On the Social Affairs Unit website (h/t Dave L.), Dalrymple argues that Britain suffers from a type of corruption that we also certainly see in the US:
It has long been evident to me that Britain is now a very corrupt country. I do not mean by this that money often and necessarily passes hands in a straightforwardly illicit or illegal way, under the table in brown envelopes, as it does in some countries that I could name. In fact, it is probably true that a very large majority of the British population never in its life makes, or feels that it has to make, an openly corrupt payment: and this is something that, in the light of world history, is very remarkable. Corruption is the norm for human beings, not the deviation from the norm.Nevertheless, Britain is a corrupt country: much more corrupt, for example, than France. The kind of corruption to which I refer is of a special and insidious kind, intellectual and moral, much more insidious and difficult to root out that [sic] the more obvious kind that is usually meant by the word corruption.
Not one of his best, sadly. I think he covered the same ground much better in this essay:
http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/001464.php
I’d really like him to have explained why the “learning mentor” post was an example of moral/intellectual corruption. It’s an interesting idea but I can’t quite grasp it on my own! But he just says it and leaves it at that.
A shame. This could have been a really good essay.
Agreed, definitely not one of his best (I would even venture to say it’s one of his poorest essays in a long time).
His two main arguments, sadly, are both flawed. I tend to agree with him that the “learning mentor” position is probably a sinecure (anyone in the education biz would smell a rat at such a description), but (a) there’s no proof of that fact and (b) who is to say that similar positions do not exist in France? If they do (and I for one would strongly suspect so), this would vitiate his point.
Secondly, the comparison of military expenditure ignores a pretty obvious caveat: that the British expenditure is bound to be stretched by the commitment in Afghanistan, where remuneration (for obvious reasons) must be disproportionate. We have soldiers in Australia able to put down a deposit on a house (and house prices in Australia are steep) on the back of four months’ work in Iraq or Afghanistan. I imagine the situation would be the same for British forces.
NHS psychiatrist – now there’s an example of a ‘non job’. Particularly if the person occupying the role is actually anti psychiatry.
…Is “Evita” the same as “Louise”, the doctor’s detractor in the linked article?
‘Learning Mentors’ are just ‘teaching assistants’ with a fancy name. They had them in my ultra-traditional Catholic school when I were a lass. And jolly good they were too. They had us reading A Tale of Two Cities in reception class.
Here’s another job description that may amuse the good doctor (if such a thing is possible). South Birmingham Trust (his old stomping ground, I believe) are no longer calling the nurses in charge of their psychiatric wards ‘charge nurses’. From now on they are to be referred to as ‘suite managers’ I think it’s intended to make the patients think they are in a hotel. And when they are forcibly medicated, the staff can say, ‘See, you don’t get this in some fancy hotel.’
Nurses re-branded as managers…
It’s going to get to the point where every single job is some kind of “manager”, then we will be unable to tell the difference between the nomenklatura class and those who do real jobs.
Indeed I wonder if the natural end state of all this is for everyone to be at least partly submerged in the nonsense bureaucracy, at least partly responsible for (and dependent on) insincerity, bungling and corruption.