Thursday 11 February 2010

Hacker... Humphrey... 20 Years on...?

Hacker:  You know what, Humphrey? When I look back and I think of the frustration I used to feel, when the likes of you and Bernard blocked or stalled what I was trying to do... And when I decided eventually that the only way to make things happen was to clip the wings of civil servants, and the wings, for that matter, of the other institutions that wanted to keep things just as they were... And when I then consider how we positioned our chaps above civil servants and concentrated power in No.10 - because, of course, we were elected politicians - When I think about how we used that power to force through certain policies, to respond swiftly, more dynamically to certain events, to act decisively, to act sometimes ruthlessly... when I think about all of that, and I then weigh up what it actually achieved, what it made better, versus how divisive it might have sometimes been, when I see that politicians did not become better people, they became worse... greedy, grabbing, sleazy... When I consider all of those things, and recall the rows that you and I had back then, in the good old days, about change... You know, I do rather find myself thinking from time to time that... this change we introduced, this sweeping away the old orders, without creating a more moral environment... well, Humphrey... perhaps... it wasn't quite such a good thing after all...

Sir Humphrey:  No... Prime Minister.

14 comments:

  1. Amass, Amass, Amass

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  2. So are you telling me that all that family silver was sold in order to bail out a bunch of parvenu money lenders?
    Well, actually i probably knew that all along.
    Still, so much for getting rid of OEs.

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  3. I need a stiff upper drink after all that

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  4. Keith Joseph's Ghost11 February 2010 at 19:18

    Yes, why did we bother? It probably started with the conservatives funnily enough. If we really were 'conservatives'. Which we weren't.

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  5. Viscount's Willie11 February 2010 at 19:19

    Well, frankly I reckon that I WAS a conservative in actual fact, even though Margaret really found us rather tiresome. She hated conservatives.

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  6. Don't you go about telling me that it hasn't changed for the worse? I mean better. What do I mean? My tits got better, anyway.

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  7. Norman Tebbit Between the Teeth11 February 2010 at 19:27

    I'm sick of the nay-sayers and the layabouts. The civil service just wanted to give lots of money away to people who didn't deserve it. Whereas we gave it to investment bankers, and that was where money should have been.

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  8. Couldn't care a damn as long as it makes me money

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  9. Change is as good as a rest, they say, and with some of the things that have happened lately there will probably be a lot of arrests.

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  10. Groucho Lagerfeld11 February 2010 at 19:32

    Change! Change! Change.
    Life is a fashion show

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  11. Well of course, you say that now, but will you say that in a hundred years time? Now, I somehow think you won't, mainly because you'll be dead of course. But you wouldn't have anyway. Even if you were alive. Which you won't be.

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