It's a good job neither of us are ill
I was reading The Daily Sceptic recently and came across the following comment, from a reader who styles themself ‘Karenovirus’: The other day I was watching Michael Palin's travelogue Pole to Pole; in episode 3 he is in Leningrad trying to buy some vodka. Someone explains that first he must obtain a ‘kiewpon’ from the Casa Kiosk (I had witnessed similar in restaurants in Kiev and Odessa a decade previously). Fortunately for Michael a passerby sells him a coupon (in the way that someone might illegally pass you a parking permit with some time left on) and nobody else batted an eyelid. This might seem like a minor transgression but it actually struck at the heart of the Soviet system in which full employment was achieved by having three people to do one person's job. Reading it, I realised that life in the UK is now almost as absurd as it was under the Soviet system. Parts of our national infrastructure are supported by teams of people that, well, seem to need to pass you to ...