Je ne veux pas travailler

Well I don't have to I am retired. Love this song, it is ironic and funny. It came out 20 years ago but it has kept its freshness.





I have also finished reading two other books and started on two others.

I finished the book by Prof. Donald Savoie, Whatever happened to the Music Teacher which tells the tale of how our democracy in Canada has been transformed since 1970 and is now a one man rule with the veneer of Democracy and free elections. Savoie is a well know University Professor and he has written extensively on government operations, Cabinet, the machinery of government and its transformation from the era of Policy driven and Cabinet consensus to a one man show and the continuous measurement of processes. The problem for me is that I saw this happening during my career and know well how things have gone off the rails. Unfortunately the public is so apathetic and so not interested in what is going on that it is quite possible to rule without opposition as our current Prime Minister is doing. Savoie advocates a return to policy initiatives and abandoning the Private Sector approach as ineffective for government operations and also stopping the continues process measurement which is useless and wasteful. It is difficult to do this many politician including the Harper government believe in the miraculous solutions of the private sector in all things governmental.


The other book is a bit of a piece of fluff, not so much a book as a conversation with an elderly aunt.
In this case its Margaret Rhodes, cousin to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The book The Final Curtsey tells in very general lines, the story of her life, but it is very general and not much details are offered. She speaks mostly of her aunt Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother who was the sister of her mother. She spent her life going from one great house to another, the war years shuffling from Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle and being a lady in waiting or a lady of the bedchamber to her aunt. There are few passages which are interesting if only as a curiosity, per example she tells us about the day the Queen Mother died and what happened. She died in the late afternoon and Margaret Rhodes was asked by her cousin Queen Elizabeth to come to dinner that night, en famille, at Windsor Castle. The next morning she returned to the house of the Queen Mother and found that the body had been left overnight in her death bed, so a full 12 hours passed before she was taken away by the undertakers. She was also the one to go to Windsor Registry Office to register the death of the Queen Mother. Though you would think the Royals are above such things, not in Britain apparently. The registrar asked Rhodes what was the occupation of the Queen Mother's husband, the question is on the form to be filled out. Taken aback by the question, she hesitated and finally said he was the King.

Her husband Dennys did not appear to work much and it is not clear from what income they lived on. But since they were always with the Royals, they were sort of taken care of. The book of Mary Lady Soames, who is the daughter of Winston Churchill was far more interesting and more in depth, though it also had its moments of vapidity.

It seems that her life was that of an observer not that of an actor, always witnessing never doing much.
She is now 88 years old and lives in a ''grace and favour'' house on the grounds of Windsor Castle.
You come away thinking that Rhodes is not going to say anything nasty or revealing about her cousin the Queen or the Royal Family which is her family and her bread and butter.

I am now reading slowly the book on Prokofiev by David Nice and the book on Machiavelli by Niccolo  Capponi, a descendant of the author of The Prince.
I also want to start reading the book of Gore Vidal, The City and the Pillar, sort of summer reading type of book.