《No, Minister.(存一下英文版)》用其他笔名

19、[Interlude] S01E01.5 Charles's Diary Wedne

　　Charles's Diary
　　Wednesday, 23rd January, 1980.
　　Absurd. If I had to find one word for today, it is still absurd.
　　Two hours. Two solid hours. An absolute farce.
　　Nodding, smiling, agreeing in principle, and then immediately turning to but, just, I'm afraid, unfortunately.
　　Every department had a line, every line was unassailable, every reason unimpeachable.
　　Pinkerton, the Deputy Permanent Secretary from the Treasury, personally attended the first meeting of a new department. At first, I thought it was a sign of respect, a good omen. Fool.
　　It was respect, of a sort. He came to ensure my proposal died in its cradle.
　　He used the Prime Minister's own efficiency policy to block my efficiency proposal. The irony was so thick it was like something out of an absurdist play.
　　A six-month feasibility study, a new working group, more meetings… were we not in a meeting at that very moment?
　　Ms Davies was even better. She frightened me with Big Brother, as if I were proposing to set up a national surveillance system. Isn't that the Home Office's idea?
　　And the Birmingham incident—that was a management failure, not a technical problem. A well-designed encrypted system is a hundred times safer than paper files scattered in various corners, liable to be thrown out as waste paper by the cleaners at any moment.
　　But it was no use.
　　I said encryption, she said risk. I said tiered access, she said weak links. I said pilot, she said legal review.
　　I felt like an animal that had wandered into a china shop. Not a bull, because I didn't even have the strength to charge. I tried to push, to question, to inspire, and ended up just watching a room full of exquisite porcelain bow politely to me, then remain, unmoving, in their original places.
　　And our Victor? He won this round again.
　　With his mild, harmless, utterly non-threatening mechanism, he secured a pragmatic, feasible, unopposed consensus. A constructive consensus.
　　And then, with my whiteboard, the whiteboard he had prepared for me in advance, he gave me a lesson, leaving his file behind before class was dismissed.
　　That familiar black cross.
　　He couldn't even be bothered to print a fresh copy.
　　He knew it would be this way. The agenda he prepared, the one I mocked as formalism, was in fact the only proposal that could possibly have been accepted.
　　My solution? Just another charge of Don Quixote at the windmills.
　　An idealistic fool.
　　Ha. A proper Charlie.
　　A crushing defeat, an absolute failure, but Victor redefined failure.
　　I chaired, I hit a wall. All true. Yet he called this situation a reconnaissance. A "fruitful information gathering"? That's how he would probably summarise it, in his exquisitely euphemistic way.
　　The worst part is, he's not entirely wrong.
　　And that is the most infuriating thing.
　　I don't want to admit it, but I have to. He was right.
　　Major Sampson from the MoD gave me a little surprise. I didn't notice it at the time, but my Principal Private Secretary did.
　　In that meeting, I was listening to what they were saying; Cyril was watching how they said it.
　　When we were writing that… fruitful report together, he pushed his notes towards me.
　　This young man had recorded details I had completely missed. Who looked at whom, who avoided whose gaze, who used what word.
　　The real conversation wasn't in the words, but outside them.
　　While I was self-importantly selling my solution, they were all playing an entirely different game. A game of power, territory, and mutual probing.
　　If I can understand what they care about, I can find a way to persuade them. Or, at least, find a way around them.
　　This isn't a method I like, but for now, I don't see any other way… If this is the only way…
　　Then I will learn.
　　Package failure as victory, obstruction as procedure, stalemate as consensus.
　　Welcome to Whitehall, Charlie.
　　We shall see.