Overheard in my dentist's waiting room...

...I wasn't really paying attention, but I was sitting in waiting room where the receptionists and one of the dental nurses were chatting. The bit which stuck in my mind was a point one of them made about a friend who works in the NHS who has seen a great deal of change over the years, but the younger people who are coming into the service now are lucky because they've not got that experience. Consequently, they understand the need for 'change', because that's what we need, 'change'. It's inevitable. It has to happen.

I honestly don't intend to sound snide or superior here, because I'm sure that I'm just as if not more guilty of voicing thoughtless political rhetoric at times, but I found this weird bit of cognitive dissonance fascinating. It's been nagging at the back of my head for the last couple of days. She didn't specify what this 'change' which is so necessary actually is, but that seems particularly common when the word 'change' is used in modern political discourse. Tony Blair was particularly guilty of this, rarely defining for us why the change his government was intending to bring about was really quite so vital.

Indeed, I would respectfully suggest that a major problem with much of our public services at the moment is the 'change' which has been thrust upon them over the last 30 years. Honestly, can we not have some relief from 'change' now? Is it not exhausting when such 'change' is often so unnecessary? So costly. So utterly destructive of what used to be good about our public services. Which is not to say that no change is ever positive, or that there is some idealised golden age in the past to which we can aspire, even reach. There isn't and we can't. But it is to say that any changes made to institutions ought to be considered on their own merits, and that there are plenty of things which don't, or indeed didn't, need to change.

What struck me was the way that such unthinking rhetoric manifests itself in our language. I'm not saying this woman I overheard was foolish. Rhetoric of this type, rhetoric which seems almost designed to preclude thought or reflection, is so easy to internalise.