ABSTRACT
New managerialism and performance management targets were introduced to the public sector from the private sector with the intention of improving public sector performance. Events at Mid Staffordshire and Rotherham attracted the attention of the media in the UK and abroad. George Ritzer identified the four themes that make up McDonaldisation, namely: efficiency, calcuability, predictability and control. The Mid Staffordshire report and inquiry, the Jay report and Casey investigation pointed at serious failings in public service delivery and this resulted in large scale human rights abuses. Professionals are being further indoctrinated, regulatory compromise is accelerating, acts of violence remain significant, human fragility is increasing, and sensory encounters continue to be degraded. The twentieth century featured two world wars and a lengthy cold war which oversaw the end of militarised European empires and a battle between competing ideologies of liberal democracy, fascism and communism.
