'Yowza! Yowza! Yowza!" Thus goes the rallying cry of the sadistic emcee in Sydney Pollack's disturbing movie They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, which exposes America's Depression-era dance marathons for the cheap, dehumanising spectacle they were. Half-dead with exhaustion, participants were subjected to ever-harsher judgements and elimination events, watched by huge crowds of people who, for obvious reasons, had little money and endless hours to kill.
As we lurch towards our own depression era, then, thank heavens for health minister Ben Bradshaw, who this week announced plans for patients to rate GPs on an NHS website, posting comments on everything from perceived competence to bedside manner. "I would never think of going on holiday without cross-referencing at least two guide books and TripAdvisor," was Mr Bradshaw's impeccably logical justification. "We need to do something similar for the modern generation in healthcare."
Did you ever hear the like? Even by the standards of this most slavish of government toadies, the statement has to be a nadir. In fact, if you had to distil New Labour into a single utterance, perhaps it might be this: a healthcare system that was once the envy of the world now has much to learn from the manner in which people select boutique hotels.
Because British society is infinitely just, Mr Bradshaw's performance is effectively judged only once every five years, while it will now be possible to sit slack-jawed in front of the spectacle of GPs competing to stay in the contest every day. We can dispense with the dance hall, thanks to the information age, and simply gather virtually to watch surgeries take a beating from people - anonymous people, naturally - who don't realise that not giving antibiotics to malingerers is actually excellent medical practice. Yowza! Yowza! Yowza!
Oddly, doctors don't seem entranced by the idea, with the chairman of the British Medical Association GPs' committee branding it a meaningless popularity contest. Come come, medics! How can popularity contests be meaningless? They are the only thing in British public life deemed to have any meaning at all. Why, our own prime minister is on record as expressing his desire for "an X Factor Britain", completely failing to see that the spectacle of humiliation is what really drives that show.
What the ideologically bankrupt Mr Bradshaw cannot see is that a society demanding constant feedback does not trust itself or its ideas. The GP ratings scheme isn't an idea. It's not even a policy. It is a desperately penny-pinching sleight of hand, designed to give people the illusion of power in the NHS. And, as it's always worth pointing out, people don't want "power" in the NHS. They want a uniformly decent NHS. They don't want choice, they want provision.
The GP ratings website is a concept so intrinsically flawed that a child of nine could pick it apart. And will probably be asked to - or rather, to pick apart their GP. After all, the rating of teachers by their pupils is already under way. Last year a north London comprehensive deployed a speed-dating technique when interviewing candidates for the positions of assistant and deputy head; 16 pupils had two-and-a-half minutes each to question applicants, moving on to the next one when a buzzer sounded.
Far from being New Labour's Cones hotline, then, the GP ratings systems is not some isolated idiosyncrasy, destined to be a joke from day one. It is joined-up government, finding its image in virtually every department, a great daisy chain of stupidity, stringing together the cheapest and basest ideas to give people the illusion of empowerment.
Yesterday we learned that the public vote may also be used to determine punishments handed out to criminals. The Respect agenda is back, apparently, and this time one assumes it's personal. Of course, you'd struggle to class the summary judging of overstretched doctors as respectful ... but then this government has never been shy of a glaringly idiotic contradiction.
How's my driving? How's my doctoring? How's my rating? Because, of course, those doing the rating must be rated, as we become a vast, swarming tribe of people constantly judging one another - a nation of narks too stupid to realise that we are being usefully distracted; a baying, bullying society of people laughing at the incompetent, sneaking on our neighbours, and undermining anyone with the temerity to work themselves into a position of expertise with a press of our red buttons.
Back in the 1930s, many American city councils deemed dance marathons so barbaric that they rushed through emergency legislation to ban them; yet here we are in Britain 2009, rushing to enshrine their sadistic principles in social policy. And don't make the mistake of assuming that we'll stop at simply hampering doctors' careers on the basis that they don't dole out antibiotics like sweets. This judgmental, decivilising impulse has gained such traction on the popular imagination that logic can only suggest, down the line, darker trials and torments for doctors and teachers and other such wretched drains on society. And why not? They shoot horses, don't they?