Living in Fear

I live in fear that our politicians do not understand modern life.  The Right are wedded to the Market, obsessed that only through competition can any service be provided, and as an inevitable consequence, fear must stalk the corridors of our hospitals and schools.

The Left put their faith in the State, but because no-one trusts all those faceless bureaucrats, they put in performance targets, generating perverse incentives (anyone tried to get a GP appointment further than 48 hours in advance?), and wedded to outmoded classifications of productivity.  These are all put together into league tables.  Perhaps the school tables could be sponsored by a bank like the Premier League and we would have Paxman on Newsnight with the head of Ofsted and an academic discussing the latest positions like on Match of the Day.

“Westminster are up two places, but I still don’t think their History department is strong enough for them to push for the title.”

“I fear for Rutland College, poor all round performance, no star quality, they look likeliest for the drop this term.”

Neither way works. 

I fear a country where teachers view children as part of a performance framework – either to prove they should keep their jobs, or to maintain league position and avoid being re-badged as an academy or failing school, with all the extra paperwork and scrutiny that entails.

I fear a Political Class inculcated from real life by policy papers and think tank reports, which probably know the answers that are required before setting out on researching the subject. 

I want an honest debate about what the country needs, not framed in terms of market or state solutions, but in terms of what we really want from our public services and what we, as the populous, need to contribute in terms of money and responsibility.  There is no one right solution, nor one correct way to view the problems.

We need to start facing up to our individual part in the position we find ourselves in.  It is easy to blame the Markets for causing the economic bubble and collapse.  It is easy to blame the then Government or the Coalition for poor decision making.  We just sit here and shake our heads, whilst having less money to live on.  We were the ones who took out the easy loans and 110% mortgages.  And now we expect the politicians to solve the problems with the same mindset that created them in the first place (after Einstein).  We have to take some responsibility and tell the politicians we want it to work differently from now on.  If we don’t then once we climb out of this economic mess we will walk blindly into the next one.