Load shedding and other matters

When you’re the last link to the past.

Quite a number of people are leaving or attempting to leave. The Lone Star Kid is finally departing; Lincoln Green has been trying to depart, but is only interested if his wife lets him or the money is seriously good; the Leprechaun, who has annually declared that this year will be his last ever since he got here, is actually going to leave; Rasputin is also trying to find alternative employment; and Sarasvati is very much on the fence.

In some ways Col. Blimp has been an improvement on Vlad, but in other ways, he’s more of the same as he flies off the handle at one pupil or another. He’ll be around another year and then we’ll have someone else who thinks they know what the answer to all our problems is. Blimp’s problem is his mania for a certain social messaging platform, which results in streams of messages being spewed forth on a daily basis via a medium I regard as utterly transitory.

My term has been busy, wall-to-wall busy, and to add insult to injury, I have to reapply to be HoD. This is one of Vlad’s parting gifts, which meant that instead of being interviewed for the post, I got screwed over, and then there had to be some sleight-of-hand for the matter to advance. Well, I’m not doing the job to keep the seat warm for someone else. I am – let’s not pretend I’m anything but – a senior member of the International Department.

To add further insult to injury, Lincoln Green and I are both at the top of the pay scale, but with one slight difference: I’ve been in the job for eight years; he turned up about four or five years ago with a brief break in between, and yet this didn’t affect his pay at all. He’s a good mate, but he’s a lazy little sod as well.

The other matter in this post is the increasing number of stories I’m seeing about the Empire being a world leader. I’m deeply suspicious about the provenance of such stories because they sound like they’re part of some propaganda campaign, satisfying the old saw about telling a lie often enough so that it becomes the truth.

What are the qualities of a global leader? (I suspect the only quality in the case of the Empire is to assume that it’s a global leader in spite of being an arse ostrich.) Does the Empire have these qualities? (No, I don’t think so.) Does it have the will to do what a so-called global leader needs to do? (Not without a significant change in its attitude towards the rest of the world.) Will it do what is good for the individual and the group? (I doubt it; the Empire is very greedy and cannot see beyond its own self-interest.)

Is the world better off with empires and large countries or without them?