Prepare to be nudged

Verity

All this fiddling while Rome is burning ... Cameron's latest Blairesque "thinking", if that is not too strong a term.

It's not the government's business to be "nudging" citizens at all. You make laws and enforce them. Everything else is up to the citizen himself without Nanny Government looking over his shoulder and tut-tutting.

Get rid of the NHS and you will see people begin to take responsibility for their own health. If they don't, so what? Darwin's Law.

This "nudging" is another wing of government control. Cameron is a disaster already. To Whoever Is The Leader of the Labour Party: How about a vote of No Confidence? Four years of this would be intolerable.

Verity

PS - Who is man pictured above and why is he dressed like a chav? Could someone nudge him to do up his shirt and put on a tie? You don't see people in government in the US or France decked out like this.

KMcC

what business is it of David Cameron's whether I eat plenty of fibre or plenty of doughnuts?

Can't these interfering busybodies leave me alone, with their relentless prodding and poking and tinkering and nudging? They're our bloody employees, not our masters - how I go about my lawful occasions is none of their business. None.

AG

I simply cannot read this post because of the intrusive and flashing adverts all around it. They may give you important income but it will be self defeating if you lose all your readers.

Dave B

The Conservatives were talking about 'nudging' at the same time as they were talking about their 'post bureaucratic age'. The Big Society was just a new label, not a different concept.

Raffles

Please never mention Mary Riddell again in any context other than one of outright derision. I have cancelled my Telegraph subscription on the back of her weekly drivel. She was still banging the drum for McDoom right up to the end. Utterly meaningless drivel, she is the benchmark for everything thats wrong with this bleeding country.

David Blackburn

Dave B, not so sure. The Big Society is about change through empowerment and nudging is about change by incentive. Though obviously the two are by the ill-defined post-bureaucratic age ideas.

Rhoda Klapp

Will someone please tell me how I may nudge, or even bloody well shove, the government into doing what I want? Normal democratic methods have been completely subverted. Not by the government, by the media. Present company included.

Dave B

David Willetts 2008 Oakshot lecture might be of interest. It doesn't specifically mention 'nudging', but it covers some of the same ground; how law/government can influence behaviour.

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/PublicEvents/pdf/20080220_Willetts.pdf

TrevorsDen

2 posts from Verity and each reveals her bigotry.

'So what' to the nations health? The NHS exists and Verity thinks its a neat idea to tell countless millions of voters that she (or the party that she would support) would shut it down and does not give a toss about them.

And then she thinks a bloke in an open necked shirt is by definition a chav.

Crass and ignorant - try to do in in one post next time.

Trafalgar

Verity, I half agree with you.

The government should get out of the way as far as possible, but the concept of nudging is to alter people's behaviour without penalising them, so this fits as part of an overall theme of getting the state off our backs.

An example, speed cameras providing data to a motorist on their speed rather than acting as a ticket machine. This has been proven to reduce accidents more affectively than fines.

This is part of an overall picture and it's also tied into reform of our public services. I agree completely with the way this government has made a priority of welfare and education reform. Forcing all 2.6m incapacity benefit seekers to reclaim and pushing for free schools - both through the involvement of the private sector - gets my vote.

I don't agree with most of Cameron's foreign policy moves so far (such as promoting Turkish accession) but domestic matters need to be fixed first. I think he has his priorities right and am willing to give him a go. I certainly don't think he's been a disaster.

PS. the picture is of Steve Hilton and it's a step up for him to be wearing a suit.

Dave B

@David Blackburn
As I understand it, the Conservatives 'post bureaucratic age' goal is to reduce the size of government, by reducing the demand for government action.

Encouraging/strengthening non-government institutions, and personal responsibility are complementary actions.

Ben G

Here comes The Big Nudge.

Nicholas

With regard to obesity can you please remove that FAT HEAD Sergeant/Brand from the page. "Thatcher's Fatal Legacy" indeed - what about his mate Broon's fatal legacy? Every time I load your page and see that wibbling tosser my computer screen is in mortal danger.

