However, although the fellow MP present didn’t actually oppose Dr Lee’s plans, he made it clear that he would be unable to support the proposals if his constituents rejected them. I suddenly felt as if I was in some sort of political horror movie, and our parliamentary system had adopted the role of a collective, out-of-control robotic decision-making dinosaur - a ‘Bureaucratisaurus’, if you will.

In my opinion, MPs who spinelessly make decisions on public projects solely on the basis of the opinions of their constituents have inferior operating capacity to a computer and quite frankly may as well be replaced by one – it would be safer all round.  You see, if we consider that the central principle to computer processing is ‘garbage in garbage and out’, then generally speaking whoever is responsible for a computer system is motivated to get the data input correct. 

However, this urge for correctness of data is nowhere to be found when it comes to our system of government.  Despite the fact there may be many people in a constituency who simply don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to the validity of particular public project plans and will vote on a whim, prejudice or misinformation, then it goes without saying that many local and national decisions are based on the equivalent of a pile of dog poo. 

To add insult to injury, there is no one at the top who is prepared to do what is scientifically necessary to provide hard evidence to back Dr Lee’s plan and guide the population accordingly. Isn’t this a national disgrace after ALL the pioneering work which took place in the computer industry in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s?  It appals me that we seem to have plunged into the dark ages where only cheap short term gains relating to political popularity seem to matter – not hard data on which great systems can be built.  In fact, there are very few people in Parliament or inhabiting public bodies who seem interested in hard data, period. 

To put politics in its historical perspective, society and its infrastructure was so disorganised and fragmented at one time, that it was probably logical that there was a ruling party and opposition – government had to evolve somehow and any system was better than nothing.  However, we have absolutely NO NEED for such ancient decision-making ‘GPS’ as party politics at this stage in our country’s evolution.  We have the systems (or at least the capability to create systems), which can provide all the necessary information and on which super systems can be built, thank you very much. 

Unfortunately it is the power of political brands which has saved party politics from relegation to the level of philosophy which by its very nature has, over time, consistently lost ground to scientific developments which were able to disprove its theories.   In other words, party politics was a useful governing tool before technology advanced to the extent that computer systems can provide pretty much precise answers to questions as to how society should be run.   And there is no use comparing the status of politics to religion because in the case of religion, no one has ‘come back to tell us’ as it were, so in a sense and from a scientific perspective you are free to believe what you want to believe.  However, it is simply not the same for politics – we could easily scientifically prove or disprove the validity of most political decisions, if we wanted to. 

The fact is that party politics is an outdated method of running society – in fact, our methods of gathering the information and data on which public decisions are based are no more advanced, nor effective than the techniques of phrenology and dowsing which preceded the invention of medical devices capable of examining the interior of the human body.  However, the sad irony is that those people who performed such ancient methods of medical divination at least had the interests of the patients at heart which lead to the development of the splendid discipline of medicine which exists today.  However, I don’t think we can say the same of the motivations of many members of parliament – I don’t think they have anyone’s interests at heart bar their own and of course their robotic reverence to their parties.

So a question to Dave and the Health Minister- where are the Ludwig von Bertalanffys and Fibonaccis in the Civil Service or elsewhere in our system of government who could work with Dr Lee to get his vision up and running post haste because it goes without saying that good systems design based on sound mathematical analysis is the right way to create a brand new healthcare system? 

And isn’t it time that we, the public, requested a change of job description for MPs which encourages the incumbent to make decisions and support projects on the basis that based on sound data, they are right for society and not just because they are vote–spinners?

I accept that it may take some time for the multi-generational hardwiring of party politics to loosen its grip on the electorate but in the meantime and in my opinion, MPs can at least TRY to develop a right brain, a set of balls and attempt to think more about the greater good than the next ballot.