On thick ice
Has anybody else read this comment piece in the Guardian by Andy Burnham, chief secretary to the Treasury and former ID card salesman?
He likes his metaphors and uses them liberally. He writes of ‘a hard road’, ‘tinkering with the wiring’ and ‘the green light’. I’m very fond of metaphors as well. Thinking up new ones is one of the vestigial pleasures of blogging. Here’s one.
I’ve skated up and down Burnham’s article several times now but I can’t see through the ice to his underlying meaning. I’ve struck the permafrost prose forcefully but it’s proving impenetrable.
I suspect the piece is couched in so many euphemisms that Burnham is addressing a very esoteric audience indeed, one party to forbidden knowledge. I’ve spotted ‘public sector reform’ and ‘the voluntary sector’ at least. I’ve yet to pin down their true meanings but I doubt Burnham could give a pithy - or honest - summation either.
When Burnham exhorts ‘commissioners of local services’ not to ‘wait for ever for an “evidence base”‘, it occurs to me that he’s advocating an even more cavalier use of public money. Public spending based on hunches and ‘common sense’*. But then I think, this government? Nah.
So, who is this piece directed at and what does it mean?
* ‘…a slogan of anti-intellectual conservatism’ (Steven Poole).
Posted on January 16th, 2008 at 4:18 am
| See also • Re-branding the herd • Telegraph: We’ve failed on crime, says Blair • A marriage of convenience |
Permalink • Trackback • Subscribe By Email • Print This Post • • • |
|
Filed under Eye Catching Initiatives, New Labour |
Justin - to figure out who Burnham is talking and why, you just need to look at what New Labour has done to the NHS in the last 10 years (not dissimilar to the approach to education). Basically, what`s been happening is that the government has been hollowing out the NHS, piecemeal replacing state-administered segments - casualty units, heart specialist units, radiological departments, etc - with private sector providers, while all the time babbling on about patient choice and `free at the point of use`, which has to be the deadliest, most meretricious phrase ever applied to public services in this country.
The private sector now has its fangs sunk deep in a large chunk of the NHS budget and its about to get bigger now that Burnham and his bagmen have brought in all the big private medical providers to decide how to parcel out the NHS services. This isn`t accidental, its all been planned. As private medicine takes over the NHS, democratic accountability and transparency will shrivel under the rubric of commercial confidentiality. And the phrase `free at the point of use` will be trumpetted louder and still louder while we the citizens pay the costs elsewhere in the system.
Yeah, its free in the surgery and the hospital, but the money is still coming out of our pockets in tax and gushing into the accounts of the endlessly rapacious private sector providers (not to mention the vile legions of consultants and incompetent IT hucksters).
So what the hell is Burnham on about? Simple - his article is a self-aggrandising, arrogant wad of lying flannel, studded here and there with nuggets of attitude and promise that will act to reassure execs in the private medical sector everywhere. `Innovate and break traditional patterns of local spending`, `Be more entrepreneurial`, `Be open-minded about who might be best placed to provide services`, `Abandon territorial approaches to service delivery`. Yes, all these and more constitute proof that Burnham is a neo-liberal privatiser in the old Thatcher mould, only this gang of Blair/Brownistas are always careful to slather on social-welfare-sounding wordbites, like; `Breaking cycles of premature ill health, poor educational attainment and repeat juvenile offending`, `individual empowerment`, `move money around if traditional areas of spending aren’t producing the goods`.
It boggles the mind to see Burnham using the word `empowerment` in one paragraph then saying `personal budgets` in the next. Along with `choice`, it amounts to a completely fake argument. People in general do not want to have to choose when it comes to health and education; choice implies choosing between bad and good. We would rather be `empowered` by being secure in the knowledge that the NHS provides universal healthcare to everyone, that ALL of the money in the NHS budget is being devoted to the health of the public, and that the Health ministry is working day and night to ensure high quality care for every citizen. I want an NHS that is directly accountable to my elected representatives, not to the accountants of some money-grubbing American `health` provider like those unveiled in the Michael Moore movie, Sicko.
But what we`re presented with is a gigantic lie; `free at the point of use`. Never mind that millions of pounds are being siphoned off to be stuffed into the wallets of private sector providers or given away to shareholders, while the NHS shrinks to nothing more than a veneer wrapped around a jostling patchwork of different companies and corporations driven by profit. Anyone who thinks that the public health will remain the no1 priority under such a system will be proven wrong.
So basically, Justin, Burnham`s piece is another piece of smug, self-satisfied propaganda extruded by a smug, self-satisfied gang of economic thugs. Helluva thing to think that the last halfway progressive government we had in this country was in 1979. God, that its come to this.
I attempted reading it and just found my eyes glazing over at the vacuous meaningless at its very heart. It means both everything and nothing, as Michael points out so eloquently above.
All gelid with icy lucidity,
Of permafrost prose it’s the quiddity:
Nye Bevan is dead
So you get choice of bed -
Rejoice, sing tum tiddity iddity.