Verity's Cats' Litter Tray

Trevor's Den - you are correct that I am not the touchy-feely type. People should be responsible for their own health, as they are responsible for their own hairstyles. It is absolutely nothing to do with the government.

The NHS and the BBC are nothing more than two armies to control the citizenry and both should be destroyed.

Tell me, why on earth shouldn't people be responsible for their own health? Tell me why not? If you want chavs and chavettes to cut down on junk food, guess what! - cut their "benefits" so they don't have any disposable income to buy garbage and give them food stamps with discrete limits on what may be purchased with them.

The BBC and the NHS are vast institutions of control ... and the financing of both by the citizenry, is compulsory. Both vast organisations are used as tools of control.

Officialview

"Nudging" is all about getting people to believe and act as Govnt wants them to believe and act. Unfortunately, without financial incentives (likely to be in short supply for the immediate future), this boils down to little more than pushing mendacious spin. No.10 under Blair and Alistair Campbell would have embraced "nudge" with open arms if they'd still been around in the current fiancial climate.

Verity's Casita

Trevor's Den writes to me, revealing his partiality for authoritarianism, "try to do in in one post next time."

No.

Marcher Baron

Nudge? What's wrong with rewarding good behaviour and punishing bad (ie illegal/anti-social) behaviour? At the moment, we seem to be doing the opposite.

Victor Southern

Verity lives in Mexico so is totally unconcerned by our access to the NHS. Mexican politicians do indeed wear ties with their kevlar vests. They make for smarter corpses over there.

Fernandez Cavallos was not wearing tie in his most recent photo, just a blindfold and a sheet.I am not sure what George Sanchez was wearing when he was arrested recently, perhaps a top hat and tails?

A recent photo of Verity, obtained at great expense, shows that he/she is a cross between a prune and a lemon.

These matters of dress and facial features are terribly, terribly important.

oldtimer

When can we expect to see a "wink" unit to sit alongside the "nudge" unit? And who will be the co-chairs?

Verity

Marcher Baron asks, "What's wrong with rewarding good behaviour?"

Your reward for "good behaviour" is, you don't get arrested, tried and sent to prison. And you don't get shunned by your fellow citizens. "Good" behaviour, in a free adult, doesn't mean cutting back on pastries and beer.

What's next, patrician Dave is going to reward people for saying "please" and "thank you"?

Any behaviour, as long as it is not criminal, is the business of the person doing the behaving, not the state.

lescam

I absolutely agree with Raffles, about Mary Riddell. (Mary Drivel? Mary Twaddle?) It gives me high blood pressure even glancing at her articles. I've now given up on her and totally ignore anything she writes. As Raffles says, she was still backing the idiot from Kirkcaldy right up to the election, when even his own SturmFuhrers had given up on him.

What I cannot understand is why the Telegraph, supposedly a Conservative-supporting paper, should feature this woman at all, not just occasionally but every week. Does the Guardian have a right-wing writer featured every week on its main pages? I don't know as I don't read the Guardian, but I suspect not.

Why does the Telegraph editor assume that its readers would want to read this stuff? We can read Lefty drivel in the Guardian or New Statesman, if we so wish. We turn to the Telegraph to get away from the Left, not to be harangued by it.

The good journalists in the Telegraph, e.g. Charles Moore, Jeff Randall, and Simon Heffer, often respectfully refer to their other colleagues by name, but never to Riddell. Presumably they don't think much of her either.

I remember when I first read her statement, some months ago, that "I think Gordon Brown is the best person to lead this country" and being unable to believe that the Telegraph could print such rubbish. Can't she get a job on the Guardian, and leave us in peace? Or don't they want her witterings?

TrevorsDen

The notion that the NHS is an army to control the citizenry is absurd. The proposer of notions like that is bonkers.

