I listen to a digital radio station from the UK, BBC Radio 4 Extra. (Used to be BBC Radio 7).
They are currently broadcasting the radio version of the Paul Eddington/Nigel Hawhtorne comedy series, Yes, Minister, from the 1980s.
I must say that although I like both these actors (Paul Eddington will be most famous to American audiences from The Good Life/Good Neighbors, in which he played Jerry Ledbetter to Penelope Keith's Margo, and Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall as Tom and Barbara Good), I really despise Yes, Minister.
Not because it isn't funny...but because it's so true to life. And the sad part is, it is probably true to life today.
The show of course excoriates British politics, but really, it resonates the same for US politics as well.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jzxt is the link for computer viewers to get to the web page for Yes Minister.
The current episode has this plot. A multi-million dollar hospital has been completed for two years...but it has no patients. More than that, it has no medical staff. What it does have is over 500 administrative staff. After a "run-in" period of a couple of years, they'll think about adding doctors and patients who can be treated by them.
There was a rather funny opening... Paul Eddington as an MP is giving a speech in which he says that administrative staff (Civil Servants, i.e., Union workers) in Parliament has been downsized by over 50%. Then someone stands up and points out that the staff haven't been downsized, they're job classification has merely been re-categorized. So there are the same number of employees, but instead of being "administrative" workers they are "auxiliary" workers, and so on.
Someone should create a TV sitcom to try a similar skwering of American politics. Yes, Congressman, anyone?
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My Schedule of Regular Posts:
*Monday through Friday morning - schedules of President, VP and Secretary of State and her diplomats
*Monday through Friday afternoon - List of topics Limbaugh discussed on his program that day
*Monday through Friday throughout the day - My posts on anything that I feel like talking about. At least one or two a day, sometimes more.
*Saturday through Sunday morning - An addition to my booklist of political books - covering Democrats, Republicans and other interested parties.
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