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Tuesday, 21 February 2006

As you can see, Gracie is just as cute with one eye.

I was just glancing at an article about our administration's policy regarding torture. "Policy" is the key word.

I've been watching Yes, Minister again lately. It's very soothing in these politically troubled times. I've seen all of the episodes but I can watch them over and over.

In an episode called "The Moral Dimension" the Minister, Jim Hacker (played by Paul Eddington), learns that a lucrative electronics-manufacturing contract was won by the British government, not fairly but by bribing the oil-rich Middle Eastern country that awarded it.

The Minister confronts Humphrey Appleby (played by Nigel Hawthorne), the civil servant in charge of the department: "You're telling me that winking at corruption is government policy?"

"Oh no, Minister!" Humphrey says. "That would be unthinkable. It could never be government policy. Only government practice."

In another episode, Humphrey considers using the Official Secrets Act to cover up some embarrassing governmental incompetence which lost a great deal of taxpayers' money on a bad investment risk.

When it's put to him that the matter isn't really a secret, Humphrey replies that the Official Secrets Act is meant to protect officials, not secrets.

Another episode deals with a committee meant to investigate whether a possibly dangerous chemical plant should be established in Britain. Of course the committee will be completely independent and no attempt made to influence it. It will be impartial.

Certain guidelines will be suggested, though. Trains are impartial, too, but whatever way you put down the lines, that's the way they'll go.

I strongly recommend Yes, Minister (which eventually becomes Yes, Prime Minister). There's a great fan site for it here. It's very funny and, I guess, cynical. However, "a cynic," Humphrey reminds us, "is what an idealist calls a realist."

That reminds me of something amusing I read in the Times Literary Supplement a couple of weeks ago: the difference between a pessimist and an optimist is that a pessimist thinks things can't get any worse and an optimist knows they can.