The Art of Compromise |
You can always tell when the king has another of his bright ideas – he comes to the Cabinet meeting early, and strolls round the table, humming to himself. Normally he is as reluctant to be there as anyone else, and the meeting takes a few tense minutes. The rest of us shuddered when we came in: this one could keep us from our work for hours. We did persuade him to deal with the urgent business first, and sign the cheques. Then it burst out – he wanted the kingdom to have another wine festival. In vain we reminded him of the last two – vast queues, white wine steaming on the tables; people queuing in the rain for hours then complaining about the lack of chairs; the knickknacks that went missing from the queen mother’s dressing table. Of course, he told us to fix the problems, not complain about them. And when we reminded him that he was in charge, he just ordered us to fix them. Why does he always have to behave like this? Well, since he had left us with the organisation, we would have to organise. We couldn’t just ignore the task – the king would notice eventually, and it’s chilly at this time of year going round without your head. We couldn’t solve all the problems to do with lack of space – there isn’t a big enough room in the kingdom, and the less said about the affair of the marquee, the better. Then the minister for work, pensions, agriculture and tourism (the landlord of the King’s Arms) came up with a breathtakingly radical solution: we should ask the customers. Another sub-committee was formed to decide what we should ask them. Finally, the terms of the referendum where agreed. Of course, this would be a one man, one vote operation. We’re not a democracy, you know: the one man with the one vote is the king, naturally. So, at the beginning of the next Cabinet meeting, we posed the referendum question to the king: “Do we go ahead with wine festival, with all the problems that it will bring, or do we cancel it?” July 2007
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