And why conjoin it with the BBC? The BBC is far too big for its boots, but its nothing to do with the issue NHS. Public service broadcasting has a role - its just that the BBC has gone too far beyond that.

Having a national health service has nothing to do with stopping people being responsible for their own health. And having an NHS is not an excuse for irresponsible spending.

I grow continually tired of people thinking they are immune from illness and that it is always someone else who is wasting the NHS's time. We will all grow old and so will all your parents if they are still alive. How is Verity proposing to look after them, nev er mind herself when she grows old? And children - are we to pay for our children's health?
Suppose you want to have an innocent game of football or rugby or go fell walking or climbing - do you want extra insurance for that? May be you do, but I prefer to live in a society that embraces these things.

The health service is not free - it is paid by compulsory NI and tax and it is national. Most countries have compulsory insurance but not all are national.

Even in America before Obama there was huge state and national health expenditure on Medicaid and Medicare. There is NO free for all, 'its your duty to look after yourself' system anywhere to admire.

These notions are pure fantasy.

And I am not partial to authoritarianism, I rather think I err towards libertarianism, I am partial to sarcasm - not that I am proud of it.

Frank P

Verity 5 Others 0

Nicholas

Trouble is, Verity, the state (here) has long been blurring the line between criminal behaviour and "wrong doing". It was nicely lampooned in "Rev' when, asked if dressing up as a vicar was illegal, the shaven-headed, hatless, kevlar-wrapped police goon answered: "No, but it's certainly wrong."

The thirteen, long years of New Labour saw a new government industry in defining what is "wrong" and employing an army of bureaucrats to tell us - ad nauseum. If that wasn't enough the quangocracy blossomed with thousands more highly-paid nose-pokers to join in the cacophony of "Do this. Don't Do That." Within this hive of state-sponsored activity the vested interests worked hard at turning nagging into coercive, increasingly draconian legislation. A responsibility for enforcement is good justification to empire build. Interesting to speculate, but not for long, whether the infantilism grew from all this or motivated it.

What we have now is a non-New Labour government trying to pick its way through the wreckage of interference, still burdened by the idea that governments must do something but not wishing to renege on pre-election promises to dismantle New Labour's giant puritan nanny. And ready to cheer or protest, depending on which way they go, is New Labour's stay-behind, bloated, gobby, "nice work if you can get it" fifth column that operated the strings of that nanny.

It concerns me greatly that a Cameronian wonk unit of nudgers is thought necessary when what is really required is a very sharp axe and the backbone to use it on all the useless mouths so busy lecturing us at our own expense.

Verity

Frank P - A gentleman and a scholar.

Nicholas: "It concerns me greatly that a Cameronian wonk unit of nudgers is thought necessary when what is really required is a very sharp axe and the backbone to use it on all the useless mouths so busy lecturing us at our own expense."

Hear, hear!

David Bouvier

Since at least the development of 1601 Poor Law (in the context of concerns about brigandage) it has been recognized that health and welfare a tools for the maintenance of the civil order and that it is more efficient and effective to combine welfare and justice than rely on justice alone. That current welfare is not serving us well does not refute the basic insight.

Secondly, there are many risks in a life time's need for health care that are problematic from an insurance point of view. There are good and bad ways to develop health care systems but some kind of large (~national) scale risk pooling is very helpful.

Most wise citizens would opt into such a scheme - though some issues such as birth defects and congenital conditions don't even allow opt-in to work.

Again, lets separate current problems with our specific system from clear thinking about health care problems.

It is very clear that most citizens of most countries actively believe in a bit of "social cohesion" in relation to healthcare costs and there are many security, risk and compassionate grounds for doing so.

By all means transform our healthcare system, but there are issues raised that are as intrinsically political as national defense or law and order, that must be addressed collectively as a national polity. Healthcare as nothing more than a consumer product is an delusion.

