Hospital's Google Map - more support for David Boyle's 450 bus theory

The ever excellent David Boyle has recently been ruminating on the nature of public service and the general uselessness of particularly the Labour Party in overseeing their provision.

His '450 bus theory' - named after a friendly local bus service in the Cyrstal Palace area of south east London is about how human scale is missing from many public services leaving the users disempowered and at the mercy of bureaucratic indifference.

Well what to make of St George's Hospital in Tooting who have launched a version of Google Maps for their patients and visitors?  Sounds very sensible and helpful you might think in helping their patients to get to their appointments on time.  But the version of Google Maps is for the internal layout of the hospital which has grown so vast in recent years that patients are frequently getting lost inside the buildings rather than on their way.

I have some personal experience of St George's and it is an enormous, souless, impersonal and depressing place even if its staff are extremely expert in their medical specialisms.  And I wouldn't wish an illness sufficently serious for anyone to end up there because of this.

The current round of NHS service centralisations will lead to more St George's - as would Labour's idea of nationalising social care.  It's why we continue to pour billions into the NHS but never see the true value of this investment. 

David Boyle is right - smaller and more personal services are the way forward - but who in government (and especially the Lib Dems) is going to have the courage to take his argument forward? 

French double dip recession challenges social liberals

News that France has returned recession poses problems for those - like the Social Liberal Forum (SLF) and indeed Ed Balls - who believe that government action can create economic demand (and jobs).

That such an explicity interventionist government as that of Francois Hollande is unable to stem the tide of Eurozone recession is surely evidence that in such a globalised world - where multinational corporations are bigger than many economies - the power of governments to change much (at least in the short term) seems pretty limited.

And that is also the failure of the SLF and others who call for plan Bs (or Cs or whatevers).  By failing to recognise the limits of government and putting too much trust into a 'benign' state they perpetuate remote  bureaucracies, overweening and overeaching politicians and allow the state to centralise economic and other power in too few hands.

In the end economics - like politics - is about people and how they interact with others.  And so Liberals should look for a new economic strategy - one that truly understands the limits of state action and the importance of people. 

A good place to start might be David Boyle who seems to be streets ahead of the SLF in defining a new liberal ecomomics - fit for the reality of the 21st century - and not simply a rehash of the failed post war certainties of the SLF and Ed Balls.

David Boyle sums up my thoughts on the NHS bill

In a superb article on Lib Dem Voice, David Boyle (a former editor of Liberal News), outlines why liberals should support the Health and Social Care Bill.

The fundamental problem with much of the party's thinking over the last 20 years has been a kneejerk support for producer interests and a failure to accept the state can be just as venal and incompetent as the private sector. Sadly it's the thinking that drives Liberal Left and much of the Social Liberal Forum's policy making.

What matters to liberals surely is the quality, efficiency and costs of public services - not who provides them?