At some point in the very distant and historic past, somebody somewhere recognised the need for some kind of service to be provided for everyone in the community, on our collective behalf.
Through a process that probably began under the control of those with money, power and influence, the pathway of civilisation brought us to a place where instead of there being services that everyone needed that were maintained under the control of specific or vested interests, services like sewage and waste management, the provision of water, looking after our roads and even our policing came under public control in the form of elected bodies that were there to represent the interests of us all.
Whilst it is staggering to know this, it is only within the past one hundred years or so that we finally reached the point where services that everyone needed every day or that everyone needed access to in the very same universal way, became fully under ‘public control’. In no small part due to the impact from and because we had to fight the Second World War.
Yes, the NHS was only born and created as a universal public health service just after WW2. An act that probably saw the zenith of public service provision, in terms of our system of government having full control over all of the public services.
It ensured that everyone had the same access, opportunities and support available to them both as individuals, but also in terms of anything -such as looking after infrastructure, where our collective interests were involved.
With a public services system or ‘public sector’ that had by this stage become so big, it was perhaps inevitable that it would take on a meaning or persona of its own.
That was of course, before politics became involved.
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