Strike!

 The Aide looked down at her papers.  They were a mix of official documents, some stamped with ‘Confidential’, ‘Secret’ or ‘Miscellaneous’ (the classifications secretary was apparently feeling ambitious) and print-outs from various web-sites because the Minister refused to look at a screen that wasn’t showing his own image.  She shuffled them a little, pointlessly as she already had the ones she wanted on the top, and then looked up at the Minister.  His eyes were on the television mounted on the wall behind her, but they were drifting away indicating that the news report of his latest speech had ended.

“Well?” he said, as though he hadn’t been the one to stop the conversation in the middle.  “My train to the Midlands on Thursday?”

“There are none,” said the Aide.  “The unions are on strike.”

“What?  That’s ridiculous!”

“Minister, that’s the consequence of your policies on public transport.  You announced funding cuts, you’ve announced your intent to pass new laws to castrate the unions, and you’ve announced a new mandatory retirement age that is seven years higher than anything even your most cynical critic predicted.   All public transport workers have gone on strike while they still can.”

“Castrate,” murmured the Minister.

“Yes, Minister.  And, while you will probably have to mean that metaphorically and not literally in order to get the law passed, that is still quite drastic.  You are being compared with Draco in the popular press, which is quite astonishing as it means they are taking the trouble to explain to their readers who that was.  You’ve also been compared with Nero, Caligula, and at least three of the Borgias.  Whether you intended it or not, the country is getting quite an education as a result of your policies.”

The Minister smiled.  “So if they’re on strike, the trains aren’t running at all?”

“No, Minister.”

“Then just commandeer one.”

The Aide opened her mouth, and then hesitated.  This hadn’t come up in the pre-briefing meeting she’d had with the Minister’s Secretary or the saner members of the cabinet.

“I don’t think I can,” she said slowly, wondering if she could.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” said the Minister. “Official government business can’t be held hostage by the peons, and if there’s no other trains running there’s no danger of collision.  I mean, how hard can it be to drive a train?  They run on rails!”

The Aide, who had spent several hours with the Minister’s speech-writer trying to make sure he never made a statement anything like what he’d just said, stretched a smile across her face with an effort.

“It’s not just the question of speed,” she said.  “There are signals to be considered, and the state of the track — which, as you know, you’ve been cutting the maintenance budgets for in the past three years —“

“Yes well, they only spend it on alcohol, don’t they?”

“…probably not, actually Minister.  Or there would be a lot more train accidents than there already are.”

“Hmm,” said the Minister in a way that the Aide had come to dread.  “Train accidents.  If there were more, it would contribute to our populations crisis, right?  As well as lowering public confidence in public transport?  Which would boost support for the idea that we should all just use helicopters to travel around the country, right?”

The Aide, try as she might, had been unable to find out who had put the idea in the Minister’s head that only people who could afford to fly in helicopters should be able to move around the country faster than walking pace but she was persisting in her attempts as it was especially galling for her.

“Our population crisis is that it is decreasing, Minister,” she said.  “We need more people, not more accidents.”

“Not old people,” said the Minister cheerfully.  “We’ve got too many of them.  We just need young people, and young people like helicopters!  They’re exciting!  Fun!  They go fast!”

“The trains would go fast if you didn’t keep cutting the track maintenance budget,” said the Aide, knowing full well that the Minister wouldn’t listen.  “Why don’t you fly to the Midlands then?  There are airports there.  Somewhere.”

The Minister waved a hand as though swatting a fly.  “Too soon,” he said.  “Let’s thoroughly discredit public transport and the unions first.  So commandeer me a train, and let’s break this strike!”

“Very good, Minister,” said the Aide sombrely.