The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

You may have noticed that the URL for my last post about press regulation was a bit odd. That's because, tired of the constant negativity of my own postings, I wanted to balance my criticisms of government's latest idiocies with an example of a good public servant at work. In the end the post got away from my original intentions, as they sometimes do.

I am no friend of the Bloomberg administration in New York City. The man himself intervened in the details of his citizens' lives to an indefensible degree. His transport chief however, who had an engineering background in the real world before entering public service, is setting an example in this video (though I can't speak for the rest of her career) of how public servants should think.

Watch and marvel. Imagine a Soviet British aparatchik boasting about doubling the rents on a public square by enhancing it with shopkeepers in mind. Imagine a pampered British bureaucrat being so concerned about costs to the taxpayer or public approval.

h/t Jeremy Jacobs