Happy birthday NHS.

You can draw a lot of parallels with what's been done to the NHS and elsewhere, mainly that people who run things get paid more or move up the greasy pole based on rate of change, people who actually do the work know it's about building on the body of work already done, and are viewed as being resistant to change. To put the squeeze on, they are judged on the proportion of things they do, which can be guaranteed to be misrepresented by anyone with an agenda.

In other words, we have a thing where the integral is vitally important, but largely ignored, the proportion keeps having the cable to it unplugged on purpose, and only the derivative remains plugged in. Proportional, integral, derivative. Pretty much the simplest control strategy. A strategy like this carried out with autopilots on planes, for example as it has been with the NHS, would leave your back garden full of aluminium.

Anecdotal evidence, smearing the NHS, mission statements and visions and all of this NuSpeak are just a handy indicator of Managerialism, and we see it in all other sectors. Power (certainly without authority) is inherently corrupt. The solution is to rout out the wastefulness at the top of all organisations, and this can only be done if the rest of us get together.

To this, people like to say 'oh well you can't always fight the system, you'll get tired out, you have to look out for yourself'. Time to grow up then. The world revolves around you at four, not forty. What about the person who can't look out for themselves? If we all get together to sort things out then it becomes easy.