A civil service wish revisited

September 23, 2025

When reading Jack’s excellent piece about the preferred behaviour of Albanese in his approach to the orange autocrat, I was reminded of a British civil service motto that I came across when working at Australia House in the 1960s.

Given the rigid hierarchy that characterised the British civil service, which was substantially reflected in the colonial public service at the time, the opportunities for promotion were rare and valued. The motto was that “where there’s death, there’s hope”.

That might be an entirely appropriate one for Americans to adopt to deal with the current extremity of their situation.