Stuart Maconie talking about his new book 'The Nanny State Made Me':
JR
JR
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He's right as far as he goes. One of the problems which helped "the nanny state" gain traction in popular circles as a descriptor was the we'll do it all for you, top-down way it has been run. Bureaucracy has always given "socialism" a bad name: the internal fiefdoms, the inefficiencies. Sure, somebody had to think up the idea of an NHS in the first place, others initiate it, but once up and running employee representation on the BODs would have helped forestall the middle layer management introductions of the 1980s and 1990s, plus all that target setting and structural fragmentation leading to selling off, PPIs being introduced, which would never have happened under workers' control. Akin to the "well if we're going to have a Tory government whether Concervative or Labour, I might as well vote for a real one", because rank-and-file workers were never made to feel involved in "our" industries, which were operated by closed board decisions and made to compete on global market criteria, they were de-motivated into not thinking of them in those terms.
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