I’ve long been an admirer of the writing of Theodore Dalrymple the former prison doctor turned social commentator. He has for a long time been very good at both diagnosing the ills of our society and also suggesting remedies for those ills. Needless to say a lot of what Mr Dalrymple suggests as cures enrages the Left that by their misguided policies created the problems in the first place.

Recently in the Critic Magazine Mr Dalrymple has turned his attention to the divide between the sometimes excellent NHS medical staff and the mediocre and damaging management that runs the NHS and runs it not for the benefit of the patients, but for the benefit of their own managerial class.

Mr Dalrymple said:

Lions led by donkeys” is no doubt by now a cliché, but it came to my mind in a British hospital recently. The surgeon whom I consulted was excellent: he was friendly but with that air of quiet authority that arises from real mastery. I could not have asked for better.

Then upon leaving the Surgeon’s office Mr Dalrymple chanced upon a poster containing the hospital management’ s ‘mission and values’ statement. It was, if you go directly to Mr Dalrymple’s piece and see it for yourself, the usual sort of low IQ, mediocre management speak bullshit that all too many of Britain’s public services have been afflicted with and nearly always to the detriment of said service.

Mr Dalrymple then contrasted the excellent knowledge and mastery of his subject of the surgeon with the worthless management that afflicts the NHS and other public services. He bemoans, quite rightly in my view, the fact that in the NHS a great man has to be subservient to mediocre management.

Mr Dalrymple added:

Needless to say, this poster did not manufacture itself or put itself on the wall: its appearance there was the product of human labour, albeit of labour at a low intellectual level, that of ambitious mediocrities. The contrast with the surgeon, who was probably subordinate in some way to these people, could not have been more painful. 

Mr Dalrymple has encapsulated what is wrong with much of Britain’s public sector. Whilst there may be quality people doing or trying to do front line work, they are hampered by a parasitic management sector that often brings no value to the service and is in my experience, not fit to run a whelk stall let alone a large public enterprise.