June 30, 2025

No government has ever been, or can ever be, wherein time-servers and blockheads will not be uppermost.

John Dryden (1631–1700), British poet, The Cynic’s Lexicon, Jonathon Green, ed. (London: 1986), p.68

Who are the time-servers and blockheads of your acquaintance?

I’d like to think that this is less true than it once was, not because a lot of people (the time-servers) would still rather be paid well for little or no work, but because the opportunities to catch them out have increased one hundredfold with the invention of the cellphone-camera.