Pleased to see that you got the original phrase from Parkinson's Law. That book deserves a wider audience, and so does its sequel The Law and the Profits. Here's a PDF: http://sas2.elte.hu/tg/ptorv/Parkinson-s-Law.pdf

That's great, it loaded with a hideous green that made it so unreadable I suspected it would have a different color on reload. It of course did, so I refreshed three more times until it had a very comfortable pastel red background.

I'm not 100% certain what that means for the whole bikeshed discussion..