'Yes, Prime Minister' quotes

Next week the UK goes to the polls to vote in another general election. Politics seems to be an increasingly emotional subject nowadays, so to help any particularly heated voters chill out and relax, this week the Charles Fudgemuffin blog features a collection of humorous quotes from one of the favourite TV programmes from my youth, the classic political sitcom, 'Yes, Minister,' and its imaginitively titled sequel, 'Yes, Prime Minister'.

Downing Street. The home of both the real Prime Minister,
and Jim Hacker, the fictitious Prime Minister from
the political sitcom, 'Yes, Prime Minister'.

For those who aren't familiar with Yes, Prime Minister, the main characters were the Prime Minister, Jim Hacker, and the head civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby who tried to prevent the Prime Minister from actually doing anything! Sir Humphrey basically believed that democracy couldn't be trusted to the general public or the politicians the public voted for!

To clarify, Yes, Prime Minister was a fictional sitcom, but a lot of the storylines and quotes were very close to the truth...

1) Jim Hacker: "So, we're going to tell them the truth?"
Sir Humphrey Appleby: "The truth, and nothing but the truth."
Jim Hacker: "The whole truth?"
Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Of course not!"



2) Sir Richard Wharton*: "People have said a lot of unpleasant things about the Foreign Office, but we've never been accused of patriotism."

* Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office.



3) Jim Hacker: "I think education is extremely important. It could lose me the next election!"
Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Ah, in my naivety, I thought you were concerned about the future of our children."
Jim Hacker: "Yes, that too. After all, they get the vote at 18."

Sir Humphrey Appleby wasn't a very big
fan of freedom of information.

4) Sir Humphrey Appleby: "How are things at the Campaign For Freedom Of Information?"
Sir Arnold Robinson: "Sorry, I can't talk about that."



5) Jim Hacker: "It says here, smoking related diseases cost the National Health Service £165 million a year."
Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Yes, but it has been shown that if those extra 100,000 people had lived to a ripe old age, it would have cost us even more in pensions and social security than it did in medical treatment. So financially speaking, it's unquestionably better that they continue to die at their present rate."



6) Bernard Woolley: "I want to have a clear conscience."
Sir Humphrey Appleby: "A clear conscience?"
Bernard: "Yes."
Sir Humphrey: "I see, and when did you acquire this taste for luxuries?"



7) Sir Humphrey Appleby: "East Yemen, isn't that a democracy?"
Sir Richard Wharton: "Its full name is the Peoples' Democratic Republic of East Yemen."
Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Ah, I see, so it's a communist dictatorship."

Pinocchio's nose grew bigger every time he told a lie.
On an unrelated note, this week's blog post is about politicians.

8) Sir Humphrey Appleby: "You told a lie."
Jim Hacker: "A lie?"
Sir Humphrey Appleby: "A lie."
Jim Hacker: "What do you mean, a lie?"
Sir Humphrey Appleby: "I mean you ... lied. I know this is a difficult concept to get across to a politican. You did not tell the truth."



9) Bernard Woolley: "The Prime Minister seems to be completely in the dark."
Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Excellent. Anything else?"



10) Jim Hacker: "One of your officials pays farmers to produce surplus food, while the official in the next office spends all his time paying people to destroy it."
EU Commissioner: "That is not true!"

The Houses of Parliament, pictured yesterday.

Jim Hacker: "No?"
EU Commissioner: "He is not in the next office. Not even on the same floor!"



11) Jim Hacker: "Surely you're not saying that the governement of Britain is unimportant!"
Sarah Harrison: "No, it's very important. It's just that I haven't met anyone who's doing it."



12) Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Bernard, if the right people don’t have power, do you know what happens? The wrong people get it. Politicians, councillors ... ordinary voters!"
Bernard Wooley: "But aren’t they supposed to in a democracy?"
Sir Humphrey Appleby: "This is a British democracy, Bernard!"

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