B. U. G. S.

There is a very true saying that, “The nearest thing we have to eternal life on earth is a temporary government agency.”

When I was in England back in the 1970s they had a great example of that. A person was still being paid to patrol the coast watching out for an invasion by Napolean’s armed forces.

Actually, I can see why that job was still open. The salary for it was fixed at ten pounds a year. Back in 1814 when Napolean was finally defeated at Waterloo, a young man who volunteered to fight in the war and who was crippled for life received a pension of only one shilling a day for for life.

A poor man could actually live on that back then.

If some hobbling wounded veteran got an extra ten pounts a year by being given the Napolean Watch, it increased his income by over fifty percent. I wouldn’t have had the heart to abolish the job either.

After that, I doubt anybody even thought about abolishing the job.

By the 1970s that ten pounds amounted to exactly two bucks a month. I wonder if the person holding that position even bothered to collect it. But I am sure some elderly Englishman thoroughly enjoyed ambling out to the coast a few times a year and still being the Official Napolean Watch.

In the twentieth century there were a couple of reports by the Napolean Watch of seeing the French invading fleet, but they were discounted because they always happened right after the pubs closed.

They still had a legal closing time for all pubs inthe 1970s (Last orders, please!) So the reports that came in right after that time were discounted.

I think that was too hasty a conclusion. I believe that, being a military genius, Napolean would have attacked exactly at the moment that the maximum number of Englishmen were in no condition to resist.

By now I imagine that the Napolean Watch has either been abolished or allowed to lapse.

So now if the Grand Army pours into England, muzzle-loaders and all, the English will be caught completely off guard.

As a former bureaucrat, all I can say I can is that it serves them right for abolishing a temporary government agency.