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Many people will fondly remember the comedy sit-com series, Yes, Minister, and its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister, which aired on BBC between 1980 and 1988.
Devotees of the half-hour programmes, which now and again are aired on the satellite channels, marvel at the tussles between the minister (or prime minister in the sequel), Jim Hacker, and his Permanent Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, which we all suspect mirror exactly the ponderous and often devious workings of Parliament and the Civil Service.
So last night I was delighted to see the very first episode of this hugely popular comedy series and was intrigued to see that Jim Hacker, the new Minister for the (fictional) Department for Administrative Affairs was proposing a White Paper entitled ‘Open Government’.
‘Open Government.’ Doesn’t that conjure up an image of a new government keen to open up its affairs so that everything it does is transparent and subject to scrutiny by the public?
What a shame though, that this fictional programme thought of such a policy as long ago as 1980 - and that absolutely nothing has happened since then!
But then, it was a television programme. Much like Parliament today, come to think of it!
.
Many people will fondly remember the comedy sit-com series, Yes, Minister, and its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister, which aired on BBC between 1980 and 1988.
Devotees of the half-hour programmes, which now and again are aired on the satellite channels, marvel at the tussles between the minister (or prime minister in the sequel), Jim Hacker, and his Permanent Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, which we all suspect mirror exactly the ponderous and often devious workings of Parliament and the Civil Service.
So last night I was delighted to see the very first episode of this hugely popular comedy series and was intrigued to see that Jim Hacker, the new Minister for the (fictional) Department for Administrative Affairs was proposing a White Paper entitled ‘Open Government’.
‘Open Government.’ Doesn’t that conjure up an image of a new government keen to open up its affairs so that everything it does is transparent and subject to scrutiny by the public?
What a shame though, that this fictional programme thought of such a policy as long ago as 1980 - and that absolutely nothing has happened since then!
But then, it was a television programme. Much like Parliament today, come to think of it!
.
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