The Wider View

Abstract

Niels Bohr, the quantum physicist, is reputed to have said that ‘predictions were difficult to make, especially about the future’! Although his remark made sense in context, I’ve no doubt that it has been reproduced repeatedly as clear evidence of a confusion of mind. A similar fate awaited Donald Rumsfeld when he famously talked about ‘known unknowns, and unknown unknowns etc’. What both of them were aiming to get across was the inevitability of genuine uncertainty about the future path for any system or society with imperfect knowledge. So, it is with some trepidation that we now embark on the final chapters and begin to draw together the threads and thinking that we have laid out in the past 9 chapters to see if we can come up with some prognosis and predictions the likely trajectory of public policy and public services in the age of austerity that confronts us.