TFTD: sometimes we might feel like saying If only the world was really as simple as your categories, but actually, its over-simplification that makes the world bloody complicated, often in literally bloody ways. Respect for real details should become a more widely held value. Better public policy making and better politics requires more respect for details and better use of evidence. Campaigning on an emotive or popular message to gain support and push for changes in policies is often not really in the wider public interest. Good campaigning is not just a matter of effectively gathering public support but also making bloody sure youve done the proper research first (proper research means in a sufficiently rigorous way that is capable of surprising you and making you realise you were mistaken) and are campaigning for a good and workable policy. It may sadly be true that in the current political culture policies dont matter, soundbites and appeals to partisan emotions win votes, but thats really sad, and its really not going to lead the kind of depth of transformations that would prevent our society from collapsing in the next couple of hundred years as the demographic time-bomb, economic stresses of adapting to climate change, end of the era of antibiotics, managing the transition to globalisation better, etc. coincide on us. I look forward to the day (perhaps in my lifetime, even?) when something like Respect for real details, careful use of evidence and consistently evidence-based policy making is a fundamental principle of doing politics for the common good makes it into the GPs Values statement.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 10:39:14 +0000
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