As regular readers know, I follow the blog of Dr. John Crippen over at NHS Blog Doctor. Dr. Crippen has now found a kindred spirit in Dr. Francis Rant, whose eponymous blog – Dr. Rant – is a masterpiece of bile directed at the goons who appear to be in charge of the British National Health Service. Take this entry, for example; it’s a wonder that the good doctor doesn’t burst a blood vessel. Mind you, I think he/she is absolutely right to be pissed off at the fatuous 5-a-day initiative. Looking beyond the jolly web site reveals the true horror. Reams and reams of turgid management-speak apparently produced by dozens of brain-dead drones, who sit around murdering the English language all day. That’s where the 10 million pounds of British lottery players’ money is going. For example:
The five pilot sites also carried out their own evaluations. These were mainly aimed at understanding the process for implementing the intervention. They also assessed any changes in the influences on fruit and vegetable consumption. The evaluation methods included countywide surveys, postal questionnaires, in-depth interviews with individuals and food mapping.
Doncha just love it: "understand the process", "implement the intervention", "in-depth interviews", "food mapping". And then after this drivel, you suddenly realise that they can’t organise a piss-up in a brewery:
Each site developed its own evaluation strategy and tools, so it is not possible to compare results of the five local evaluations.
Erm, didn’t anyone think that it would have been a good idea to have been able to design the pilots so that data could have been compared? Of course, then, there would have been a single design team. This way, we got five teams (doubtless at five times the cost) all busily reinventing their own particular wheels. Dear god, words fail me.
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