The Tyranny of Choice

Everywhere you go these days you hear politicians using the ‘c’ word. They seem to talk about hardly anything else when it comes to public services, it’s ‘c’ this and ‘c’ that, one wonders how we managed in the days before “choice”. Choice in education, choice in healthcare, choice to gamble or drink ourselves stupid 24 hours a day, choice is a central pillar of every parties manifesto in the bright and shiny 21st century.

Choice is good, we live in a democracy and that's something even the Luddite doesn't want to change. But whether it’s what phone company we use, who supplies our electricity or whatever, everything is our choice, because we are consumers and people tell us that's what we want. But they’re lying, and your powers of choice would be best employed by ‘choosing’ to hit these 'people' over the head with a blunt instrument. The government likes choice, because it helps them to abdicate responsibility. But choice is a fiction here, why should I need to choose? I might want to decide what to have for dinner, but if my dinner subsequently poisons me I should be able to go to whatever hospital is nearest. Equally I shouldn’t have to move house to be able to choose a decent school for my kids. They should ALL be good, that’s the governments job – not offering choice!

It is not choice to allow us to decide between the lesser of two evils, it is our right to expect everything to be of a uniformly high standard. Instead we are bamboozled with reports and gradings and league tables and all the other crap which proves how well things are going. Psychologists have shown that too much choice is bad for you, increasing anxiety and uncertainty in a world already blighted with it’s fair share of both.

Get on with it and stop telling me I have the choice of ten buses which are late, when I only want one that runs on time. Politicians need to start singing a different song because we're being palmed off with poor public services through spurious 'choices' which fail to address the root cause. Luckily we still have the choice to vote at the next election. But as with the decision between several germ ridden local hospitals, what choice do we really have?