Fisking Polly Toynbee – Part Four
Patrick Crozier

The NHS is the most efficient health system in the world: now it is well financed, it can be the best.

I am going to assume for the sake of argument that there are some studies out there which have compared some standard procedures across the Western world and come to the conclusion that the British ones are the cheapest.

But that's a long way away from saying they're any good. It could quite easily be the case that other countries provide operations of higher quality. Ones where, for instance, there's no 2-year waiting list or no MRSA super bug or where nursing staff are pleasant to you and the wards are nice places to be. If money is to be spent then I would suggest much of it would have to go on these areas which, of themselves, would not actually increase the number of operations performed.

There is also the issue of scalability - the ease at which you increase the size of something. Doctors, nurses, hospitals and operating theatres do not grow on trees. It takes many years for them to appear. The Splurge might look good over the next two years but it won't be long before the next recession kills it stone dead. And then where will we be?

This is also something odd going on here. Miss Toynbee claims that the NHS is "efficient" implying that that is a good thing. So, how did it get to be good? I can't imagine that it has become massively more efficient over the last 6 years of Labour Government - after all, it doesn't seem to have changed much in any other respect - so the conclusion must be that it must be the old Conservative Government that must take the credit. Miss Toynbee, do be careful.

Fisking Polly Toynbee – Part Three
Patrick Crozier

Spell out what good the state does and how much more it can do.

What does she mean here? Notice, I am having to ask this with just about every line she writes. Is it because she is vague or I am being over-precise? Dunno. Anyway, I will continue on in this vein because that's the kind of guy I am.

She could mean that because the state, say, provides some schools which provide some education to some children it is therefore a good thing. But if she were saying this it would be terribly disingenuous. The real measure is how the state compares with the alternatives.

And then we get into a real problem. Because how do you make that comparison? Which is better, that ten children are educated to level 9 or that one child is educated to level 100 and the others not at all? Which is better quality or equality? This is assuming that you could ever come up with a linear scale of education - surely and impossibility.

And even then there is the whole question of whether education itself is so much better than its alternatives. Personally, I rather think that a vast number of 14-year olds would be far better off (and not just financially) by leaving school and entering the world of work.

I suppose what I am arguing is that you (and by extension government) simply cannot know what "good" is, let alone deliver it.

Fisking Polly Toynbee – Part Two
Patrick Crozier

Stop trying to do good by stealth,

Well, that presupposes that governments can do good. I would say the evidence for that is pretty shaky at least. After all, if governments can do good that would tend to imply that the more they do the better things get. I would say the evidence of the Soviet Union compared to the United States would indicate the opposite.

But I guess I see her meaning here. She would like Blair to stop pretending that he's all in favour of low taxes while on the sly stuffing state services with gold and, instead, say it as it is. And I have to say, on this at least, I agree with her. There is nothing constructive in ambiguity.

...stop running against public services

Oh Geez. What can this mean? You cannot argue that Tony Blair is against the NHS and state education. Remember "24 hours to save the NHS" and "Education, education, education."? For Heaven's sake.

Fisking Polly Toynbee – Part One
Patrick Crozier

Polly Toynbee’s article Ten things Tony Blair should do before he is 55 has provoked much sneering in our corner of the Blogosphere. As has Margaret Drabble’s I loathe America, and what it has done to the rest of the world. Commenting on Drabble’s article über-blogger Stephen Pollard was moved (or rather not moved) to write: "I don't really care."

Well I do care. Especially about Miss Toynbee’s article. I think it is one of the most powerful and seductive arguments for social democracy I have ever read. I also think it is profoundly wrong. Because it is so good, lampooning it or ignoring it are simply (as Peter Cuthbertson has recently pointed out) not good enough. No, this is an article that deserves to be taken at its own estimation of itself and then taken apart line by line, in minute and forensic detail. A mega-fisking, so to speak.

So, that’s what I am going to do. It’s going to take a while, hence the Part One. And there may be long gaps between the parts, and, Hell, I may never actually finish it but never mind, let’s give it a go and see what happens.

This is how she starts:

Tony Blair has had a warm welcome to the wrong side of 50. A life so frenetic may ward off existential tremors - if it's Tuesday it's Belfast, Wednesday it's foundation hospitals - and keep intimations of political mortality at bay on a manic treadmill…

Actually, there’s quite a lot in this vein. Not particularly controversial stuff, merely preparing the terrain and providing a hook to hang the article:

…man of destiny…political longevity …blah, blah, blah

Until:

So here are 10 things to do before he's 55. Ten things to shape the nation radically and permanently, more than Mrs Thatcher did. These will stretch his powers of persuasion, test his political art and try his warlike bravery. But so far he has not done much that cannot be undone. Here is his manifesto for 50:

And then:

1 Bang the drum for social democratic values.

Boom! And we’re off. "Bang the drum for social democratic values." Now, what can that mean? Not bang the drum for social democracy. But it’s values. And what might they be? At risk of attempting to nail jelly to the ceiling I am going to guess that she does mean bang the drum for social democracy. As in it’s a good thing. In which case: what is it? I suppose what it means, and I am no great expert here, is the mixed economy with the state running health and education while regulating everything else (where necessary) in order to ensure equality of outcomes.

If that is the case then with the exception of the equality bit I fail to see what the difference is between social democracy and what we actually had between 1945 and 1979. Dammit, what ended in 1979? Certainly not the health or the education. No, I think you could argue that we have been governed on social democratic lines since 1945. The question then being “Was it any good?” and “Was the outcome better than if we had not gone down that path?” both of which are absolutely enormous and way beyond the scope of this blog posting.

Give up pandering to the language of Thatcherism, of markets, individualism, consumerism.

What on God’s Earth does this mean? How can you pander to a language for heaven’s sake? OK, let’s try to decode it. I think what she means is that markets, individualism and consumerism aren’t all that. In other words they could be good they could be bad but there are other things (-isms) out there that are more important. Now as a libertarian I do regard this as something of a challenge. To me markets, individualism and consumerism are the hallmarks of freedom ie what I want.

To be continued…

Toynbee slammed
Patrick Crozier

Guardianista, Polly Toynbee, has come under attack for being soft on murderers. Writing in Conservative Commentary, Peter Cuthbertson said: "Motivated by a bitter contempt for her country, morality and common sense, she is shameless in her advocacy of any means to destroy conservatism. The parliamentary route seems scarcely to interest her except where she shows her distaste for it. She must look with admiration on those European Commissioners, without a vote to their name, driving small businessmen across the continent into bankruptcy with politically correct regulations."

80% of Britons support the restoration of the death penalty.