233kosta Can’t remember the name of the episode, but they did one on “real democracy. Neither politicians, nor civil servants would be able to ride rough-shod over the electorate.
@@richardlloyd2589 More easily enforced if you have a well-armed, politically aware and competent electorate. Britain has none of those. I do believe there was a British man who once said that the people deserve their leaders or something along those lines.
That’s why we in the States have a solution to this problem. Our government policy is just as wrong, but it’s carried out with exceeding levels of incompetence.
Disappointed that it cut off one of my favourite lines: Jim: "Would you be surprised say...if an aircraft carrier turned up in the Central African Republic?" Humphrey: "I for one would be very surprised Minister, its a thousand miles inland."
Sir Nigel Hawthorne was superb as Humphrey Appleby! When in the 80s during my teens, I wrote to him to express my appreciation for his acting n the role and he wrote back . The letter was typed on type writer and signed by hand. I'd never expected a reply let alone one that was personal, so that made my day and increased my respect for Hawthorne. He was a very kind, intelligent and generous man and a brilliant actor.
Kybele Kordax One up on you! He was a real gentleman, like Sir Alec Guinness and Sir Derek Jacobi. After having watched The Madness of King George by the then Royal National Theatre, went backstage to have my programme autographed, had brought a gift to thank him for all the wonderful work put in in all five series, next day, a handwritten note of thanks was delivered. He respected all fans!
So was Paul Eddington. While he was playing Sir Joseph Porter in a 1987 Sydney production of HMS PINAFORE , the officers from HMAS SYDNEY attended the show... were invited backstage, and presented with signed (and personalised) advertising posters from that production.
@@brentkeller5209 I think the Minister has good ideals, but when push comes to shove he acts in self interest often compromising his ethics. I was once told by a very intelligent man that ethics are meaningless unless put to the test. And whenever the minister is seriously tested he compromises. Sometimes however he wins out over Humphry and I really delight in watching those episodes.
"Bernard, I have served eleven governments in the past thirty years. If I had believed in all their policies, I would have been passionately committed to keeping out of the Common Market, and passionately committed to going into it. I would have been utterly convinced of the rightness of nationalising steel. And of denationalising it and renationalising it. On capital punishment, I'd have been a fervent retentionist and an ardent abolitionist. I would've been a Keynesian and a Friedmanite, a grammar school preserver and destroyer, a nationalisation freak and a privatisation maniac; but above all, I would have been a stark, staring, raving schizophrenic." One of the best lines in the series.
It's also the speech that IMO crystallizes the need for a neutral civil service. It acts as a moderator so our society doesn't follow the swingometer quite so slavishly as our parliaments do. That truly would mean chaos as sir Humphrey often says.
And all parliaments and departments - but I fear only a few will get the message - and none will see any humor in it - yet they will twit about it and demand answers...
@@jahmulugu4425 Well, "Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister" is the same show with the same actors. The reason they changed the name of the show is because the Minister became the Prime Minister.
“Selling arms to terrorists is wrong…” “…either you sell arms or you don’t. If you sell them, they’ll inevitably end up with people who have the cash to buy them” Humphrey is clear-eyed about how the system works and his role in it. He knows who he is, never pretending to be anything else. Hacker is one of those people who believes he’s fundamentally a good person, holding the “we do bad things for good reasons” angle. Sometimes it’s simple: either you sell arms, or you don’t.
One thing I liked about this episode was the ending, with Hacker getting very drunk at home and lamenting how he's become a "moral vacuum." Neither he, nor the episode, writes any of this reality off. Hacker comes to understand that he's part of an unjust system, and he doesn't pretend that he is absolved of his participation in it...
It's strange but scenes like this one have taught me more about politics and the workings of governmental organisations than my three years in a political science course
I enjoyed this line because it works on two levels. He's basically saying the civil service does a good job of carrying out government policies, even when they are wrong. But using "frightfully well carried out" adds an extra element suggesting just how terrible the results can be.
I can't believe that all 3 of them passed away. But they left behind something so great that will never get old, out of date or be irrelevant. Thank you, Gentlemen. Sleep well.