Rhoda Klapp

Public health, as opposed to national health, is a proper concern of the government. Food standards, hygeine, vaccinations, all that stuff. Obesity, which is (probably) not catching, is not. It is a personal concern. No good can come of the government interfering even indirectly.

If one reads a few of the NHS's annual obesity scare press release, one finds they keep changing the emphasis, they do not repeat year-on-year stats unless they suit the narrative. There is at least an indication that obesity has topped out. And to me at least that it occurs far more frequently in urban populations. I think it is the presence of fast food outlets combined with bored people with money, but that is just an opinion. It would be useful if someone did some real research into the causes, be they genetic, disease/virus or just plain lack of self-control. It might be that the nudge approach is not only offensively patronising, but unlikely to work anyway.

Boudicca

Rhoda Klapp
August 10th, 2010 2:11pm

Forget nudging or shoving, Cameron needs a bloody good kick up the backside when it comes to the EU.

yank

I have a suggestion, which we here desperately need as well. Cut out the government's food subsidies.

Cut out agricultural price supports.

We subsidize corn production, and guess what? They make corn sweetener of it. Kill the subsidy, and let the price of sweetening rise to where it should be. You'll save government money, and presumably less sweetener will be consumed.

Dave being a typical politician, I don't expect this type of sensible action, any more than I expect it here. Voting constituencies to be protected, don'tchayaknow. So he'll just go nanny, as here.

But if you want my Krispy Kremes, you'll have to pry them from my cold, dead hand, and the other hand will be holding my smoking, empty firearm. ;-)

TrevorsDen

Careful Bouvier you are talking sense. Amazing to think that the nut jobs on here want to return to pre Victorian levels of poor laws.

'public health as opposed to national health is a proper concern of govt' - what kind of bogus statement is that?
The proper concern of govt is what the people say it is! The problem, the real issue, is affording it.

Health costs and organisation need to be under proper control but to assume the natural order of things is not to have a health service at all beggars belief. Clearly the nut jobs are clueless about what they are talking about.

All nations are struggling to control health costs.

Take Germany (which unlike Verity's idea also has a compulsory centrally provided health system).

From the WSJ

'In the long term, analysts say, Germany will almost certainly be forced to make painful cuts to a system that to many here is sacrosanct.'
'Annette Emmerich, ... who suffers from breast cancer.... says paying an even bigger chunk of her monthly paycheck toward insurance or an additional premium would put considerable strain on her personal finances.'

This is what the alternative is to the NHS in the real world as opposed to the breast cancer free world of Verity (tell me Verity how do you 'look after your own health' and protect yourself against breast cancer?).

Sadly Brown squared the circle just by borrowing more money. That option has run out. Health costs and services need to be controlled or they will bankrupt the country inside 10 years.
Hmm, Verity's solution would at least only bankrupt her ...

TrevorsDen

The WSJ link

http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB125849684108252695.html

Dave B

@TrevorsDen
Germany is just one alternative to the UK NHS. Hannan advocates Singapore's health accounts; in the past, the UK had a mixed system, where local gov't provided some services, insurance schemes provided some services, charities provided some serivices, and others were provided on a cash basis. (The Welfare State We're In is very good on the history.)

Thingamy

I entirely agree with Raffles. Please never mention Mary Riddell again. I buy the Telegraph sporadically (one paper lasts several lunch-breaks) and am always miffed if I find I've bought one with her in it. I tried a few times but can discern not the smallest contribution to the great debate and have stopped punishing myself. Losing one of the leaders is a terrible waste of a quid!

Verity, in her observations on personal responsibility, speaks to a fundamental tradition of English law - it never seeks to deny an individual his own freedom to do as he wishes, but merely sets out the consequences of particular choices (you can go to the devil if you insist, but the consequences will be thus...).

Verity's Lemon Tree

Trevor's Den - The only two health care systems worth copying and applying to Britain are Singapore and France. Both are top notch.

