The Complete Yes Minister

Today I had an environmental issue to deal with. A deputation of several environmentalists brought me a petition. Six fat exercise books, full of signatures. There must be thousands of signatures, if not hundreds of thousands.

They were protesting about my proposed new legislation to sort out all the existing confusions and anomalies in the present system — not that you can call it a system — which is a mess, a hotchpotch. Local authorities, tourist authorities, national parks, the National Trust, the Countryside Commission, the CPRE[11] are all backbiting and buckpassing and nobody knows where they are and nothing gets done. The sole purpose of the new legislation is to tidy all this up and make all these wretched committees work together.

I explained this to the deputation. ‘You know what committees are?’ I said. ‘Always squabbling and procrastinating and wasting everyone’s time.’

‘We are a committee,’ said one of them, an unprepossessing bespectacled female of indeterminate age but clear upper-middle-class Hampstead origins. She seemed rather offended.

I explained that I didn’t mean her sort of committee; all that I was trying to do was create a new authority with clear simple procedures. Public money will be saved. It seems to me that it should be welcome to everyone.

However, these representatives of the Hampstead middle class were worried about some place called Hayward’s Spinney. Apparently it is going to lose its protected status under the new scheme — like one or two other places — because it’s simply not economic to administer it properly.

But it seems that Hayward’s Spinney is regarded by some of these cranks as a vital part of Britain’s heritage. ‘The badgers have dwelt in it for generations,’ spluttered an elderly upper-class socialist of the Michael Foot patrician ilk.

‘How do you know?’ I asked, simply out of curiosity.

‘It said so in The Guardian,’ said an intense young man in hobnail boots.

Some reason for believing anything! You’ve only got to be in public life for about a week before you start to question if the newspapers are even giving you today’s date with any accuracy! However, the young man thrust a copy of The Guardian at me.

I looked at the story he had circled in red. Actually, what The Guardian said was: ‘The bodgers have dwelt in it for in it for generators.’

I read it aloud, and laughed, but they appeared to have absolutely no sense of humour. Then the middle-aged lady in a brown tweed skirt that enveloped mighty hips demanded, ‘How would you feel if you were going to have office blocks built all over your garden by a lot of giant badgers?’

Giant badgers? I tried not to laugh at this Monty Pythonesque vision, while another of these freaks continued self-righteously, ‘There’s nothing special about man, Mr Hacker. We’re not above nature. We’re all a part of it. Men are animals too, you know.’

Obviously I knew that already. I’d just come from the House of Commons.

Bernard helped me get rid of them after about ten minutes. I made no promises to them, and gave them the usual bromides about all views being taken into consideration at the appropriate stage. But I am concerned that no one in the Department warned me that unifying the administration of the countryside would mean removing special protected status from these blasted badgers. Not that I give a damn about badgers, but I have been allowed to tell Parliament and the press that no loss of amenity was involved.

I should take this matter up with Humphrey tomorrow.

I shall also take up the matter of why my time is being wasted with footling meetings of this kind, when I want to spend much more time meeting junior staff here, getting to know their problems, and generally finding out how to run the Department more efficiently.

[We discovered a remarkable exchange of memos between Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard Woolley, written during this week — Ed.]

[Translation: ‘Considered all the implications’ means ‘You are making a complete balls-up of your job.’ ‘Consequences which could be unfortunate, or even regrettable’ means ‘You are in imminent danger of being transferred to the War Graves Commission’ — Ed.]

SIR BERNARD WOOLLEY RECALLS:[12]

Being rather young and green at this time, I was still somewhat puzzled about how to put Sir Humphrey’s advice into practice, as the Minister made these diary appointments for himself and was getting thoroughly on top of his work.

I sought a meeting with Sir Humphrey, and began it by attempting to explain that I couldn’t prevent the Minister from doing what he wanted if he had the time.