I was at a work function about 3 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall and got into a discussion with an ex-Trade Commisioner to Moscow. He said he thought the Soviet Union would collapse within 20 - 30 years.
Whhhat!! - this is one of the worlds superpowers - he must be mad. Of course it had gone within about three years so he did know what he was talking about.
To illustrate his point that the economy and the country was a facade and disaster waiting to happen, he told me a story.
He went to visit a dustbin factory. The Central Planning Committee decided to put the factory that made the lids in one town alongside a river. The factory that made the bottoms was another town further downstream and the assembly point and sales department further down the river.
He asked me what do you think happened when they barged the lids and bottoms downstream for assembly. I thought they wouldn't fit. He said no, that was fine - in fact they were a great dustbin. Only one style but they were solid and would last for 20 years. However, when he looked around he saw piles of lids for as far as he could see just rusting away. Literally millions of them. He asked what was going on.
The answer was that for every bottom they made three lids so they just threw away two!! This had been going on for over 30 years.
He said this is crazy - why don't you make less lids. What - and put all those people out of work!! Mad capitalists.
This was an example he said of the inefficiencies of the system. More stories another day.
Meantime, New Years with an 's'. From todays N Z Herald about words that are becoming annoying
"....... would like to add "New Year's" to the list of words that should be banned. "The event is New Year as in 'where are you going for New Year?' Not New Year's. What is correct, however, is New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. But all you ever see and hear these days is: What are you doing for New Year's or New Years? It is now so rife I fear it may never be stamped out."
Quite right. It is 17th century English that Americans still speak today. But it is not confined to them as the Scots say "6 stones 4 lbs" and at a Rugby match Bill McLaren always said " the ball is now to be thrown into the lines-out"