Sir Humphrey's lecture at the end...just wow. So right on the spot for all career civil servants. "Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister" is a master-level course on western democracies.
PraxeoLiberty It is equally critical, if not more so, of the civil service, and bureaucracy in general. The cynic in this scene, after all, is Humphrey, not Hacker.
R.I.P Nigel Hawthorne, Paul Eddington and Derek Fowlds who played Sir Humphrey Appleby, Rt. Hon Jim Hacker and Bernard Wolley respectively. Actually hard to believe that the BBC was once capable of producing such brilliance.
- Humphrey, we're discussing right and wrong. - You may be Minister, but I'm not. It would be a serious misuse of government time. Why no one laughed at this marvellous one?
It's a good point. You can discuss good and evil all day long and not get anything done and nobody is better off. He spoke the simple truth that it would be a misuse of government time. Organized religions have talked about good and evil their whole existence and nobody is better for it.
The problem is each line is so perfectly phrased and beautifully delivered - and so quickly, that if you`d taken the time to laugh you`d miss each pearl as it was said.
"Well, almost all government policy is wrong, but.......frightfully well carried out". To me, this is the scariest line in cinema that I know of. Delivered expertly as well.
@@jdrancho1864 Not really. As horrific as it was, it was not at all well, or efficiently carried out... and thank God for THAT small mercy... It could have been FAR worse if it had been "frightfully well carried out".
@@trooperdgb9722 that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. You might be interested in watching 'The Conference", either the one with Kenneth Branagh, or the earlier one with subtitles.
If you study politics deeply, you’ll come to the disappointing conclusion that most of what Sir Humphrey says is essentially correct-at least within the context of a career bureaucrat. Their job carries the same frustrations as that of the military and police: they’re given tasks that are essentially impossible to carry out in any sane way, along with a long list of contradictory and illogical rules to follow in the process. So they make the best of it.
He’s also right about government’s purpose. Governments were never designed to carry out good since if that was the case then governments would be ineffective on practical grounds. Practicality must guide governments and the only small justifiable good they can do is the maintenance of order and that sometimes means doing immoral actions.
@@alexanderthegreat445 Depends on what is meant by good. The moral good can be defined only in reference to some object. Good, to whom? Or good, to what? The government should not be making these moral decisions. If the government decides that the rightful beneficiary of the good is the state, then all statist practices are the good. If the good is what is good for the Aryan race, then Hitler was good. Such is the essential issue with legislating morality, especially with the ends justifies the means mentality. He is quite right in saying that there is no difference in the ends and the means. Poor means will always lead to poor ends, regardless of what consequentialists may claim from their ivory towers. The rightful place of government is to act as the monopoly and regulator of the use of retaliatory force. That is to say, they should punish the initiation of force, whether through breaking a contract or actual physical force or otherwise. In the times where retaliatory force is used by a private individual, it must be judged whether or not that force was justified. Anything further than this is the use of force in itself, which is always a problem of ends justifing means.
@@brutusthebear9050 It also depends on what is meant by poor. Because your statement about consequentialism also works towards intentionalism. Morally righteous actions, can be interpreted as being poor given the context and vice versa. I would, for example, interpret lying as a morally wrongful act. But if the lie is to protect innocent people, I would see the end (protecting innocent people) connected to the means (of lying) to be more substantial than the means itself. I aggree so far as to say that means and ends are inseperable. Means always lead to ends, else they are no means. But I consider the ends to be more significant than means due to their potential to have long lasting impact. Of course I would have to add that there is a certain degree of proportionality connected to this statement. Consequentialism is often misinterpreted as finding it morally neutral (or even good) to burn down an entire village in order to give a child their teddybear back. A true consequentialist would look at the proportionality of their means towards an end. The only problem with this is that the actor is in charge of weighing the two, so it has the potential of becomming misguided when the actors in question are hungry for power/wealth/anything really. But that is more a question of bounded rationality than consequentialism.
