The NHS spends millions on ‘directors of lived experience’.
Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times:Surfing the internet in the hope of finding an easy new career to see me into my dribbling senescence, I chanced across what seemed a very good opportunity indeed. I will be applying for the post of “Director of Lived Experience” for the NHS in the Midlands. Three things immediately attracted me.First, I have 62 years of lived experience, which should make me a shoo-in. I am not sure how “lived experience” differs from “experience”, mind — I could hardly have dead experience, could I? Or zombie experience? But never mind. Second, from the job description it became very clear that neither the people offering the post nor the successful candidate would have the remotest clue what it entailed.I divined this from the prospectus, which was a lengthy dissertation of incoherence, flatulence and fashionable drivel. For example, I would be expected to “be responsible for establishing and maintaining the highest levels of Lived Experience Practice and amplifying the voice of those using services within decision-making at all levels of the organisation”. Fine — I can do that, even though I don’t know what it actually means.The description continued: “The aim is for this post to provide leadership for lived experience practice; bring the experiential lens to Trust Board decision-making, and facilitate the cultural changes needed to infuse and propagate best practice . . .” And so on. Any wiser? Me neither.Better still, the post appeared to require no qualifications whatsoever — no experience (other than, uh, that lived experience), no NVQs, no degree and no A-levels. The only thing it did demand was that I must have experienced “power imbalance” in my life. Well, I have — quite literally, when I’m very pissed. But also when it’s snowing and I discuss with my wife who is going to take the dog for a walk.All good, then. And what about reason three, the clincher? The salary is £110,000-£115,000. That’s what I call a decent whack. You nurses, emptying those catheters and rubbing liniment into an octogenarian’s nutsack while complaining about your wages — you are being taken for mugs. There are loads of “lived experience” jobs up for grabs in the NHS, including trainee lived experience assistants (nope, not kidding), all paying a hell of a lot more than you get, no qualifications necessary. Not to mention the various heads and deputy heads of “diversity”, the grandest of which has a salary not far short of double the prime minister’s. As John Lydon once memorably put it: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”According to the news programmes, this is a time of acute privation, with the poor scrabbling in wheelie bins for half-eaten kebabs and pensioners freezing to death in their living rooms because they can’t afford to put the heating on. We are enjoined, sagely, to cut our coat according to our cloth. But none of this applies to our government or the institutions that rule our lives. They have no intention of cutting down on cloth. They are busy ordering more cloth, plus shoulder pads and silk lining.If you want more evidence of this, take a look at the new report drawn up (via thousands of freedom of information requests) by the Conservative Way Forward group. It details the taxpayers’ money spent on politically motivated campaigns designed to make the country an even worse place to live and puts the total at more than £7 billion a year. This sum includes all those diversity and inclusion jobs I mentioned above — which here come to nearly £600 million a year.Then there’s £212 million on fatuous EDI (equality, diversity, inclusion) training and the humungous sums bunged to charities to campaign against the government — this last example being, for me, the definition of stupidity. But then, I don’t think governments should give anything to charities — that should be for us to do, of our own volition.The biggest spaffers of hard-earned money are, of course, the quangos. According to the report, the Office for Students is spending £2.5 billion over five years on a range of initiatives that include “anti-British” and “decolonisation” programmes in universities, and the Arts Council is spending a load of dosh on “unlearning whiteness”. Couldn’t we wait a few months, until the present crisis is over, before we unlearn our hideous whiteness?The problem for the Conservative Way Forward group is that this stuff has all happened — and continues to happen — under a Conservative government with an enormous majority. Somehow this post-rational, inane and at worst deeply corrosive ideology is able to get its fair-trade mitts on lots of cash no matter who is running the country.If you are a nurse turning up for the next 12-hour shift and being told we’re too skint to pay you any more money, it must turn your stomach — much as it does mine.
Les Wilson ● 1372d13 Comments ● 1370d