“…we’re putting amateurs into really important positions and people are getting killed as a result…” Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Viggers. BBC News – Army chief lambasts ‘amateurs’ in post-invasion Iraq
The most important fact for elected politicians to accept is their own ignorance. Almost all of them got elected by standing for the right party in the right place at the right time. And that is all.
Lt Gen Viggers’ statement is a truth about all democracy.
When politicians ride rough-shod over the advice of experts, either because they have conceitedly convinced themselves that they know best, or because they are sucking up to misguided public opinion, that is when things go wrong, sometimes very wrong.
People often use the derogatory expression “these so-called experts” when the advice is counter-intuitive, but good advice often is, that’s why we need it. If all problems could be solved through intuition and gut reaction, none of us would need experts at all; we wouldn’t need doctors to help us when we are ill, we wouldn’t need engineers to design bridges that don’t fall down, and politicians wouldn’t need expert advice on just about everything, but we do and so do they.
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