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Parkinson's Law
Circa 1953:
"Work Expands To
Fill The Time Available To Complete It"
Haelig's Corollary To
Parkinson's Law:
"The Number Of Bureaucrats Expands To Fill The Space Available
To Accommodate Them"
Editor's Note:
Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1909 - 1993) was a British
historian and author of sixty books.
Google tells us: "Besides numerous works on British politics
and economics, Parkinson also wrote historical fiction, often
based on the
Napoleonic
period, and sea stories.
He is most famous for his ridicule of bureaucratic
institutions, notably his
Parkinson's Law
and Other Studies,
a collection of essays explaining the inevitability of
bureaucratic expansion."
Parkinson's Law asserts that:
"Work expands to fill the time available to complete it."
Parkinson:
More Admirals
Than Ships In The Royal Navy
"As early as the 1930's, for
example, Parkinson had successfully predicted that the Royal
Navy would eventually have more admirals than ships."
Former Assemblyman Robert K.
Haelig Jr. is a commentator for OceanCountyPolitics
and has been a commissioner on the Dover Municipal Utilities
Authority for 26 years.
Haelig: More
Admirals Than
Boat Ramps In Dover Township
Google tells us very little
about Haelig, who has never published a single book, but
Haelig predicted as early as 1984 in an obscure essay, that
Dover Township would eventually have more admirals than public
boat ramps.
He is the author of Haelig's
Corollary To Parkinson's Law: "The number of bureaucrats
expands to fill the space available to accommodate them."
Parkinsonian
Implications In Morris Job, Now Another Segment In
$110,055,000 Hidden Greed Tax
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Lucky Hal Morris
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Our Series starts with two short
passages from Parkinson's Law, which have direct application
to the recent appointment of Mayor Harold Morris to a useless
job as "confidential aide" in the the Department of the Fire
and First Aid Academy.
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Bureaucrat |
T he
Parkinson commentary also applies to about a hundred other
useless county employees and the political boss system, which
aggravates normal bureaucratic tendencies and adds to the
hidden greed tax which, with the Morris appointment, is now
approximately $110,055,000 extra every year for Ocean County
taxpayers.
From Chapter
1: Parkinson's
Law or the Rising Pyramid
"Work expands so as to fill the
time available for its completion. General recognition of this
fact is shown in the proverbial phrase "It is the busiest man
who has time to spare." Thus an elderly lady of leisure can
spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t
her niece at Bognar Regis. An hour will be spent in finding
the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half an hour
in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in
composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to
take an umbrella when going to the mailbox in the next street.
The total effort that would occupy a busy man for three
minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person
prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil."
From Chapter
8: Injelititis Or Palsied Paralysis
"We find everywhere a type of
organization (administrative, commercial, or academic) in
which the higher officials are plodding and dull, those less
senior are active only in intrigue against each other, and the
junior men are frustrated or frivolous. Little is being
attempted. nothing is being achieved.
And in contemplating this sorry
picture, we conclude that those in control have done their
best, struggled against adversity, and have finally admitted
defeat. It now appears from the results of recent
investigation, that no such failure need be assumed.
Final State Of
Coma
In a high percentage of the
moribund institutions so far examined the final state of coma
is something gained of set purpose and after prolonged effort.
It is the result, admittedly, of a disease, but of a disease
that is largely self-induced. It is the disease of Injelititis.
It is commoner than is often supposed, and the diagnosis is
far easier than the cure."
This article
prepared for publication August 8, 2005. |
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