Letter

Choice: always good?

healthmatters performs an invaluable service by highlighting the hidden issues around ‘choice’ and consumerism in the health service (How will greater ‘consumer choice’ impact on the NHS?, issue 54).

Choice is like motherhood — who could possibly be against it? healthmatters readers may be unfamiliar with the invented word ‘fnord’ from Wilson and Shea’s The Illuminatus Trilogy. In the book, children are trained to respond to the word, buried in the middle of texts, by 1) having forgotten they’ve seen it and 2) getting nervous. As adults they will then ascribe their anxiety to what they were reading.

So fnords are words or phrases that prevent clear thought and analysis. When you meet a fnord (e.g. ‘choice’, ‘human rights’, ‘dictators’) you are supposed to stop thinking and make an ahistorical value judgement (‘good’ or ‘bad’). Otherwise, your intelligence, your intentions and your basic decency may be questioned. Ironically, further ‘fnords’ may be used against you (nanny-statist, elitist).

Blair’s — sorry, Orwell’s — essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ gives many examples of ‘fnords’. How we flag them to ourselves and others in a ‘Big Conversation’ that is both one-way and riddled with soundbites is another problem.