THE PROPHESIERS OF THE PALAIS

Do you know where you'll be on 26 May 2009? Do you know what the German delegate is going to say on 30 June 2010? Do you know the tastes of the col­league who will occupy your office on 2 November 2012? If you have answered no to all these questions you are not competent to work for the UN. Because one of our major functions these days is the one of prophesier. You don't believe me? We just received a wonderful form, which asks each of us how many publications we will issue during the period 2010-2012. The bureaucratic beauty of the request doesn't stop there; we also have to give their tides, number of pages, and last but not least their format and date of submission. As every body is going to move thanks to mobility and as nobody can guess what our governments will decide to publish during the coming 5 years it is an exercise of pure science fiction. Since I will soon leave the organization and have a wicked sense of humour, I have forecast 668 pub­lications, out of which 12 will deal with the sexual behaviour of mice in Papua New Guinea, 9 on the evolution of the cultivation of Brussels sprouts in the Atacama desert and 3 on the demographic trend of red ants in the Paris subway station Pigalle between 30 June 2012 and 8 May 2036. All exciting topics which will undoubtedly be of great interest to the Trade Committee.
And it doesn't stop there because I can imagine, rub­bing my hands with glee, how my poor successor will be obliged to justify why he or she didn't publish all these studies. Why some of them have 62 pages instead of 83. Why others are in A4 format when they were planned as A5. I can also picture with great pleasure the exchange of e-mails be­tween this office and the administration where he/she will be oblige to explain that the sexual behaviour of mice is no longer in the department's programme...
We are spending more and more time on totally sterile and stupid tasks. The only consolation is that we are working for sustainable development by ensuring that future generations will have even stupider work to do up until the Berlin wall of the last centrally planned system, the UN one, will collapse and our bureaucracy with it.