DIY? Barefoot Doctors & Bush Lawyers
Uses of Universities - some kind of tunnel vision?
I hear a few people, and see letters to the paper, say: "I never went to Uni, but my taxes are subsidizing these students". Maybe they've taken Maggie Thatcher's "There's no such thing as society" just a bit too literally. We are all interdependent on many others.

Would these persons (or their young children or aged parents) be happy to be treated by nurses & doctors & pharmacists who did a quick 3-month course by correspondence, like the barefoot doctors?

How would they feel driving on roads, freeways & bridges constructed by engineers who learnt it all from a book & by talking to a council worker who'd worked on some roads?

Wouldn't it be fun using the water supply & sewerage system (or living downstream of a dam) if those designers & engineers were self-taught too? Or being near a factory, refinery or similar complex dealing with toxic chemicals, high temperature & pressure that was not designed & checked by someone qualified to?

What about walking through the city with its skyscrapers if none of the architects had been certified for anything larger than a 3-storey walk-up that they'd learnt about by being a builder's labourer?

Check with the inhabitants of some of the cities where sudden collapses of blocks of flats happen every year -- tho' much of that devastation is said to be because of poor inspection & enforcement of those naughty bureaucratic regulations so decried by the heroic slashers of red tape.

And if you did want to sue for injury caused by faults with these, you'd have to settle for a Bush Lawyer, I guess.
[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 5/13/2004 05:28:00 pm