Good Idea Fairies

 

I've been reading a military autobiography in order to review it for the HPANWO Voice blog, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2024/01/no-easy-day.html. I was surprised at the author's descriptions of the camaraderie and culture within his special forces community because they sounded very like that within hospital portering. This is despite the huge difference between the roles and social standing of the two professions. I think this is partly because the special forces and HPing worlds are both exclusive male domains. I know the HPing world is not all men, but only about 5% of HP's are women. Feminists naturally denounce this with condescending terms like "male bonding" and "bromance". There is another similarity I noticed, possibly making this something universal within government service. What happens is, for example, the frontline staff who have to do the job every day and have developed a lot of experience and practical knowledge, work out a new method of doing something. They usually manage to get this idea cleared at the head porter/unit command level because those people share the day-to-day level with the frontliners, if they're good appointees. However, before this plan can be introduced, somebody higher up comes along and shoves their oar in. This is usually a younger member of staff who is rich in academic qualifications, but has little or no experience. In fact an NHS administrator can be promoted to the level of trust director with nothing more than their single week of student work experience with the porters. This admin officer will make some suggestion that is totally useless, extravagant or impractical and then the frontliners have to waste a lot of time and energy trying to explain why this is a bad idea to somebody who has far less understanding, but far more decision-making power. The book's author calls these people "good idea fairies". We called them "boy wonders"; although they were as often as not female, in which case we had far ruder terms for them. These overqualified underworked fools are clearly just trying to justify their own existence and, of course, their very high salary, with manufactured obstacles and therefore false solutions. They are sometimes more than just annoying though; their stupidity can kill, for example see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2014/01/man-falls-to-his-death-at-jr.html. I'm not sure what the solution is. The boy wonders and good idea fairies are a product of the fundamental bureaucracy of the state. Maybe some kind of anarchist utopia is possible where hospital porters and special forces will be free of these millstones, but that scenario lies beyond my imagination.