@@mrid5850 In your example, you are not the one doing a moral action. You are preventing an immoral action. Morality only pertains to life, and so actions which are divorced from normal reality are not moral issues. In this case, neither lying nor telling the truth is moral. There is no morality in an emergency for the reason I stated above. It is your choice. Lying in normal life is immoral, though, because it is faking reality. If you fake reality, you cannot live your life according to reality. Therefore, Lying is against your life. Therefore, Lying is immoral. If you lie to "gain" a job, then you have faked reality to obtain something you didn't deserve. You may think this is a good thing for you, but you have destroyed your self esteem and have created a situation where you must continue to fake reality. A consequentialist, ironically, would ignore the real consequences of Lying and say that if the lie is beneficial, the ends justify the means. But as in my example, the means are the ends. You fake reality, that is what you have done, and that is the end. Any gain is based on this false reality, and therefore loses its status as a value. Just as stealing cannot be done to gain value, only material. The most common "moral test" which consequentialists love is the trolley problem. The trolley problem is entirely divorced from reality, it is an emergency situation. Therefore, it is not a moral question, but a personal one. There is no good or bad answer to it, because there is no good or bad. It gets a bit more complicated when you add people you value into the mix, in which case you should save the people you value over someone you do not know, but once again this is not moral. I bring this up because it actually is argued as a test of morality, unlike your strange village-burning example.
It’s pretty amazing how they’re able to introduce true moral greyness to Humphrey’s character by the end of the scene despite him seeming so morally abhorrent at the beginning of the scene. He’s a great embodiment of the idea of bureaucracy, both why people hate it and why it is ultimately necessary.
I have worked in government service most of my life, and Sir Humphrey is absolutely correct that in order to survive a career spanning decades, one needs to be able to dissociate one's personal opinions and beliefs from carrying out the laws of the land and the policies of the duly elected according to the ethics of the profession. It's not easy, but it's necessary to the maintenance of a government that subordinates itself to the will of the electorate.
@@ClickBeetleTV It's amazing how you subhuman insectoids always have hollow lip service to pay to the concept that what you are doing is evil but never are able to produce even the vaguest reason why that evil is actually necessary.
Sir Humpry doesn't give a shit about the electorate. Sir Humphrey's only real loyalty is to making whatever version of the truth that best serves his selfish, vain agenda to appear better than he really is, seem genuine to those who are in positions of actual authority, and Hacker knows it. Hacker has even used it to make Humphrey his bitch on many occasions, and likewise Humphrey has used Hacker's selfish cowardly desire to dodge responsibilities he doesn't genuinely have the spine for accepting, to make Hacker his bitch. Carrying out policy is one thing. Obscuring, distorting and subverting policy out of some selfish, cowardly desire to advance and perserve your own career and those whose hands feed you, is absolute corruption. Would an inquiry have resulted in the government being embarrassed? Perhaps. But it would definitely look bad if the other countries found out that the British were willfully ignoring their enemies getting their hands on their weapons. An inquiry would have proved that the British were being serious about stopping monsters getting their hands on their weapons. The only things that keeping quiet about it would result in, are the monsters being monstrous and the wallets of politicians and greedy industrialists growing fat, and Humphrey would be able to dodge being judged as unable to control Hacker by his selfish, vain peers in the civil service. There's no excuse here, Humphrey is simply a selfish, cowardly, snobbish con-man who doesn't give a damn about serving the country, only his entitled, terrified of losing face and control ego.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Intending well is no guarantee of a good outcome. It's the most well-intentioned laws that have the most harmful effects often. Look at prohibition of alcohol in the US. Or the war on drugs. Every attempt at a Utopia has turned out to be almost the exact opposite. For Mice and Men.
@@Jordan-Ramses "It's the most well-intentioned laws that have the most harmful effects often." Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 - Gave local police the right to steal you possessions without evidence, USA PATRIOT Act (2001) - Introduced draconian government powers and removed civil liberties, all under the excuse of "protecting" civilisation. I often wonder how much more protection civilisation can take before it is destroyed.
The reality is selling arms destroys people’s lives, destabilises countries, empowers dictatorships - and from a selfish perspective, backfires on us in the long term.
