{"id":4375,"date":"1982-01-01T16:25:00","date_gmt":"1982-01-01T16:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/?p=4375"},"modified":"2022-12-07T16:38:10","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T16:38:10","slug":"youth-will-be-served","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/1982\/01\/01\/youth-will-be-served\/","title":{"rendered":"Youth Will Be Served"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

By making a few discreet inquiries I was able to find out that the plans for the new Ministry had already materialized and that the Ministry was actually functioning in a large building in Kato Kifissia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had already been told that the Ministry had been divided into four main departments, each concerning itself with a separate age group — the 2-5, 6-12, 13-16 and 17-20-year-olds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So I was not surprised when I was met at the door of the Ministry by a three-year-old moppet who looked me up and down suspiciously and said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What do you want, old man?” I explained that I had an appointment with the Minister but the little boy seemed unimpressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What’s an appointment?” he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I explained what an appointment was and the child then looked up at me coyly and said:
“I’ll let you in if you give me a lollipop.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sighed. I hadn’t thought of bringing any lollipops with me and the nearest kiosk was half a mile down the road. So I decided to argue. “Look here, young man. I may look like Kojak but I’m not Kojak and your Minister will be very angry with you if you make me late for my appointment. So be a good boy and let me in, will you?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The child immediately burst into tears and ran into the Ministry. A few seconds later he came out again, wiping his cheeks and accompanied by a serious-looking young girl of nine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What did you do to our doorman to make him cry, you nasty old man?” she asked, sternly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I explained the situation, upon which she turned to the little boy and wagged her finger at him:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Haven’t I told you that people who have appointments don’t have to give you a lollipop?” Then she turned to me \u00b7 and apologized, explaining that when the Ministry first opened, there had been such a rush of children to avail themselves of its services that the Minister had decided to charge an entrance fee of one lollipop from each visitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s like a ‘hartosimo’ (excise stamp),” she explained, “and it helps to keep our staff in Department A happy — that’s the two to five-yearolds.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally I was ushered into the Minister’s office where I found an eighteen-year-old lad standing before a-mirror, anxiously examining a few hairs-growing on his upper lip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He turned to greet me, shaking my hand with a firm grip and ushering me to a comfortable armchair. He switched on his intercom and barked into it: “No calls for the next half hour and ask the cafe to send up two glasses of Nounou, will you?” A squeaky voice at the other end of the machine said : “Yessir.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I’m sorry I can’t offer you coffee or anything stronger but one of our policies is to promote milk drinking among the younger generation and we have to set the good example.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After he had settled down in another armchair, opposite mine, I asked him how he had come to be selected for the post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He smiled, modestly. “I really don’t know,” he said. “The Prime Minister was very keen to have someone young in this post but it was very difficult to find anyone in my age bracket who had been imprisoned or tortured by the junta, or who was equipped with an acceptable moustache. But I suppose I could call myself a victim of the dictatorship, in a way.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Oh?” I exclaimed. “How did that happen?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Well, when I was eleven, I was watching some workmen dismantling the phoenix emblem from the arch over the main road of my home village which said: ‘Long live the 21st of April’, when the phoenix fell and hit me on the head. Fortunately it was made of flimsy cardboard and didn’t do any serious damage but I had to have three stitches in my scalp.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“And this is what qualified you for Minister of the New Generation?” I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Oh, no. At least, I don’t think so. I’ve been very active with PASOK in recent years. Did you see the huge PASOK sign on the bridge over the national road to Patras, just after Akrata? Well, I sprayed that with three cans of green spray paint, at night, hanging upside down from the bridge rail with two of my buddies hanging on to my ankles.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That must have been exceedingly dangerous.” I observed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Oh, yes. It was. In fact, Department Din our Ministry is compiling a list of youngsters who have suffered accidents in painting PASOK signs in the most inaccessible places you can imagine. They will all be given life pensions regardless of the extent of their disabilities. We are working very closely with the Ministry of Social Welfare on this score.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I see,” I said. “And what is Department C doing?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Those are the 13 to 16-year olds. They’re recruiting youngsters in their own age bracket who will be the right age at the next elections to conduct the pre-e1ection campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They will be trained in slogan-painting, bill-posting, flag-waving and rhythmic chanting at electoral rallies and distributing pamphlets and leaflets throughout the country.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Very interesting,” I remarked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“And what about Departments B and A?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Well, Department A is staffed by the very young, as you saw from the doorman. They’re in charge of collecting lollipops and arranging for the distribution of surplus quantities that are not consumed in the Ministry to kindergartens in the greater Athens area. Later, we hope to have enough to extend the system to other areas where they will be distributed by local self-government bodies. This is in line with PASOK’s decentralization policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Department B, the 6 to 12-year-olds, are gathering information from schoolchildren on schoolteachers who give them too much homework, who are too strict with them in class, who tweak their ears when they are naughty and who generally behave toward them in a beastly manner. We are compiling dossiers on them to be used by the Ministry of Education in assessing their general conduct and abilities and their prospects for promotion.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I broke in here to remark: “But surely PASOK has said it will do away with all dossiers!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“All the old dossiers, yes. But it hasn’t said anything about compiling new dossiers,” the Minister said, taking a deep draught of Nounou.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ONE of the more intriguing of the PASOK government’s plans to improve the quality of Greek life was the promise to set up a Ministry of the New Generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-onlooker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4377,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4375\/revisions\/4377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}