LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
The essence of public debate is to find ways to make better decisions. Is that so threatening? John Crown claims that our political decision makers act as if it is.
When the Health Minister toured US cancer centres on the famous 'Superbowl Trip', she was accompanied by two PR executives -- but no cancer experts. Many public service spin doctors bring strange qualifications to their well-paid jobs; qualifications that suggest who they knew was more important than what they knew. It will be suggested that they play a necessary role in fostering communication between the various agencies and the public, but the truth is different, and in truth somewhat more alarming. Not only is the Government misusing this money at a time when frontline services are under threat, but it is spending it against the public interest.
The primary role of the public service PR agent is not to advance communication, but is rather to manage the public's perception of the agent's paymaster. Top officials will generally only appear in carefully controlled environments. Public debates with informed commentators whose opinions are at variance with the official line are always avoided.
John Crown is a doctor. He will be in some people's minds an unusual doctor -because he has turned down a huge payrise offered to him by the HSE for reasons of principle.
He believes that health services are badly managed. He believes that in part this is because of a failure to take personal responsiblity, and a failure to discuss policy choices in an open rational way.
In today's Sunday Independent he gives us some new specific insights into how the people who are paid to govern us stop at nothing to avoid critical discussion of policy. Nothing new in that? Well the details are new to me at least and you might be surprised at how deep this goes. And at how complicit media has become in shielding the responsible ones from scrutiny.
As some readers may remember, I was once removed from a Late Late Show panel at the eleventh hour after it had been suggested by an official that the panel was unbalanced. It should be noted that the minister herself and other officials had been invited to take part but declined. Cancer czar Tom Keane withdrew from another Late Late when he discovered that he would face critics. I was invited to debate Brendan Drumm on Primetime. It never happened. In the last year I have shared platforms with three ministers, all of whom insisted on speaking first and leaving before hearing the dissenting opinions.
What are they afraid of? The essence of public debate is to find ways to make better decisions. Is that so threatening?
Link to story
I could be wrong
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Question R24U