I have said several times on these pages that we should adopt one system or the other, and get a froggie or a Singaporean over to run it for us.

In France, doctors, dentists, labs and hospitals compete for trade. It is run as a free market. The doctors, hospitals, etc are paid by the number of patients they treat. So competition rules the day. A doctor gives you a prescription to go to for an xray, say, and you trundle off with your prescription and take it to a lab you've heard other people praise.

All the ancillary services compete for customers as in a free market. They keep their appointments on time - in other words, they don't overbook - they're warm and friendly (yes, even though they're French) and they strive to give good service.

I haven´t experienced a hospital in France, but there again, they compete for patients.

In Singapore, they use a system where everyone has a health account and they can spend it however they choose. If someone opts for plastic surgery, for example, that's their choice, and the money for the procedure is deducted from their account. As it's not a general pot of money, but each individual's account, people are inclined to be more frugal in the services they use. (Of course, the Chinese are frugal by nature, so I don't know whether this would translate elsewhere.)

I had an operation in Singapore, and was very pleased at how clean and well-run the hospitals are. Of course, they still have matrons.

Also, there is not general pot of funds for foreigners in Singapore. Either your employer pays, or you pay, or you go home for your treatment.

Rhoda Klapp

"- what kind of bogus statement is that?"
and then..

"The proper concern of govt is what the people say it is!"

What kind of bogus statement is that? They never ask. And you know fine well they ignore everything which does not suit them.

Immigration, multi-culturalism, the Afghan War, the EU and climate change.

TGF UKIP

Absolutely hilarious! I really do love this government with Dave more than living up to all my expectations and giving more ammunition than I could ever have expected.

Surprised though at the house mag being so bold as to actually feature a pic of the poison dwarf, the Mekon himself. Sign of the times when even The Speccie knows no fear.

TrevorsDen

Dear Verity

The French healthcare system is funded by compulsory insurance ie the state makes sure you and your employer pay. So its not the sort of system you were advocating earlier where you alone were supposedly responsible. You would pay 20% of your salary (self employed more) - deducted at source, and its 6 billion euros in debt despite that. It has problem hospitals just like we have - its not perfect.

The French have a social security system, just as we have. And if you are poor or have a serious condition the state pays all and you do not have to insure against any top up charges.

The management of a system is a matter for argument but this is not what you were stating to begin with; healthcare in France is not a free for all as you suggest it ought to be here.

We ought to be able to learn something from Singapore since it only spends about 3% of its GDP on health. It is of course a very small country with just 23 hospitals. And it too enforces mandatory health care contributions.

The state cannot ignore health care.

TrevorsDen

Ms Klapp - its clear the people want the NHS, they may be right they may be wrong but thats the issue.

given the bias for the system in the lefty media its not a good idea for a political party hoping to gain power to hint at abolishing it.

reform is a different matter.

Everything can be reformed sometimes even for the better.

Dave B the point is all health care costs are coming under strain. Without the recession without the cuts to the deficit we still would have strains on our health care. Brown and Labour just want to borrow more money. We cannot continue to do that - healthcare will bankrupt us.

Rhoda Klapp

Trevorsden, i was not trying to debate the National Health, but merely saying that public health is a pretty undeniable task of government (not necessarily The Government) along with defence, law and order, that sort of stuff. Personal health, treatment and such, is not. In this country we have decided the NHS is the way we deliver (most of) that. OK, I am not dogmatic about it, I think the effectiveness is more important than the ideology, but that debate is over.

However, if the government thinks that it is their business to interfere in issues like obesity, with their odious nudging, I don't like it. It is both intrusive and ineffective. A good government would resist the temptation to use its powers to nag and bully its employers.

Simon Stephenson

TrevorsDen : 9.35am

"Ms Klapp - its clear the people want the NHS, they may be right they may be wrong but thats the issue."

Well this is a latter-day discussion-stopper, if ever I saw one.

