What lies beneath

Franz Kafka’s Poseidon

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Rupert Darwall

Labour has walked into a net-zero trap of its own making

Franz Kafka’s Poseidon

sat at his desk doing the accounts. The administration of all the waters gave him endless work. He could have had assistants, as many as he wanted — and he did have very many — but since he took his job seriously, he would in the end go over all the figures and calculations himself, and so his assistants were of little help to him. It cannot be said that he enjoyed his work; he did it only because it had been assigned to him.

But he did it, nonetheless, and with a kind of regularity and constancy which the CEO of any organisation would have appreciated. Sumatra, Tonga, the Samoas: only the latest entries in the Sea Director’s neat, double-columned book.