Your Tax Dollars At Work

This morning a second green carton ambushed me from my mailbox at the post office. The first arrived about one month ago.

Informed sources tell me that there will be more. The uncorroborated story is that the government ordered oodles of kits, way more than enough, and they were delayed. Next month is the third anniversary of the government/broadcasters campaign to stampede the general population into panic and mandatory house-arrest.

Inside the carton is a cornucopia of knick-knacks that amuse me.

First off – a small “cheat-sheet” in a font too small for me to read even with my new 4.0 spectacles especially ordered for reading.

I am now of an age where I ignore anything I cannot read. All be the same in a hundred years.

However I still have a good mind, and I am smart enough to lay the plastic cheat-sheet against the carton to confirm my belief that the government could have printed a larger card, allowing them a larger font, which means more people might be able to read the data.

You of course are wondering why the carton appears to have exploded.

Easy: I open every carton that crosses my threshold (Covid tests, Bakers Cooking Chocolate, USB hard drives) and fold the carton on itself to re-glue it inside out. I have a good stockpile of bland cartons that can be used to house those awkward collections of little things that a well-equipped office/home/shed needs.

There is too a fully-fledged six-panel sheet in the same unreadable micro-font. The panels are the same size of the carton, so what could one do?

Well, speaking as a 30+ year resident of a bilingual nation, each version could have been printed on its own six-panel sheet. That would have enabled the font size to be doubled.

And speaking as one who was born in a mono-lingual country and raised in a different but still mono-lingual country, the folded six-panels could have been printed on a double-size (hence 12 panel) sheet which would have enabled the font size to be doubled.

Mathematics is my strong point. But if it isn’t a strong point for the government, how are they dreaming up these annual budgets?

My informed sources tell me that many poor people in the rural hinterlands do not enjoy the luxury of sliding down the hill to the post office to gain access (at certain hours) to their postal box within the perpetually heated building that is the post office. These people suffer the inconvenience of a letter box at the foot of their rural property driveway.

Side Note: Last nights forecast called for -21c. It didn’t reach that, and went only to -15.1c. But at 9am the weather reads -16c real feel -26c. The wind-chill of -36c applies only to human skin on its walk to the Post-office, but my guess is that “Do not freeze” applies not to my dessicated body, but to the ampoules in the carton, which ampoules contents must surely freeze at the foot of the rural driveway.

And just in case you do not understand “do not freeze” …

By now you are thinking “Can anything be salvaged from the government largesse?”, and I have an answer for you:-

YES!

There are a variety of various pieces of plastics which, with minimal effort, can be converted into milk churns, platform seating, and various other parts of a model railway built in 1:72 scale.

Hooray!

The sheets of clear plastic use to shield the ampoules and all from damage were in turn shielded by more packing material. The clear plastic is superb material for windows in 1:72 scale buildings.

Let nothing go to waste.

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