ANOTHER VOICE

Let us all decide how we will vote and shut up about it

AUBERON WAUGH

So the softening up process has started. The current issue of the British Medical Journal carries an article, the product of a 'study' or 'survey' by one Richard Wilkin- son, senior research fellow at the Trafford Centre for Medical Research. in Sussex University, which argues that Britons would live as much as three years longer if the gap between richest and poorest were narrowed to the levels of Japan or some European countries. I quote from the Daily Tele- graph's uncritical summary of Wilkinson's argument: The study, in the British Medical Journal, shows that people are healthiest and life expectancy highest, in countries where the gap between rich and poor is narrowest.

People in Britain, where the gap between highest and lowest paid manual workers is greater than at the end of the Victorian era, live to an average of 75.

But in many European countries, where inequalities in wealth are less, people live to an average of 77, and in Japan, where the gap between the rich and the poor is the narrow- est of all, life expectancy is the highest in the world.

Wilkinson goes on to argue that whereas it has long been known that the better off enjoy better health than the poor, the expected improvement in the health of the least well off has failed to occur, despite rises in the general standard of living:

He said: 'there is clear evidence of a strong relation between a society's income distribu- tion and the average life expectancy of its population'.

This preposterous argument goes on to demonstrate that in 1970 income distribu- tion and life expectancy were similar in Japan and Britain, but in the last 20 years longevity among the Japanese has overtak- en that in Britain. 'The big difference is that Japan now has the most egalitarian income distribution of any country.'

I shall not insult readers of The Spectator by listing all the logical non-sequiturs, the cases of post hoc ergo propter hoc or the mis-statements of fact in this argument. The interesting questions are why a senior research fellow attached to Sussex Univer- sity should bother to write such piffle, and why the British Medical Journal should bother to print it.

Average life expectancy in Britain has continued to grow throughout the Thatcher years. If it has been overtaken by the Japanese and by some European countries, the most obvious explanation for this would have nothing to do with income distribu- tion, but might have much to do with the hospital side of the National Health Service which, despite shocking and gigantic increases in real expenditure, is manifestly in a semi-collapsed state and threatening to join British Rail as one of the great disaster areas of our domestic economy. The reason for the semi-collapsed state of the hospital service has nothing to do with shortage of investment, but is largely due to the idle- ness and greed of laboratory technicians, senior medical staff, ancillary workers and nursing staff in that order. Excessive administrative costs may well be another factor, but since they are invariably blamed for all the shortcomings of the NHS, it seems reasonable to suppose that some- thing is being done about them.

Obviously the British Medical Associa- tion, which publishes the British Medical Journal, is not best pleased with any analy- sis of our health disaster which puts a large share of the blame on its members. The idea that our comparatively poor showing in the life expectancy tables is attributable in some mystic way to the growing disparity in income distribution would be altogether more congenial to them, although senior doctors do not seem to have done too badly in life's merry-go-round.

I should be surprised, in any case, if dis- parities of income were greater in Britain than elsewhere. We need not be in the least bit surprised if the gap between highest and lowest paid manual workers is greater than at the end of the Victorian era. The same would be true in any technological society. Technology has meant that the value of some manual labour (if only in terms of the threat of its withdrawal) is infinitely greater 4.1‘ ActrA,. 'Lethargy, depression, confusion. I'm afraid it sounds like election fever.' than that of other manual labour. Compare the function of a train driver with that of an office cleaner, whose value has scarcely changed since the end of the Victorian era. But to say that the overall disparities are greater is absurd. How many professional men or women in Britain can nowadays afford to pay four indoor and four outdoor servants out of their taxed income? Per- haps half a dozen. At the turn of the centu- ry. it was commonplace.

But my purpose in drawing attention to this piffle was simply to warn that the soft-

ening up process has begun. Make no mis- take that the British Medical Association, representing the country's doctors, hopes for a Labour victory in the election. So, of course, do the teachers, the nurses, the dons, the welfare workers, the probation officers, the lower-class public employees and all the millions of others with their snouts in the public trough. Never mind, what the more intelligent of them must realise, that in two years' time the public trough will be empty, as it was found to be in Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, 'Hun- gary and is even now found to be in Cuba.

Pig-like, they run towards the first meal. Or perhaps they hope to frighten nice Mr Major into filling up their troughs. The effect is the same.

This senior researcher's claim that greater equality of income produces greater longevity, at whatever level of income it is imposed, may seem to belong to the further flights of looniness. But we must remember we are dealing with very simple people, and people who are not used to being contradicted. Any day now the child abuse industry will wade in, announcing that ritual satanic abuse goes hand in hand with lower direct taxes; the cosmologists will prove, with the help of innumerable equations, that planets which spent most on international scientific con- ferences are least likely to be sucked into the permanent oblivion of a black hole.

Every sort of expert in every sort of field will be making the same point. It will be cunningly suggested by the BBC, by the London Review of Books and other scroungers, that it is somehow cleverer to vote for Hattersley, Kaufman and social- ism. Cancer of the breast is much rarer among Labour voters. The great thing is to make up your mind and stick to it. For my own part, I am going to vote for nice Mr Major.