Are we trying too hard to think? In our thoroughly-decent fair-play English way we have always put a high premium on thinking. Yes, there is common sense, but when we have got a big problem like the future of the world, or even a medium sized problem like the future of the United Kingdom, how about doing some superior thinking? How ever much it hurts our heads, how about some intelligence.
Let’s take a medium sized problem like the future of the Health Service. That calls for NHS Intelligence… (Let’s play the Harry Lyme theme now – NHS Intelligence – I kid you not). Now there is a title that makes me smile.
You see I have a theory about the NHS. Composed in the spirit of historical determinism it is called my “Russian/Soviet Army/Hospital Trust Theory” and it goes like this:
Take a large organisation with over 1 million ’employees’ or ‘people in arms’
+ plus a passionate ideology of freedom for all at the point of delivery (of a bayonet or a needle)
+ plus the need to be in a constant state of decisive change (radical reform or
revolution)
=
The outcome (however well intended) is that the organisation moves 50% slower each time a cycle of reform is completed. eg the tank/hospital divisions/services move at 32 kph then 16, then 8… and so on… ad finitum.
Yes, there’s the rub. It is ‘Ad Finitum’ not ‘Ad Infinitum’. Things do not go on for ever, and there is always a cut off point… It was 1989 for the Russian Soviet Army… And it will be a date in the relatively near future for the NHS. It is not a question of whether, simply of when.
The above theory has nothing to do with Right Wing Think Tanks by the way. There is and has clearly been a Tory ideological objective to do away with the NHS for some time under the guise of ‘market reforms’, and if these kinds of people get their way this of course would simply hasten and bring forward the moment of ‘Ad Finitum’.
NO, my theory is based more in the tradition of mind of central european thinking
post-communism… and now (perhaps) post-capitalism. This tradition is embedded in the 200 million people of our european neighbours who live east of Berlin and west of the Urals, people have seen more terrible and violent things in the last 100 years than we in our gentle English isle would ever care to think about or imagine, and experienced the worst excesses and most ridiculous absurdities of ideological practices of both the Right and Left. In this tradition they have developed the wisdom of being superflous, and a deep knowledge of transience having seen many things come and go. They know the horrors of superior thinking, and they would have little time for NHS Intelligence or UK government’s ‘market reforms’ (if they happened to live in Ukania as opposed to Ukraine). They would in fact be entirely indifferent.
Being indifferent to ‘Decision Times’ is their way of surviving because they know that, whatever is done on their behalf and whatever is changed to improve the system (intelligently or otherwise), they are always the ones who will end up suffering the worse consequences.
They have my entire sympathies… etc…
Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka (The Good Soldier Švejk) knows better; NHS Intelligence indeed!