Ministry of Everything moves ahead!

More entries from my uncle's diary have been uncovered. This is a continuation of this, this,  this and that.  

These particular entries seem to relate to the events of the summer 1976 but sometimes one cannot tell the past from the future.

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Thunderbolt

We have been silly and stubborn and the day of reckoning has been long overdue. The Central Committee is finally fed up with the system and old comrades are tired and annoyed. They are irritated by  a society that cannot exercise their democratic power and speak with one voice, they are upset with the government institutions, furious with a sagging economy, and  aggravated by constant bickering about ever changing weather.

So we are to be punished and everybody was worried about it for weeks. You see, some older comrades in the Central Committee are very fond of the medieval ways of doing things, and this can spell trouble. Today our punishment was named and initiated. The plan is called Suffocation and quite frankly upon hearing that name we started breathing easier. Suffocation is simply a serious disruption of various services to remind us that some of them are kind of useful. Many things are lined up for punishment and among them, the Ministry of Everything is cutting down by 10%. Younger comrades say that it is no big deal but more seasoned ones are not so sure. The point is that 10% of everything could be quite a bit. 
Capitalist pigs are constantly saying that our society is brainwashed and the government is inept, inefficient and run by heartless bureaucrats, but seeing that the comrades from Central Committee side with this view is somewhat discouraging.

Repartee

Nobody was completely sure if Suffocation was really coming and speculations were rampant. Now that it has just became a reality we need the right response. There are basically two choices: to whine vigorously or to show indignant defiance.

I am please to report that our response to Suffocation is the second of these choices.

On the eve of Suffocation we announced ramping up of our Chutzpah program. Chutzpah program is the invention of our director and it is designed to promote individuals who  brainwash us from behind  a smoke screen of tantalizing promises. It started small and it did not amount to much. The newly announced Big Chutzpah is a different breed. To pull Big Chutzpah you need to supremely hone your bullshit laying skills and you need to rent a supporting crowd - and this is what the resources are for. In spite of some lingering doubts, Big Chutzpah is easier to carry out than grungy everyday work and it lifts the spirit in times of Suffocation. I am rooting for scientists and teachers  entombed in a warm blanket of self-confidence to lead pushing the agenda in these trying times.

Pay it Forward

By pure coincidence the Botany Unit is well positioned for these events and let me explain why. For as far as I remember together with my comrades we would go to drink borscht during the short midday break. Rather than everybody paying for their own borscht, one comrade would buy it for everybody else, and we would rotate randomly so that everything would settle to the average while bonding our group together. This simple idea was picked up by our boss  and it become Pay it Forward initiative - a mechanism for sharing the resources of the Botany Unit with just about any other unit in the Ministry of Everything. As in our borscht club, Pay it Forward is a wash. However, mathematicians  in the Numbers and Figures  Unit (yuck, what a terrible name!)  laugh at us saying some gibberish about scaling and exponentially slow convergence. I do not understand it, clearly in Botany everything repeats once a year!  On the other hand, colleagues from Numbers and Figures are the only ones who helped us out and showed that Pay it Forward might actually work.  

For a very long time we were trying to make a point that  Botany=Plants, Plants=Food, and everybody needs food. This way we equate Botany with a product that is ubiquitous and much needed. We were pushing this message forever, and it turns out that units participating in Pay it Forward are willing to listen!

Pay it Forward has not blossomed yet but it created a buzz in the Ministry of Everything and sent scads of freeloaders our way.  This is not particularly good if you plan to accomplish something but on a positive side,  it gave us the taste of Suffocation already several years ago.  With so much giving and charity, austerity, cutting down and penny-pinching are everyday staples, and so we can absorb the extra blow with raised heads!

Big loss

I am sad to report that our beloved Minister is leaving his post. His reign was many years shorter than expected but it was punctuated by direct and persistent involvement with just about every aspect of our operation.  The reasons for his departure are not known but one  rumor points to Vow of Poverty that every Minister, but not his immediate subordinates,  has to take. If this is the case then perhaps sacrifices on the most personal (even intimate) level took its toll. Our Minister is a classy dresser and the constant urge to rip off his shirt and give it to a random stranger may have been intolerable. 

Continued here.