All the twin studies how strong heritability for Left/Right political orientation. Leftists are born dissatisfied and conservatives are born contented. And Leftists love bureaucracy. They can hardly get enough of it. As V.I. Lenin remarked: "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". So is there also an inherited bureaucratic instinct? Something I encountered recently inclined me towards that belief.
A little background: I have a pinup on my bedroom wall. It is a picture of the Queen. No doubt many would say that I must be a poor thing to have the Queen as my pinup but it is a large and beautifully done portrait so I think it could be called a pinup.
And I am an unapologetic monarchist. I believe that a constitutional monarchy is the best form of government, Americans have to wait 4 years before they can get rid of an unpopular President but, in a monarchy on Westminster lines, parliament can boot out at will any Prime Minister who has lost popularity --which the Australian parliament has done rather a lot of in recent years. So it suits my views that I have a picture of Her Majesty and Prince Philip on my wall.
But I have acquired that picture only recently. There is an Australian tradition that Federal politicians can give out free pictures of Her Majesty to their constituents. So I wrote to my local Federal MP, Terri Butler, member for Griffith, and requested one. She represents the Labor Party so I was slightly surprised that she wrote back to me and agreed. I had to pick the picture up from her electorate office but that was not far away from me so off I went.
When I arrived and rang the bell a large sandy-hired young man appeared. When I made my request he said; "We haven't received any correspondence about this". I said, "I wrote to Parliament house". He said "Did you get a letter from Terri Butler about this?" I said I had. "Have you got it with you" -- "No". "Where is it?" -- "At home". And he went on generally in a rather circular way about having authorization to give me the picture. I inherit a rather short temper from my father however so I very soon started to shout and bang on the counter. That dislodged him and he gave me the picture.
As the pictures are freely given out, there was absolutely no need for any bureaucracy but this employee of the Labor party dreamed some up anyway. He appears to have a bureaucratic temperament. I suspect it was inherited -- JR
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