Dear Dennis,

I liked your Cargo Cult powerpoint a lot - it focuses attention very sharply and elegantly on the giant gap between what we as a nation do and what it is rational for us to do. Many thanks!

It is my belief that that gap is largely artificially produced, by mainly external parties and their team of "caciques" within the country, in order to further a particular agenda, and their main means to control the discourse is a propaganda skew which encompasses so much of our information landscape that the gross bias involved becomes invisible to news consumers. The desired bias has deliberately been normalised and thus rendered beyond question.

The thinktank world is of course a key motor of perception gap creation, and its funding and management are worth scrutiny. See, for example, this example concerning an oft-trusted think-tank:

Management:

http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/about-us/whos-who/general-advisory-council/general-advisory especially Britnell of KPMG Consulting, Prof Steve Field of the Future Forum Fake Pause, and Adebowale, patron of privatisation promotion NGO 2020Health. Also note Mr Hope, who may be being exploited to front the "integrated care" privatisation narrative. People who don't catch on to what damage is being done via the pretty narratives are brought in to these teams as camouflage for the privatisation contingent, of course.  One public health commentator refers, for brevity, to this Common phenomenon as "the greedies and the dims".

http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/about-us/whos-who/board-of-trustees especially privatiser-academic LeGrand of knights & knaves fame, Macpherson from JP Morgan.

http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/about-us/whos-who/chris-ham Ham does not mention that he was also a founder member of privatisation promotion group Demos, along with this Thatcher-team privatiser: http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Arthur_Seldon

Funding:

http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/about-us/support-fund/corporate-partners-and-supporters-events the last endorsement is from an American IT giant that Britnell allowed into the NHS.

Thanks for raising this issue, it is a most useful thread to make this phenomenon more visible for people who want to do the right thing.

This book is a great orientation for those interested in this area, also for those still rather bemused as to how we come to be in the current pickle:  

Also available as a public transport-friendly paperback, through the usual channels.

Best regards,

Lucy