If you have ever experienced or learnt something which you then knew was instinctively right - you will never have forgotten it. Peter Hunter learned something years ago which, regrettably, most of us have still yet to learn.

When the NHS was first set up in the UK, its champion, Nye Bevan, told us that the people who deliver the services should be the people who decide how those services should be delivered.

Since then the administration of the NHS has grown to the point where the people who deliver the services are now not able to do so because of the obstacles created by the administrators. Whenever successive governments tried to buy votes by increasing spending on the NHS the extra money was always sucked up by the administrators with little difference made to the service delivery.

Recently we have seen a more rational approach. Instead of just throwing more money at the problem there is a recognition that we must make changes in the way the NHS is run. Unfortunately the people with the ability to make the changes, to improve service delivery, are the same managers who are making it so difficult for the front line care staff to deliver their services.

These administrators and managers are never going to tell us that their own positions are the ones that add least value to the service delivery so they do the same thing they have always done when asked to make the service more efficient. They put more constraints on the medical staff and make it even more difficult for them to provide their service.

This is a horrible Catch 22. Management have become a nuisance but the only people able to do anything about it are apparently, Management. Meanwhile the workforce do the best that they can with what they have been left.

I was told by a line supervisor at Vauxhall in Luton, "We make cars, in spite of management."

That seems to sum up the experience of an awful lot of people in an awful lot of organisations, public and private. They do the best that they can with what they have got, while management seem to spend their time trying to prevent them from doing it. No wonder management get such a bad name when all they really have to do is get out of the way of the workforce and let them get on with what they know how to do.

I like Douglas Adams solution in "The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe." Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect found themselves on Ship B of the Golgafrincham Ark Fleet. They were told the Golgafrinchams home planet was doomed so they, the Golgafrinchams, built three massive spaceships to find and colonise a less doomed planet.

Into ship A went all the brilliant leaders, scientists, engineers and artists. Into ship C went all the people who actually did the work, who made things and did things. And into ship B went everybody else.

As the story unfolds it becomes apparent that although the "B Ark" had been sent off first it was not followed by either of the other two, it had all been an elaborate plan to rid their planet of all the people who did not add any value and therefore improve the lives of everybody who was left.

For the full list of everybody who was on that ship you have to read the book.

The “B Ark” was programmed to crash when it landed to make sure that none of the occupants could get back to their home planet. The planet the “B Ark” was programmed to crash on was the Earth. Douglas Adams suggests that the people who we find a nuisance today may be the descendants of the survivors of that crash.

That sounds very plausible.