The Prophecy

Once upon a time, long long ago, when I was a Teenie and a fanatic SF fan, I read a short story. It told of a group of astronauts who visited a planet to find that the entire agricultural land was filled with the same little green plants. Over each tiny new plant was a little woven mat on four legs. This, they were told, was to protect the growing plants from the fierce rays of the Sun. The astronauts soon figured out that the entire population of this planet was engaged either in planting and nurturing the growing plants, and the other half was busy harvesting the green plants in order to weave mats and shred stalks to make the legs of the little sunshades to protect the plants.

I have long forgotten the name of this funny author, but would love to inform him that his prophecy has come true, in Germany at least.

Every Saturday morning when I go to check the mailbox I find that our postman has delivered a clear, sealed, plastic bag filled with 15 to 20 advertising flyers from local Supermarkets and Furniture stores. I tear open the plastic bag, throw it into our communal recycling container, and throw the unread flyers into the communal waste paper container. Twice a month a big truck comes by and teams of men empty our paper container into their truck. Later, and also twice a month, another big truck full of men arrives to empty our recycling container.

These are presumably then delivered to a recycling center where the plastic and the paper is processed to produce fresh new plastic and nice new paper so that someone can print new flyers and pack and seal them into a nice new, clean plastic bag that our postman delivers religiously every Sturday morning into our mailboxes.

Perhaps I have missed the point, and this is a secret Government plan to reduce the unemployed statistics so they can report how successful a new Government they are ! On the other hand . . . . .