Two Empires and a Mushroom Cloud

Hi Everyone

Now, as you know, I am just approaching middle age, so I was certainly not around almost two thousand years ago, wearing a toga with a season ticket, and wearing my world famous green jacket at the Colosseum in Rome. If I had been, I would have been a witness to the slow decline of the Roman Empire, fueled by ever increasing bureaucracy. When I asked AI (whoever he or she is) for an opinion, this is the reply I got.   

“While bureaucracy was not the sole cause, it contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire by increasing inefficiency, corruption, and financial strain. The empire's vast size necessitated a large bureaucracy, which became increasingly complex and cumbersome, hindering timely decision-making and policy implementation. This, coupled with excessive taxation to fund the bureaucracy and military, strained the economy and led to social unrest.” 

I think that if you ask the same question about the UK today, you would probably get almost the same answer. Just as a small example, near to where we live we have a stretch of straight road with a sixy mile an hour speed limit with suddenly a thirty mile limit as it enters a more urban area. A friend told me two years ago that it was proposed to move the thirty mile limit further along the road to take it further from the high density housing, which made perfect sense. Nothing happened. Now a new proposal has been put forward by local people to apply a forty mile speed limit about five hundred yards up the road so that traffic will gradually reduce speed from sixty to forty and then thirty. Again, a sensible solution. This time the council have forwarded the idea for consultation. For goodness' sake, why can't someone send two men with two steel poles, two discs with forty on them, two spades and a bag of concrete. Job done. Ok, I know it is not that simple, but surely a decision could be made in days rather than weeks or even months. Now, nearly two thousand years later, despite the demise of the Roman Empire, Italy is one of the best places in the world to visit. In two thousand years, I will surely be past middle age , but it would be interesting to know whether tourists will still be flocking here despite our current demise.

The word Empire reminded me of a cinema, a short bus ride from where we lived. As young boys, we did not go to this Empire cinema very often, but again, you had to be there early to get a seat. If the cinema was full, you could stand at the back of the stalls until a seat became available. while paying the same price as someone seated. The problem was that if you were standing at the back, the overhanging balcony above obscured the top half of the screen, so you could spend up to an hour looking at legs and feet rather than faces. It is hard to understand in this world today that this was normal and accepted without question by cinema goers unless you were the Senior Partner, of course. 

This week marked the 80th anniversary of the end of the war against Japan, bringing WW2 finally to an end. Whilst I vividly remember the street party to celebrate the end of the war in Europe, I have no recollection of any celebration on this occasion, which is probably why many later called it the forgotten war. In the end, this brutal war was brought to an end by two huge mushroom clouds that each killed about 100,000 people. At that time, only two or possibly three countries had access to those devastating bombs. Now they are in many hands but we must do everything we can to ensure that we never see those mushroom clouds again.

Just a Thought :

I struggle with Roman numerals until I get to 159. Then it just CLIX.

My friend got kicked out of the cinema this week for taking his own food. His argument was that their food prices were outrageous, and besides, he hadn’t had a BBQ for ages.

Vandals have attacked the National Origami Museum in Tokyo. I will keep you updated as the story unfolds.

Brian