APRIL 27 2010

Dear Readers, once again I have had the pleasure of interviewing the esteemed Edward Forrester.  Though I can only call him Mister Forrester to his face, his candor and experience in politics led to some interesting insights and discussions on his last article.  I have tried to follow up on some of the more interesting comments he made as well as get his response to the new inquiry going on into the ministry.  Since you do not pay me to write these introductions, I shall go onto the interview without delay.

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"Mister Forrester, I thank you for your time once again.  As you can probably surmise, the reason I am here is to ask you about the recently announced ministry inquiry.  Would you care to comment on that?" I ask, opening with the obvious.

"I would be happy to, Mister Thermoplye.  To the purpose, if the ministry wants to take a hard look at itself, I will probably be the last person to stop them.  Though well-intentioned, the ministry has the nasty habit of creating bureaucracies and setting up artificial barriers where the only thing that it seems to generate is piles of parchment and no answers.  If the ministry is spending time questioning itself, that is less time it can devote to impeding other things.  While the ministry can do somethings right, the number of things it does wrong is what seems to be the problem," Mister Forrester comments.  You really do have to see the gentleman in person.  His aura of command is unshakable.

"Going along those lines Elder, what does the ministry do correctly?" I ask, looking for something to counter his stance.

"To be honest, the Department of Mysteries & St. Mungos do an amazing job.  To be brutally honest, St. Mungos does its job too well.  They preserve the lives of wizards dumb enough to stick wands up their arse.  That said, I cannot in good faith cut funding to an entity that does a necessary service to the community.  I will also note that they have extremely limited interference from the ministry despite the amount of funding they receive.  The other department I will commend is the Department of Mysteries.  As much as I hate to admit it, those wizards are far smarter and solving far more complex problems than I probably ever will.  The ministry should keep up a group like that, if for no other reason that they are probably the best group to deal with the next inevitable magical catastrophe that occurs." the elder explains, though he glares suspiciously at me.  I can tell he does not like praising any aspect of the ministry.  Still, his candor is obvious enough.

"I see.  Some of your previous comments had garnered a fair bit of attention.  Though a favorable stance towards purebloods was expected given your lineage, I did not expect quite so honest an answer as 'not doing stupid' - pardon my french - 'shit' " I comment.  Though there was no actual question, but he seems to get where I was going with this regardless.

"Ah.  You will note that the last revolution by Voldemort and his followers were a pure-blooded majority.  Auror Potter and his friends stopped him.  That tale is well known and there is no need for me to go into it here.  The point I am trying to make here is this - the purebloods felt strongly enough to overthrow the government, more or less in two years.  Though they had a powerful leader - they did not have a sane one.  Depsite his performance in the seventies, something happened that made him think making him attack a well fortified castle with a thousand years of enchantments was a good idea.  Despite the questionable mental state of Voldemort,  he effectively forced a coup d'etat in two years.  How quickly do you think a wizard person can? An intelligent wizard could send the ministry into chaos without too much effort.  It is one of the main reasons I try to prevent it from doing much of anything" the elder explains.

"I see.  Moving right along, how do you think the dementor issue will be resolved?" I ask.  I hate to admit it, but his comments about the ministry unnerved me, and I was desperate to change the subject.

"I have a strong suspicion that this is the cause of this inquiry.  Regardless, I will not comment on that further.  I will comment further when the results are available to the public," the politician responds.

"I see.  That is all I wanted to ask you.  Do you have anything you would like to add?" I ask.

"Yes there is one thing.  You had commented on my statement about 'not doing stupid shit'.  If you take nothing else away from this article, please take away that.  Until the dementors are rounded out, please stay with someone who can cast a patronus.  There are other safety tips- but do not listen to the ministry in this regard.  Casting a cheering charm is close to useless against them," the elder comments.  I actually did want to ask a follow up on that, but to be honest my time with him had ended five minutes ago, and I had another place to be as well.

"Thank you for your time - as always," I say, concluding the interview.