Ebay informed me that a recent order had arrived at the post office, and so I rushed in, only to be greeted by this notice on the door. The post office closing up for lunch and closing early "due to staff shortages"? If the post office, a sinecure of a job if ever there was one, can't attract staff, what hope is there for the rest of them?
Perhaps it was appropriate that the book I had come to collect was Niall Ferguson's "Civilization", because by the time our bloated welfare state, which gives far too many people at government's expense a lifestyle which in years past they would've had to work for, finally implodes, there won't be much left of our "civilization". Of course, the rot sets in at an early age when children regard free education as a chore rather than a privilege, and when they leave school having learned neither any dicipline nor even the three R's of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
But back to the other "Civilization", the book which is a derivation from the TV series, in which Niall Ferguson explains the six 'killer apps' which allowed the West to dominate the Rest: competition, science, property, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. What are we left with?
Science
Property
Medicine
Consumerism
Work Ethic
For me it's all over bar the reading about it. I have been an adherent of Max Weber's idea of "working to live" and have practised my German Protestant work ethic and thrift all my life, and it's their world now.
To paraphrase a certain French lady, "Laissez-moi manger mon gâteau".
