YOU REMEMBER how it was going to be. No more monopoly. No more customer rip-offs. When directory inquiries was opened up to the joyous freedom of the market-place, we could look forward to a faster, cheaper service where choice and happiness reigned.

The initial results of that brave new world have just been published.

A multiplicity of numbers led, unsurprisingly, to a multiplicity of confusion. New companies with new staff had what we might call an expertise void in their new trade.

Wrong numbers were dispensed with cheerful and serial abandon.

The very existence of others was flatly denied with a Kafkaesque conviction. Instead of savings, many new operators involved the customers in greater expense.

In short, a service that wasn't broke was fixed so that it failed to deliver the vital function which was its solitary raison d'etre. Neitherwere these changes made on the back of a clamour for improvement; the customers had never expressed a desire for big savings, just speed and general competency. There is an important lesson here for any policy wonk willing to learn it.

I address myself in particular to those bright young things hired by parties in general and by the current UK government in particular to think the unthinkable and re-package it as strategic wisdom. They have persuaded their ministers that the holy grail of progress and electoral success is choice. Promise the voters more choice and more control, and services will improve, swiftly followed by poll numbers. This, to employ a highly technical term, is a load of old cobblers. There are areas where choice is desirable and monopolies unhealthy, but, conversely, there are parts of our public services, not least some health, education and social work provision, where merely introducing a range of suppliers could introduce significantly more damage than benefit.

Today, for instance, a green paper will be published which suggests offering the elderly and disabled the freedom to construct their own care package; where they would deploy a personal budget to choose a sort of pick-and-mix selection of assistance.

This is being talked up as a way of freeing "clients" from too much red tape; too many regulations overwhat their helpers can and can't do. The architects of the proposals talk blithely of "a trusted third party"who could sort out the administration and help choose from a menu of public, private and voluntary provision.

This is a classic example of trying to solve one problem by the introduction of several more. It is true that many elderly people are frustrated in their attempts to access a sufficient level of good domiciliary care, and by the lengthy list of things their hired help is no longer permitted to do in the interests of health and safety. So far as most pensioners are aware, the incidence of death or disability from changing light bulbs, hanging curtains and cleaning windows is on the minimalist side of negligible.

But it's difficult to see how the antidote to these irritants is handing the customer a pre-determined set of readies and letting them get on with it. It sounds much more like a recipe for anxiety as vulnerable single occupants try to navigate a route through different types of provision which will give them what they need at a rate they can afford with continuity and safety. After all, some of these regulations now apparently being viewed as stif ling were put in place for very good reason. Rules about vetting workers for criminal records for instance.

Again, the basic error is assuming that what people most want is choice. In fact, what most people want is to know that their needs will be reliably met with the minimum of hassle.

It's hard to imagine what comforts will flow from sitting with a cheque and a copy of the Yellow Pages, calling round suppliers to see who can come when and on what basis.

Equally, the notion that everyone needing this level of home care has a readily identifiable "trusted third party" to hand is entirely fanciful.

The same broad principles apply to the vexed question of health service reforms, and general puzzlement over why a high level of investment has not apparently produced a high level of service improvement.

Dr John Reid, the cuddly puppy of the UK cabinet with the cute accent, is wont to tell us that what we long for is the ability to determine which hospital in which locality will give us the best care and then be able to access the service we require there.

That is not a view which chimes with most anecdotal experience. A much more common and insistent refrain is for local services to give local people the best possible deal on their own doorstep.

I chaired a couple of public meetings on NHS provision recently which were packed to the rafters with people concerned about losing local provision. Nobody mentioned wanting to access a crack team in Aberdeen when they lived in Greenock. What they wanted was to make sure that if they got sick at 3am, they wouldn't be stuck in an ambulance and ferried to another town. When we prospective patients are rational about the NHS, which is to say, when neither we nor friends and family are in immediate need of its assistance, we recognise that having every service in every hospital is not an affordable or logical option.

But we do regard access to front-line medical staff with a functioning range of basic life-saving equipment and skills as a core priority. The same applies to secondary services in hospitals. Shops, cafe services and pleasant decor are very acceptable but, frankly, profoundly less important than basic hygiene and staffing levels.

What of choice in education? As a readers' service, this paper featured a housing supplement in the past few days telling people what it would cost to move into areas where the best schools operated. Yet, in an ideal world, few parents would have a burning desire to uproot their families and leave their friends. What they want is their local school to deliver.

In all our public services, choice is a factor, but it's not a fundamental.

What is crucial is location, location, location; getting the services your family needs as close to home as possible. Inevitably, some providers will offer excellence compared with other's mere adequacy, partly because of demographics and variation in leadership skills.

But the answer can't be to put a black spot on the forehead of the under-performing school, or the overstretched hospital and tell the consumer to get on their bike in search of better prospects. The answer has to be an all-consuming determination to use the lessons of the best to drive up standards across the board.

Given a choice, most folks unerringly choose quality in their own backyard.