@@summersevening Arms can also protect lives and overpower dictatorships. Without arms from the USA, Europe would have been a stable empire run by Hitler.
When I saw this episode in 1982/83 I thought it was funny and enacted brilliantly. 40 years later when I saw this clip again, my mind was blown to bits. The utter truth laid bare that Government is not about right or wrong, rather to stay on for as long as possible by any means. If we were to mute the laughter track, it is a seriously brilliant moment of dark comedy, and now in year 2022, almost 40 years later downright scary.
This clip reminded me of a time when I had to give a company director some good and bad news. I asked him what he wanted first, the good or the bad. His reply was "Give me the good news, you deal with the bad".
Humphrey's last speech tells us exactly why he must regard the means and the ends as identical. The means are exactly his job. The ends? That (in theory) is why there are elections, to choose the people to decide on them. If the civil service were to focus on ends, then there would be no need for the government.
ChrisC Oh, he very much has ends, though he rarely discusses them with the Minister. Those ends are the preservation and increase of the power of the civil service (usually through manipulation of the ministers they are supposed to serve). The only bad ends to Humphrey, as he states in another discussion, are loose ends. Humphrey rather likes Hacker, because he is somewhat hapless, and thus is easily manipulated -- most of the time. Occasionally Hacker does get the best of Humphrey. That tension between elected officials and the civil service is the central theme of both series, and both were brilliantly written and acted. It's a little sad that Nigel Hawthorn got so much acclaim, often at Paul Eddington's expense. (The two often were both nominated for the same awards. Hawthorne won every time). I am not trying to take anything away from Hawthorn's brilliance, with those long monologues. But they would not have been nearly as funny without Eddington's facial reactions as his character tries to figure out just what Humphrey is saying. Eddington was the perfect straight man.
I have always seen this series (Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister) as being without peer. And these two extraordinary actors were a major reason for that! But the writers! To make even one episode of this extraordinary series is surely a sublime effort of creativity - basically unequaled by any other pretender. But to make a whole string of 38 of them, each well-nigh perfect, is an achievement of intelligent creativity on the level of Einstein's contribution to physics. Hats off to Jay and Lynn!
"Almost all government policies are wrong, but frightfully well carried out." After living through the pandemic, this rings home truer than I ever could imagined...
Unfortunately, that can quickly bring you to an 'I as only obeying orders' moment. As Thoreau put it: 'Why has every man a conscience, then?' There are limits and nobody can switch off their capacity to care. Civil servants have committed suicide due to cognitive dissonance and emotional distress.They have leaked information about blatant lies. They have internally crippled projects that they strongly objected to, on every part of the political spectrum.
@@michaelbootes4822 Not really...he's going as far as a loyal civil servant could or should...possibly crossing the line, to warn the minister of the political risk he's assuming...he's actually trying to save his minister's neck...
Save us from civil servants who embrace an ideology, they become the government within government. Sir Humphrey is right, civil servants have no business making policy just implementing it. Policy is the job of politicians who can be held accountable by the electorate.
@@allisondoak9425 to whom are you referring. I should point out that Boris Johnson is a journalist, or at least a newspaper columnist. I will admit that our unfortunate involvement with the EU can be traced back to a number of former prime ministers, in particular Edward Heath and John Major both of whom in my opinion grossly mislead the uk electorate about the nature of the organisation the uk was tricked into joining, ably assisted by Tony Blair. It is a great pity for the uk that Charles de Gaulle did not manage to keep Britain out of the common market. Though there may be some truth in the theory, that we joined with the intention of destroying it or at least controlling it.
@1rst with all this state control language, in sounds as if it has been written by a communist, and that system failed. I think the changes needed should simply address the the more iniquitous practices of the banks and markets. Certainly any laws or rules that stop the uk protecting its home producers and manufactures must be removed or circumvented. Priority must be given to local producers. This is the first step in fighting globalisation, which is the root of most of the worlds problems. The link between what the banks can lend and what they receive from savings must be reestablished. This will significantly reduce the leverage they apply to their assets. Hedge funds should be made illegal or be tightly regulated. It should be also be illegal for speculative investors (vulture funds) to take control of a company using the value of the assets from that company. The uk government must stop the sale of uk assets, infrastructure and critical technology companies. This should be done both in the national interest of defence, but also the economy. Foreign owners should not be allowed to acquire control of any of the UK's means of production. The French protect their interests, so must the uk.
