The Ministry (July 2023)

A sporadic flurry of white flutters in the wind currents high above the concrete and asphalt, disappearing around corners of the myriad gray office buildings. From below, they could be taken for snowflakes, larger than usual, and so, visible against the gray cloud cover and the gray walls of this typical gray winter morning.

The trail of white flecks leads back to a 24-storey, windowless facade, where from an unseen crack, paper, it seems, is slipped through to the outside world. This is 'The Castle,' the unflattering nickname of the building housing the Ministry.

Unbeknownst to the pedestrians hurrying from the subway and buses to their offices, someone is releasing page after page of printed matter in the only way possible. These pages have been salvaged from the library that is being evacuated to make office space for the Ministry's restructuring, re-engineering and re-orientation plan.

All library materials (books, journals, reports, memoranda, correspondence) have been designated obsolete and historically irrelevant, hence the Ministry's decision to bypass archival protocols.

How do we know this? It was once a matter of public record. There was a brief phone conversation between someone inside and someone outside. The persons have never been publicly identified, despite the existence of archived call records that were subpoenaed by a 'concerned' news media outlet. The suit was dropped when the news organization was acquired and absorbed into the Ministry's vast communications department. According to one source, the not so public offices of the department are physically located beneath the three-level underground parking garage. This is also the Ministry's information hub. It is here that information is classified, secured and vetted for release and employees are likewise classified, monitored and evaluated for fitness.

The snow flurry lasts only 15 minutes, and afterwards, groundskeepers are dispatched to the surrounding blocks to gather any loose paper on streets, sidewalks and in alleyways. There's not a trace of evidence—the public space is as clean as if it were in Singapore.

And at the other end of the line—silence.

This was not the Ministry of old. A former Ministry staffer once told me, off the record, that 'back in the day' she used to watch episodes of Yes, Minister in the director's office. She said, in a Humphrey-like paraphrase of Margaret Thatcher that "it accurately depicts the incorrigible chaos of entrenched bureaucracy that keeps us free from the shackles of centralized and authoritarian rule."

That, I thought, was a peculiarly British twist on the 'deep state' obsession of American populists, many of whom favour the authoritative hand of an 'elected' CEO to control the administrative machinery of state—much like today's Ministry.