Love's Labours Lost

Author: Dr Iona Heath

This excellent essay, by Iona Heath, offers real insight into what is being lost, as central government centralises power away from citizens and the professions. The attempt to manage markets, create incentives and restructure 'from the top' reveals the same toxic pattern of mistrust that disabled people, women, families and many other groups have already experienced at the hands of well-meaning public services.

Dr Heath describes how the systems that are now being used to manage her and her colleagues are not only ineffective, but also how they are sucking value and meaning out of the lives of professionals themselves. She demonstrates that professionals and the relationship between the citizens and the professional is not the primary problem. Rather it is the way professional power is misused and distorted by the meritocratic centre. 

This essay offers the hope that, by better respecting professionals and their relationships, we might restore sanity to the whole of society. However this will also require greater power and authority to be vested in citizens themselves - rather than in Whitehall or its agents.

The publisher is International Futures Forum.

Love's Labours Lost © Dr Iona Heath 2012.

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