After Dr Nortin Hadler’s plea that we as citizens involved in our health system speak up and take responsibility Quentin Cockburn in today’s post deplores the dis-empowering aspects of being referred to as ‘Clients’.

I HATE that word client.  It is detestable.  It reminds us all that we as citizens have been robbed of dignity, reduced to being mere consumers, to units on a bar chart somewhere.  Our worth as individuals, as participants within a society is marginalised to management speak shorthand.  It denies us the most basic dignity.  It denies us our society.  To be referred to as clients takes away any power we might have had.

The corruption began about twenty years ago.  Now it is unstoppable.  There is a code implicit in being referred to as a client.   It is patronising.  There is no reciprocity in the ‘client’ arrangement.  We are encouraged, as “clients” not to be actively engaged in any political, social, and reform process.  Ours is to just consume.  Leave the big picture to focus groups and the fiefdom of upper and middle management.  Clients are now nothing more than “ Designated Lesser Persons”.   Collectively we are prisoners.  As “clients’ we are told what is good for us by those who bought us the GFC, with ‘A wisdom beyond question’.  Like a church, they have certainty on their side, and it’s evidence based.  Go ask the scientologists, unlike ‘mainstream’ religion they can support their beliefs with ‘FACTS’.

I believe, (and this proves a little bit of history goes a long way), the mis -use of client is rooted in the tradition of the Greeks and Romans.  A democracy based upon the assumption that there’s an impenetrable layer between the rulers and the lesser orders.  They developed a prototype version of democracy.  In Greece, the citizens, (some ten percent of the population), were granted voting rights, participation in decision making and the rest of the population were slaves.  With citizenship came responsibilities, to pay taxes, serve on the military when called upon, and suicide if your faction or strategies were bested by any putative Hannibal.  I think the best description of the sort of Graeco-Roman rites of passage comes with Robert Graves’ ‘Count Belesarius’.  He describes Constantinople at its height, torn by factions, and all the panoply of power and corruption we associate with pre selection in contemporary politics. The finale is of Belasarius after political and military success, having his eyes taken out as a member of the wrong faction and for valuing principle above politics.

The point being; as a citizen the individual had a stake in power and the discretion to act upon principle. There are no ‘principles’ in being designated a “client”, other than to be subjected to power.

‘Client’ used to establish an agreed, paid, participatory exchange, (usually professional) between an individual and a professional.  Invariably for white collar services.  For accountants, lawyers, engineers, and consultants.  Other users of services, non professional, invariably government, were described as  ‘inmates, wards, prisoners, homeless, destitute, delinquents’, the list goes on and on. It describes an involuntary arrangement, whereby the government forces an individual to endure an incarceration, or period of prescribed isolation or treatment.  It’s partly a draconian ideal prefaced upon the activity being activated to ensure a subject’s personal welfare, and benefits to the state.   Since when did a prisoner become a client?  Since when, did a poor bastard in a psychiatric institution become a ‘client’?  And since when did some miserable bastard stuck on Manaus island became a ‘client’?  There is no reciprocity, there is no exchange beyond the power of the state or instrumentality to brutalise and coerce.  It is a corruption of the rights of individuals to exist, (even bad ones) as free and equal citizens.  It is Thatcher’s enduring legacy. To ensure that our community becomes to all intents and purposes ‘impotent’.

So when next you’re being pinioned by a burly host of Public Transport Safety Officers for failing the Myki test, you’re being bludgeoned to death on Manaus Island, or your sentence has been increased courtesy of unpaid parking fines give thanks to the fact that as a “valued client” your standing in the community is virtual. And your power to enforce change minimal, as client assumes subservience, almost derogatory, because that’s how they do things in the ‘Church of Clientology’.  They have an acronym for it, You may have heard it,  as a ‘Designated Lesser Person’ ; DLP.