Deck the halls

Yesterday, Chris wrote

You are wrong on your sweeping analysis of the public sector worker, though, and are sadly falling into this "front line good - back office bad!" socio/economic illiteracy that is so popular just now with the politicians.

A good public servant is there to do the public will, as set out by their bosses, who get it from THEIR bosses,(the politicians)- and THEIR bosses - us!

 and, to be fair, makes a sound point.  There is a marked tendency for opposition politicians to define management - particularly in the health service - as largely superfluous to the well-being of the institution. But Chris' shrewd observation did set the mind thinking: was the piece yesterday justified in its commentary and - as a further adjunct - is management deserving of the critique it receives?

It used to be said that those who can, do and those who can't, teach. That simplistic but oft quoted saying actually does a massive disservice to committed and genuine teachers, but - as with all such aphorisms - there's often a germ of truth lurking beneath the surface.  In the case of teachers, good salaries, apparently long holidays and easy entrance to the Mathematics and Sciences side of things are powerful incentives while, in a time of recession, teaching offers steady employment, a reasonable career ladder and a degree of respect within the community. But the public has a remarkably selective capacity for these things.  If we were to apply the saying to, say - clairvoyants, spiritualists or Derren Brown, then many would be incensed, while books proclaiming 'How to make  a million - I did!' simply fly off the shelves.

But the pressure on education and the NHS, albeit politically imposed through varying degrees of astonishing ignorance, demands a management structure be in place, partly to deal with the horrendous amounts of paperwork which now pervade all the public services.

The NHS is one area where management is frequently vilified as unnecessary, incompetent or a sterling combination of both. Which brings us to the second part of Chris' comment:

A good public servant is there to do the public will, as set out by their bosses, who get it from THEIR bosses,(the politicians)- and THEIR bosses - us!

and it's probably there where we encounter the biggest issues of the day. It is, after all, we who demand change, we who elect MPs and Councillors, we who blame them when things don't go according to plan and we who choose the Government. So it's probably worth considering exactly how the political will is directed towards change.

And this is the problem.  All too often the politician reacts to perceived pressure from without;  the Tabloids, in effect, set the agenda. Unfortunately, once we've elected them, there's little we can do to influence them, and thus the Tabloids get free rein to pick up individual stories that can so often end up becoming policy.

But there may be light on the horizon. Our democratic system saw its genesis at a time when the journey from Edinburgh to London took five days, three horses and a pair of saddles.  Things have never changed as fast as they have in the past ten years. The emergence of 'instant' messaging, twittering, forums, blogs, facebook and the mobile 'phone mean that our elected representatives have never been so accessible, nor their actions so open to comment and dissection. In fact, it's now technologically quite feasible to implement a real democracy - one in which every voter can vote on every issue. But somehow, it's hard to see any politician voting through a measure which might actually make them less powerful.  But all these innovations are steadily combining to erode the power of the printed media, supplant the visual media and provide platforms for the ordinary voter to have their say.  Perhaps it won't be too long before we can really bring about change.