The fine point being: There is an important difference between a government employee and a politician. Sir Humphrey is employed to keep the ship afloat, ensure it doesn't sink in a storm and that everyone on board is fed and safe. The politican has been elected to steer the ship...often into aforementioned storm. Sir Humphrey just attempted some preventative maintenance. Governments come and go, but the system stays the same. And Sir Humphrey IS the system.
Brandon Holmes sleeping dogs means leaving things as they are but Humphrey is saying how Hacker should tell the Sleeping Dogs aka leave things as they are or tell someone who won’t change things
The best series of satire and comedy. And all it took was roping in three middle aged men . No slapstick comedy ... no foul language and no obscenity of any kind. Hilarious , funny, Satirical through brilliant scripting.
After one paricularly difficult meeting where we had no answers the Minister said “that was a good meeting” when I said we had no answers he said “we came out alive!”
The best preparation I had for becoming a reporter in Washington was memorizing all the _Yes, Minister_ episodes. Different country and constitution, but all the same rules applied.
absolutely bloody brilliant, "no minister...home office problem" "who should lie?...sleeping dogs minister?" "tourists?..foreign office problem" the best show ever to show people how government, thinks and acts in democratic country
The philosophical discussion here bears an uncanny resemblance to the conversation between Arjuna (Minister Hacker) and Krishna (Sir Humphrey) in the Bhagavad Gita. Same questions over morality of action, same advice on dispassionate execution, in the interests of - not morality, which changes with the season, but stability, which is the main purpose of civilisation. Nigel Hawthorne, and the rest are just marvellous, even with their timely pauses.
The problem is, a lot of people go into the civil service that aren't actually independent. And when your independent civil service isn't independent...
@K. DV That's being deliberately obtuse. The point of the civil service is that they would be neutral in carrying out their duties. In practice that's been completely false. they've pretty much been unfireable democrat activists. It's pretty much the spoils system except only for Democrats all the time.
I think you may have missed the whole point of Yes Minister- the Civil Service IS independent. It serves its own agenda and no one elses. At least back then in the 70s and 80s it did.
The genius of this is that it combines comedy and a deadpan seriousness which makes you think and the absence of canned laughter at the moment when Jim Hacker refers to means and ends is simply stunning.
"the absence of canned laughter..." ...is down to the fact that this was shot in front of a live studio audience (as practically all BRITISH comedies are)!
Yes, I know that which makes it all the better (coming from an acting background). It doesn't however deter from the professionalism of the cast involved. @@marvinc9994
As always - absolutely brilliant. Very few series compare with this one and its follow-on : Yes Prime Minister. I was distraught when Paul Eddington (Minister & PM) died in 1995, and when Nigel Hawthorne (Sir Humphrey) died in 2001. The loss of two magnificent actors. Thank goodness Derek Fowlds (Bernard) is still alive at 79.
@@James-kd1kp You're right. If something it not working perfectly best to just pull it up by the roots. Your car breaks down? Scrap it. Leaky roof? Just burn down the house.
This is probably one of the most brilliant explanations of Max Weber theory of modern bureaucracy and the notion of “bureaucratic indifference”, a notion too often misunderstood - indifference perceived nowadays as a negative feature, while Weber praised it as a necessary feature of modern bureaucracy: processes should move forward through public administration regardless of the personal consideration of the involved bureaucrats. This video is even more necessary today, as the dominant XXI culture of “meaning” and supreme values is a great interference on the proper management of public and even corporate world. Nowadays , even the most humble civil servant of private employee is bombed with a blatant series of messages of “for a greater good” “work with a purpose” “make a difference in the world”, etc. Not only this generates a necessary long term frustration the gap between rethorics and reality being such an unmountable difference but eventually hinders the good functioning of any public or corporate body. Sir Humphrey here is not cynical at all. On the contrary, he fully grasps the difference between politics and policies , and the roles of politicians and civil servants, and how that apparent detachment on ends privileging the means is ultimately not only the positive thing to do in terms of functioning bureaucracy, but also the democratic thing to do - as it does not bring his personal political preferences to the processes, as he is not an elected official, charged with that purpose, but a civil servant, an operator.
