With his tongue firmly in his cheek, Mr John Clarke, FRPharmS, of Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, ponders what full integration into Europe might really entail!
As doubtless you have read in the National Press, from December 31, 2000, the whole of the United Kingdom (but excluding the Isle of Man) will be converted to Metric Time Working (MTW). Following the introduction of MTW there will be 10 seconds to the minute, 10 minutes to the hour, 10 hours to the day and so on, delineated as shown in Table 1. Obviously, from the Departmental standpoint, as one new hour represents only 5/12ths of an old hour, members of the staff may be expected to work longer hours, eg, 31/4 decidays (or millimonths) per day. However, for administrative and payroll purposes, it is intended to reduce the mid-day break by 3/4 of a new hour (3/4 decidays thus making an MTW working day equal to 4 new days). There will be no alteration to either wages or salaries due to the introduction of MTW except in the special case of leap kilodays when adjustments will be made at the end of every 1.46 decamonths. |
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Leave entitlement will remain unchanged under MTW. However the following may prove helpful to staff:
Staff will quickly realise that Saturdays and Mondays will become transposed. It is pointed out that the "Monday Feeling" will now be felt on Saturday, and should not affect the new MTW decaday.
Your immediate supervising officer will be available on Sunday (the pre-MTW Wednesday) to answer and/or explain MTW further. Your supervisor has been allotted 3 demi-decidays per 100 staff for this purpose.
It cannot be emphasised too strongly that strict adherence to Metric Time Working is mandatory. Staff will soon realise that it is (in the long term) a far simpler measurement.
Having chosen English as the preferred European Community language, the European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of improving efficiency in communications between various government departments. European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarilt difficult. For example: cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be administered by a committee of staff at top level by participating nations.
In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using "s" instead of a soft "c". Sertainly sivil servants in all sites would reseive this news with joy. The hard "c" could be replased by "k" sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusions in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.
Enthusiasm
There would be growing enthusiasm when, in the sekond year, it is announsed that the troublesom "ph" would henseforth be written "f". this would make words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter in print.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of "double letters" which are a deterent to akurate speling.
We would al agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the language is disgrasful. therfor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapened. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z". Perhaps zen ze funktion of "w" kould be takn on by "v", vitch is, after al, half a "w". Shortly after zis, ze unesesary "o" or "u" kud be dropd from words kontaining "ou". Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Avter tventy yers ser vud be no mor trublsum difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi to interstand ech ozer. Ze drems of ze Führer vud finali hav kum tru!