Need to Know?

          There’s a bus stop at the end of our street that I have walked past hundreds of times, without noticing that there is something very odd about it. Then, one day, a companion pointed out that, although it is an “alighting only” stop, it has a shelter fully furnished with seating – for what purpose, one can only guess. Perhaps it is so that passengers can have a nice sit-down after a stressful journey, though it is more likely that ownership of the bus company is in the portfolio of a hedge fund too remote from its customers to either know or care about it. I was disappointed in my powers of observation not to have noticed the anomaly, though the failure may be explained by the fact that I have never used that bus stop and, consequently, have no interest in it. If so, this is a symptom of a tendency to limit one’s curiosity to a selfish agenda, which is regrettable since it leads to a ‘need-to-know’ mindset, which, taken to its logical conclusion, results in unsocial behaviour.

          Nevertheless, there are small but worrying signs that this where I am heading, as age and experience prevail over the open curiosity of youth or, as one wag put it, “when one’s broad mind and narrow waist begin to exchange places”. Take podcasting as an example: when the technology first became popular, I did take the trouble to learn how to use it but that was as far as it went. Some years later, having forgotten quite how to access and play podcasts (because I never made time to listen to them – rather like all those ancient VCR recordings that I never viewed) but prompted by the desire to listen to the latest BBC radio adaptation of Middlemarch, I looked into it again, only to find that hundreds of un-listened-to episodes of Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time had taken up residence somewhere inside my phone. (I also discovered, in the process, that Middlemarch is not actually a podcast, but may be downloaded from the BBC ‘Sounds’ app. Keep up!)

          So now I am developing a form of ‘need-to-know anxiety’ that manifests itself in fretting over how best to allocate my time – especially as it is diminishing fast – to learning about what may or may not turn out to be important. Lately, this anxiety is compounded by the forthcoming election, the outcome of which will have serious socio-economic consequences. The problem is how to cut through the boasts and promises so as to evaluate and decide which policies to support, some of which encompass complex, specialised areas of governance that require any concerned voter to acquire a degree of understanding and factual knowledge before making an enlightened choice. Take hospital numbers as an example: building more hospitals is good policy, right? Well, not necessarily. It depends. Changing demographics, advances in medical treatments, robotic surgery and the integration of social and health care systems are all factors to be taken into account when totting up how many hospitals will be required. You could take the time and trouble to work it out: or you could take the word of a trusted expert; or you could just cast your vote on the basis that your local hospital is a) too far away, b) under threat of closure, c) not very good, or d) excellent, thank you very much.

          The latter choice of decision-making technique is, of course, the least challenging and, therefore, the least stressful, which means that it will be the most popular. Nevertheless, I do aspire to know the policies of the political parties and evaluate them as best I can – though, perhaps, I am spending too much time on the subject of the ownership of bus companies.