nemowrites.(column on politicising health and education)(Column)

Beyond belief

Among the various domestic problems which have plagued this country during the post-war years, the consequences of politicising health and education must surely rate a very high priority. Barely a week goes by without hearing of some new controversy relating to what, in the views of many thinking folk, should by their very nature be non-controversial apolitical areas. When all is said and done, it seems to me that the health of the population and the education of our children are far too important to be left to the vagaries of political theorists.

Look around us, and we see a National Health Service largely fashioned on a 1946 political template, still faced with the unresolved dilemma of how to reconcile infinite public demand and finite resources. Whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer's latest largess, announced some months ago, will have any discernible effect …