Bureaucracy -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Satire; Science fiction
She told Prideaux that she was considering this offer. Prideaux said,
"That thing! Its very name condemns it. It's on the wrong tack. You
shouldn't be out to stop things; they've got to go on.... If it's
journalism you want, why don't you apply for a job on _Intelligence_?"
_Intelligence_, or the Weekly Bulletin of the Brains Ministry (to give
it its sub-title, humorously chosen by one who visualised either the
public or the Ministry as a sick man) was a weekly journal issued by the
Ministry, and its aim was, besides reporting the Ministry's work,
decisions and pronouncements for each week, to correlate all its local
activities and keep them in touch with headquarters, and to collect
reports from over the country as to the state of the public mind. It was
for official circulation only. "Why not?" repeated Prideaux, struck by
this idea. "It would be quite enough of a change: you would probably be
one of the travelling reporters and send bright little anecdotes from
the countryside; I know they want some more reporters. Why don't you
apply? I'll speak to M.B.B. about you if you like." (M.B.B. was the
department which edited the Bulletin.)
"Would it be interesting?" Kitty wondered.
Prideaux thought it would. "Besides," he added, "you'd remain attached
to the Ministry that way, and could return to headquarters later on if
you wanted to.... And meanwhile you'd see all the fun.... We're in for a
fairly lively time, and it would be a pity to miss it. We're bound to
slip up over the A.S.E. before the month's over. And probably over the
exemption of Imbeciles and the Abandoned Babies, too. And the
journalists; that's going to be a bad snag. Oh, it'll be interesting all
right. If it wasn't for Chester's remarkable gift of getting on people's
right side, it would be a poor look-out. But Chester'd pull most things
through. If they'd put him at the head of the Recruiting job during the
war, I believe he'd have pulled even the Review of Exceptions through
without a row.... Well now, what about trying for this job?"
"All right," Kitty agreed. "If you think there's any chance of my
getting it. I don't mind much what I do, so long as I have a change from
this hotel."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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