Posted on 06/21/2024 11:44:33 AM PDT by Brian Griffin
Hacker: Underpaid? Backbench MPs, Darling? Being an MP is a vast subsidised ego trip. It's a job for which you need no qualifications, no compulsory hours of work, no performance standards. A warm room and subsidised meals for a bunch of self-opinionated windbags and busybodies who suddenly find people taking them seriously because they got letters "MP" after their names. How can they be underpaid when there're about two hundred applicants for every vacancy? You could fill every seat twenty times over even if they have to pay to do the job.
Sir Frederick: [...] there are four words to be included in a proposal if you want it thrown out. Sir Humphrey: Complicated. Lengthy. Expensive. Controversial. And if you want to be really sure that the Minister doesn't accept it, you must say the decision is "courageous". Bernard: And that's worse than "controversial"? Sir Humphrey: Oh, yes! "Controversial" only means "this will lose you votes". "Courageous" means "this will lose you the election"!
(Excerpt) Read more at en.wikiquote.org ...
Fantastic series. It gets a bit scary when you realize that the bureaucracy really is as subversive and swampy as Sir Humphrey.
One of my favorite BritComs. The show is STILL relevant to this day.
Humphrey's confession was priceless.
"It was the one by whom your present interlocutor refers to by means of the perpendicular pronouns. It was I, Minister."
Did not realize that Americans watched it.
I have the DVD collection.
“Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” were ahead of their time, making fun of the Deep State by what amounts to exposing it. That’s the one thing that scared me when I first saw it: “Man, I’m glad that can’t happen here!” Ah, the innocence of youth.
Yes Minister portrayed the accuracy of FedGov much in the same way 1984 did.
Much in the same way Idiocracy is coming to reality.
From 1979 to 1987, when those two shows aired, everything stopped in the UK as people sat down to watch the latest episode.
Thatcher actually made a cameo appearance in one of the episodes.
I don’t think it aired. I have the whole set on DVD (Yes M/PM) and she’s not in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwaX_DgHZkM
I recommend the UK series “ The Thick of It”. Its a much much darker satire on UK politics, mostly politics not government. Unlike Yes M\PM none of the characters are likable. You would enjoy drinking beers and socializing with Sir Humphrey & Jim Hacker not so with the characters of “The Thick of It”.
Are there really 200 candidates per seat? I assume nominees are chosen at convention? I can’t see 200 names o a primary ballot.
A few years ago — I counted 1600-ish candidates for the US House who raised enough money to file FEC paperwork.
Many seats are unopposed if there is an entrenched incumbent — but on average 4-5 serious candidates per seat.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.