In terms of the quality of their drama, too. ;-)

With all respect: Playwright.

................or were you, mayhap, playing?

"civil servants in jobs that did not exist ten years ago".

And not just in Britain - although government employees (often not called civil servants - as book cooking trick) have vastly increased over the last ten years, and there were a vast number of them already under the government headed by Mr Major.

In the United States also there has been a big expansion of government - and it is not just military spending.

The welfare reform forced on President Clinton (good in many ways) contained an evil seed within it (put there by the Clinton Administration) the SCHIP program - which (like Medicare and Medicaid before it) started out tiny and has grown and grown.

"But President Bush resists its growth" - only recently and in a half hearted way.

And, of course, there are Bush expansions of government such as "No Child Left Behind" - the Kennedy-Bush expansion of Federal education spending and yet more crushing more autonomy and diversity out of State and local areas.

One of the depressing moments of the Republican nomination campaign was hearing one of the Republican candidates (not the one who won) say (during a Fox News debate) that he came into politics opposed to the Department of Education, but now supported No Child Left Behind.

He not understand that saying the exact opposite would have appealed to Republican voters better.

Saying "I used to support Federal interventions in education - but experience and thinking about things have led me to understand how bad these interventions are" would have been worth hearing.

But "once upon a time I might have been O.K. - but I am a shit now" or words to that effect, was not.

And a play showing the absuridites of No Child Left Behind (such as tests being made less difficult - in order that more children pass, so that more Federal money can be gained) would be worth seeing.

Anything would be an improvement on Pinter who is a chronic sufferer of the Raging Pilgers.

But good on Stoppard! I really liked Rosencrantz & Guildernstern Are Dead.

Paul,
It might be worth doing but gawd would it be dull. Bums on seats darling! You do of course know why Macbeth has the rep it does in theatrical circles?

God, I hate Harold Pinter raving away. His long, tedious rhetoric is so distorted and dull that it almost makes one give up entirely. Droning away with his keywords of 'war', 'death', 'blood' and '...'. It's bloody boring, and just goes on and on.

Well Pinter didn't get born in Czechoslovakia.
Had to flee just before the Nazis invaded.
Ended up in Singapore, where his father was to be captured and die in an Japanese prison camp...
This kind of sharpens the mind to the horrors of totalitarianism.
It makes Stoppards writing witty, quick and acute and above all, entertaining.
'Arold is famous for............................
.......Pauses.

The play's the thing /

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.

Trapping unicorns is more likely.

I bought some Aspro yesterday. The girl at the till told me it mustn't be given to children under 16 I told her I had no children under 16 or otherwise. She looked hurt and said she had to say such things. Bit like kicking a kitten. On the receipt it says (in caps) CONTAINS ASPIRIN. Well, I never. Responsible for ourselves? We're not supposed to be conscious.
BTW I pop in here occasionally as a sort of sympathetic alien, one of the minority of fans of Samizdata firmly embedded in the Left. My site addy has changed over the years. and the URL box offers me a choice of where I am, where I was and where I have never been, namely 'bnp.net'. The same interesting phenomenon I have noted at Harry's Place. This suggests someone has posted as me. Accept no imitations. I am nothing if not unique. This is presumably the absence of responsibility for the functioning of one's brain that perceives hostility to sexist, racist, homophobic, theocratic fascists as evidence of neo-Nazism. Should there be some kind of campaign - 'My brain works - tough Wensleydale if yours does not'.