What people want is a system that prevents the poorest and most-needy from being denied access to healthcare through lack of money. Why they treat the NHS as untouchable is firstly because they believe the endless propaganda which suggests that reform of the NHS must involve a watering down of the commitment to providing for the poor, and secondly, and probably more importantly, because the provision of funding for the NHS is largely the responsibility of the relatively few people who pay large amounts of personal taxation - and not the masses who don't.

There's precious little thinking along the lines that in a world of limited resources a commitment in one area means a denial in another, or that the central purpose of politics is to determine a rational graduation of levels of importance so as to allow best-fit allocation.

TrevorsDen

Mr Stephenson, WHY the public want the NHS is not the issue (they may be right they may be wrong), they do and the tories have been successfully smeared as a result.

Ms Klapp - when in a hole stop digging...
'public health is a pretty undeniable task of government (not necessarily The Government) along with defence, law and order, that sort of stuff. Personal health, treatment and such, is not'.

Leaving aside the confusion and contradiction in all that ... every govt in the world dictates to its citizens how they should receive their health treatment.

Its the responsibility of govt to save us from ourselves regarding crime but not obesity. We are to be forced to take out car insurance but not to worry about our health cover?

Strange notions.

TrevorsDen

PS
Mr Stephenson -- there is no intent to stop the discussion. Just HOW the NHS is organised is wide open for discussion. There are many many questions that need to be asked and indeed hopefully answered.

I put it to you though that the attitudes of Ms Verity (apparently in far away Mexico) and Ms Klapp will only prejudice any such discussion. The notion that health care cannot be a consideration of government is risible.

Tim Carpenter LPUK

I see "nudge" as just a version of Fabianism, but with a Conservative twist.

Odious, arrogant, self-serving.

We should realise where this will all end up - force. Lansley has already got bored with waiting for voluntary calorie labelling on menus and now wants to force it upon people. This is how it will go. Nudging will segue into shoving once results are needed for the next election.

Its what Authoritarians do. It is all they know.

"Amon....the Good"?

Rhoda Klapp

Trevorsden, I don't know what you are reading, but it is not what I am writing. Perhaps you have me confused with Verity.

yank

The only thing you lot need to understand about your NHS is that Obama here is in love with it, and his chosen administrator of ObamaCare is in love with it, and they're on record saying so. They LIKE what the NHS is doing, jot and tittle, and want ObamaCare to mirror it.

And 60% of us over here want to throw the whole mess right into the dumpster.

And now, as the election nears and ObamaCare's unpopularity looms ugly, they're trying to back away from that NHS love. Too late, gang. That die is cast.

Simon Stephenson

TrevorsDen : 11.33am

"Mr Stephenson, WHY the public want the NHS is not the issue"

Errrrrr .... but surely, unless we try to understand the reasons behind peoples' irrational behaviour, we have little chance of overriding it and implementing rational policy, do we? Giving sacred cow status to the NHS, as it is currently constituted, is to admit that the infantilisation of society is irreversible.

I'm sorry, but if implementing grown-up policy makes the Tories unpopular, then the fault to be corrected is popular stupidity, not government will and determination. Democracy can only work if popular opinion is formed at a higher level of awareness than half-wittedness.

Simon Stephenson

Tim Carpenter LPUK : 11.33am

"I see "nudge" as just a version of Fabianism, but with a Conservative twist.

Odious, arrogant, self-serving ...

Its what Authoritarians do. It is all they know."

Correct.

Tim Carpenter LPUK

The problem with the government getting involved is that it only understands and tolerates monopolies.

Very rarely, a monopoly is not as bad as plurality and these are called natural monopolies.

Health and education are NOT natural monopolies. Not even close.

This is why "nudge" is so vile - as the State begins to get a taste for it, only one direction will be permitted and soon nudge will become shove. Watch obesity, smoking and drinking. That is how it goes. Nagging then yelling then bullying then taxing then fining then de-legitimising and finally criminalisation.