Ministry of Defence Main Building (United Kingdom) each and cost £12,600. Similar figures representing "air" and "fire" were intended to be installed at the south end of the building, however these were never constructed. During the 1950s, building staff nicknamed the statues "Mr and Mrs Parkinson", after Cyril Northcote Parkinson, the Board of Trade civil servant who devised Parkinson's Law which states "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". More recently MOD staff refer to the statues as the "two fat ladies". The badge of the RAF is carved into stone columns either side of the southern entrance to the building, reflecting
It is time to work for the Lord due to an ambiguity in the Biblical Hebrew: instead of God acting in response to sin, humans should act on behalf of God. Thus, the verse may be understood as: "It is time to work for the Lord..." In the tannaitic period, the sage Hillel the Elder cited the verse to call fellow Jews to intensively study the Torah when it is neglected. (Ephraim Urbach interprets Hillel as calling for fuller observance of the Torah commandments in general, "The Sages" pp. 341f.) Rabbi Nathan makes a related gesture, for Jewish efforts against heresy, at the end of Mishnah Berakhot. Nathan