The view from inside New Labour Whitehall

William Heath is concerned at the New Labour meme, "We're from the government and we're going to help you" or, put more bluntly:

New Labour was elected on a manifesto that promised personalised services. We're damn well going to deliver personalised services. We're not going to listen to a bunch of unrepresentative whiners. Sorry, but the human dignity implications of e-government were a complete non-issue last election. We can see a bunch of middle-class wafflers who share an irrelevant obsesion with privacy with a few IT suppliers. It's self-referential and introverted, so we're quite entitled to be robustly dismissive. They only ever talk to themselves so they're just not used to trenchant arguments based on reality. Why the hell should we pay any attention to the likes of Kim Cameron, Stefan Brands or closer to home EPG or these cranky NGOs who are only going to say things we dont want to hear? They should stop reading the Guardian, get out more and see what life is like on the local housing estate. Because our progress is not to be impeded; the rules have changed and we have to move forward into a diffrent world.

His response is

"The proponents are very articulate...

This is one half of the discussion that isn't taking place anywhere I can see...

I find class-based arguments strikingly unattractive...

I think the notion that human dignity & rights are the exclusive fixation of some middle-class wafflers is one to which history wil be unkind.

Unintrusive state services matter to everyone...

Should we be surprised if the people far-sighted enough to be concerned about the long-term implications of the complicated cross-fertilisation of technology and the work of bureaucracy turn out to be educated people professionally active in IT and trying to apply values to what they do? No. The minicab driver is too busy just now. But he'll care about it when it hits him...

We should examine longer-term the idea that bureaucratic intrusion is offensive only to an introspective group of wafflers and IT suppliers and is of no concern to "real people"."