Letter

Cztart slow and build up

Dear healthmatters — Geof Rayner’s view that the government’s public health strategy is ‘not bad as far as it goes’ does not do justice to the government’s dilemma. It is hard for all of us to rebuild a sense of public service after the damage done by the Thatcher and Major governments.

Some criticise the current government for leaning to far too the right, but they are suffering from the delusion that governments lead nations, rather than follow them. Thatcher’s government was the exception to the rule, Blair’s is thoroughly conformist. As a society we are now more individualised and less socialised, more competitive, less aware of others, and shallower than the generation that made the NHS. Now young and old compete for medical care, and the rich want to dump the expensive poor. Rolling that lot back is no small task, if it is possible at all. A Drugs Czar is no compromise, but a way of making the complexity of the drugs problem apparent in a deeply conservative nation with an impoverished political culture. Of course ‘Czar’ is a dumb name, but we get the language we deserve.