I’d come to realize over the years that anything created by mankind had error, mischief and bureaucratic officialdom hardwired at inception, and the … - Jasper Fforde

Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corruption and error hardwired at inception.

The industrial age had only just begun; the planet had reached its Best Before date.

"How is the book going?" I asked returning to my knitting.
"The self-help stuff?"
"The magnum opus."
Landen looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, "More opus than magnum. I'm trying to figure out whether the lack of progress is writer's block, procrastination, idleness or just plain incompetence."

The Commonsense Party’s first major policy reversal of perceived current wisdom was with the scrapping of performance targets, league standings and the attempt to make subtle human problems into figures on a graph that could be solved quickly and easily through “initiatives.” Arguing that important bodies such as the Health Service should have the emphasis on care and not on administration, the Commonsense party forced through legislation that essentially argued, “If it takes us ten years to get into the shit, it will take us twenty years to get out—and that journey starts now.”