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C. Northcote Parkinson, expounder of Parkinson's laws ("Work expands so as to fill the time available" and "Expenditure always rises to meet income"), writing in a supplement of the Times of London, finds that bureaucracy's Abominable No Man ("who says 'no' to every proposal") is being replaced by a more subtle and effective breed of administrator: the Prohibitive Procrastinator. The Prohibitive Procrastinator (or PP) doesn't say "no" to a new idea. He forms a committee to study it. The committee drafts an outline proposal; referring its various subparts to "subcommittees formed to deal with the legal, financial, cynical, technical, political, hysterical, statistical, ineffectual and habitual aspects of the scheme." Braced by this wisdom, the committee issues an interim report which is laid before a commission of inquiry. This body will convene in about six years and eventually set up procedures for deciding whether there is any point in proceeding further. By this time the PP has wond the game without firing off a single "no".

"That fact-finding is thus a substitute for decisions is very generally known," Parkingson declares. "What we fail to recognize is that fact-finding is also a substitute for thought."

--Milwaukee Journal