Expertly played and so well-written. Just a delight and a willingness to really go hard on the topic. You really believed that Hacker had reached a line "this further, no further; absolutely wrong" and that in turn forced Humphrey into an even more ardent revelation of his true philosophy -- as Hacker notes. Then you bring in Bernard to show that Humphrey wasn't just being a dogmatic blowhard but rather completely pragmatic in the reality of national government run by democratic representatives. Woven together so sweetly and performed with delight by all.
Comedy was never so well written or performed. There was a real pathos, if that’s the correct word, in this scene. The only other thing that comes to mind as being so profound, is the last 10 minutes of the final episode of Blackadder Goes Fourth.
A brilliant scene, one of the best in the series. In moments, the back and forth about morality, order and chaos is tonally possibly the most serious the series ever got, and you can tell the audience didn’t quite know whether to laugh or not . Utterly superb.
I love watching Bernard during this discussions because he knows exactly what Humphrey is going to say before he says it and knows exactly what Hacker will say in return. Then he plans the conversation so well he can get his perfectly timed quip in there for comedic effect. Truly exceptional screenwriting.
I love Sir Humphrey, my late grandfather was a Civil servant most his life. Not only did he look like Sir Humphrey but he was like him. When I went on a vacation with them when I was 6 he had a schedule for every single day. Museum's, memorials even when and were we should eat lunch and dinner. Even if we came for dinner he would change into an evening suit. Except when he had promised to take care of us, if it was at 4 we should come and we came early he would be in his office till 4 and then change to normal clothes. I absolutely loved the guy.
I sooo miss my first job which was in Somerset House in The Strand in The Civil Service from 1971-1973. The highlight of the day was the Biscuit Trolley both in the morning and afternoon breaks. With a long lunchtime, as well we even fitted in a little bit of work to fill in the time between breaks. HALCYON DAYS....
I did an internship at a government department in the seventies. Ah yes the tea trolley. It was always a treat when there was jam rolley polley left over from lunch.
@@tim2015 I had an even better 16 years in a Nationalised Industry with a monopoly and got a redundancy on 31/12/79. After a 2 year break after my,um, strenuous efforts,it was Local Government to keep the work to a minimum but then in October 1995 ,I thought it was time to start my own Business and it is amazing how that concentrates the mind, wonderfully. That finished, after 20 wonderful years as it was my main pastime and I did it for a for Business and I began another one in 2015, which I still do @ 70 years. I still miss the biscuit trolley though and last week went on a Cruise up and down The Thames and sailed past.....Somerset House:)
This series was ans is,one of the finest and most insightful television programs ever made ! If you want to know how government and the bureaucracy REALLY operate, just watch YES, MINISTER and YES, PRIME MINISTER.
I remember my father watching Yes, Minister and then Yes, Prime Minister back in the day, when I was to young to understand politics, on any level. Yet, now, a few decades later, I find alot of the commentary made then still stands today.
I just love how Hacker brings Sir Humphrey & Bernard along with him... The ending of the last series of 'Yes Minister' when Sir H says.. 'Yes... Prime Minister' Brought a lump to my throat
Bottom line - there is no cure, running a country cant be completed, like a task, and all paths may run ill, due to nature, other peoples, the utter intransigence of humanity and the general chaos that life is for everyone. Sir humphrey was depressingly right, and we must soldier on. Bae systems still doing awfully well at home and abroad, live long and prosper.
Oh dear.. I used to LOVE those clever episodes of Yes Minister. But now I see how clearly it was all pointing to the very situation we are in now. They revealed precisely how we arrived at where we are today... Bureaucrats and politicians!!! 😪😫😨😢
