The Complete Yes Minister полностью

The irony is, in practice it is virtually impossible for any institution to have its own foreign policy, even the Government. The Foreign Office sees to that, with the help of Washington, NATO, the EEC and the Commonwealth Secretariat.

So I attempted to show him that he was suffering from delusions of grandeur.

‘If the Russians ever invade us,’ I suggested sarcastically, ‘I suppose they’ll stop at the borough boundaries, will they, and say: Hang on, we’re not at war with the London Borough of Thames Marsh. Right wheel Comrades. Annex Chelsea instead’?

The discussion was becoming fairly heated. [What the press statement would later describe as a ‘frank exchange of views’ — Ed.]

But at this moment Bernard intervened and, excusing himself for interrupting us, handed me a little note. It was most revealing. In no time at all I grasped its contents, and its political significance.

I looked at Comrade Ben. ‘Oh Mr Stanley,’ I said, trying not to smile, ‘it seems that you would not be called upon to make the supreme sacrifice, in any case.’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, knowing perfectly well what I meant.

The note contained the information that there is a fall-out shelter under Thames Marsh Town Hall, with a place reserved in it for, among others, the Leader of the Council. I asked if it was true.

‘We didn’t build it.’ I’d got him on the defensive.

‘But you maintain it?’

‘It’s only a very small one,’ he muttered sullenly.

I asked him about his own place in it.

‘I was persuaded with deep reluctance that my preservation was a necessity in the interests of the ratepayers of Thames Marsh.’

So I asked him what provision he had made for other essential people: doctors, nurses, ambulance men, firemen, civil rescue squads, emergency radio and television services? ‘People who might be almost as important as councillors,’ I added sarcastically.

‘One of them’s a chemist.’

‘Oh great,’ I said. ‘Nothing like an aspirin for a nuclear holocaust.’

[Later that week Sir Humphrey Appleby lunched with Sir Arnold Robinson, the Cabinet Secretary, at the Athenaeum Club. As usual Sir Humphrey kept a memo of the meeting — Ed.]

Arnold observed that my Minister had enjoyed quite a little publicity triumph down at Thames Marsh. He seemed pleased, which surprised me.

I’m always worried when this Minister has a triumph of any sort. It invariably leads to trouble because he thinks he has achieved something.

Arnold thinks it’s good when Ministers think they have achieved something. He takes the view that it makes life much easier, because they stop fretting for a bit and we don’t have to put up with their little temper tantrums.

My worry, on the other hand, is that he will want to introduce his next idea.

Arnold was most interested to learn that we have a Minister with two ideas. He couldn’t remember when we last had one of those.

[Of course, Hacker had not really had any ideas. One was Bernard’s and the other was Dr Cartwright’s — Ed.]

Arnold wanted to know about the latest idea, and I was obliged to tell him that it was Cartwright’s idiotic scheme to introduce pre-set failure standards for all council projects over £10,000, and to make a named official responsible.

Arnold knew about this scheme, of course, it’s been around for years. But he thought (as I did) that Gordon Reid had squashed it. I think Arnold was a bit put out that Cartwright had got it to Hacker, though I don’t see how I could have prevented it since Cartwright has now come over to the DAA. After all, he slipped it to the Minister privately, under plain cover. Brown envelope job.

Arnold was adamant that it must be stopped. He’s absolutely right. Once you specify in advance what a project is supposed to achieve and whose job it is to see that it does, the entire system collapses. As he says, we would be into the whole squalid world of professional management.

Arnold reminded me (as if I didn’t already know) that we already move our officials around ever two or three years, to stop this personal responsibility nonsense. If Cartwright’s scheme goes through, we would have to be posting everybody once a fortnight.

Clearly we have to make the Minister understand that his new local authority responsibilities are for enjoying, not for exercising.

I told Arnold that tomorrow Hacker will be living his little triumph all over again, recording a TV interview with Ludovic Kennedy for a documentary on Civil Defence.

Arnold wondered out loud what would happen if we gave Hacker a dossier of the curious ways in which local councillors spend their Civil Defence budgets. I remarked that I couldn’t really see how that would help. But Arnold had an idea…