Public sector employees everywhere treat their clients as barely tolerated irritants
28 November 2009
Toby Young suffers from Status Anxiety
The problem does not lie with the sort of people who take up these low-level public sector jobs, but with the nature of the relationship between the state and its citizens. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the ‘end user’ will be asking the state employee for some sort of handout, whether a 90-day visa waiver or free medical attention. That places the employee in a position of power over the petitioner and, human nature being what it is, that inevitably leads to contempt.
George Orwell got it wrong. The relationship between ordinary people and the all-powerful nation states that have come to define the modern era is not that of a boot stamping on a human face. Rather, it is of a hand being held up, palm outwards, as if to say to the human face, ‘I’m just not interested.’
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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