Free Republic

No devotee of Yes Minister, yesteryear’s BBC’s classic, can forget St. Edward’s Hospital – that spanking new cutting edge facility that had no patients or medical personnel. Nonetheless, St. Edward’s hustled and bustled, a veritable hive of activity and creative energy. For 15-months since its much-ballyhooed inauguration, an administrative staff of 500 bureaucrats filled the hospital’s offices, pushed papers and generated red tape. Sounds exaggerated? A bit over-the-top for real life? Not really. John Kerry’s peace project, for example, replicates the parody’s blueprints with mind-blowing precision. It is for diplomacy what St. Edward’s was for health care – an incredible...

The Prime Minister spoke of his pride at legalising same sex marriage, just a year after explicitly giving a personal guarantee to do it by 2015 to a reception for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans-sexual community at 10 Downing Street. Mr Cameron told guests at the same reception one year on that Britain was now “the best place to be gay, lesbian or transgender anywhere in Europe”. He added: “That is a great achievement. That’s not my measure; that is an internationally recognised measure. But there’s still a lot more work to be done.” Thanking the ministers and civil...

Yes, Minister, the classic BBC comedy series, has just been sold to the Ukraine. Proof, says its co-creator Antony Jay, that incompetent politicians are something the whole world can relate to. ------------- When Jonathan Lynn and I started writing Yes, Minister back at the end of the 1970s, we had no idea whether the television audience would find it funny. We did, however, think they might be interested in a series that took them behind the scenes of government – there had never been a TV comedy series set in Whitehall. So from the very first episode we tried to...