Yes Minister is a multi-award winning satirical British sitcom written by Sir Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn that was first transmitted by BBC television and radio between 1980 and 1984, split over three seven-episode series. The sequel, Yes, Prime Minister, ran from 1986 to 1988. In total this made 38 episodes, all but one of which lasts for half an hour. Set principally in the private office of a British government cabinet minister in the Department for Administrative Affairs in Whitehall (and, in the sequel, in 10 Downing Street), the series follows the senior ministerial career of The Rt Hon. Jim Hacker MP, played by Paul Eddington. His various struggles to formulate and enact legislation or effect departmental changes are opposed by the will of the British Civil Service, in particular his Permanent Secretary (head of each government department's bureaucrats), Sir Humphrey Appleby, played by Nigel Hawthorne. His Principal Private Secretary Bernard Woolley, played by Derek Fowlds, is usually caught between the two. Almost every programme ends with the line "Yes, Minister" (or "Yes, Prime Minister"), uttered (usually) by Sir Humphrey as he relishes his victory over his "political master" (or, sometimes, acknowledges defeat). A huge critical and popular success, the series received a number of awards, including several BAFTAs and in 2004 came sixth in the Britain's Best Sitcom poll. It was the favourite television programme of the then British Prime Minister, Baroness Thatcher.
Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1570:
Pope Pius V issued the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis to excommunicate Queen Elizabeth I and her followers in the Church of England. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regnans_in_Excelsis
1836:
American inventor and industrialist Samuel Colt received a patent for a "revolving gun", later known as a revolver. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/revolver
1921:
The Soviet Red Army took over the Georgian capital Tbilisi after heavy fighting and declared the new Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_invasion_of_Georgia
1986:
Corazon Aquino was inaugurated as the first female President of the Philippines after Ferdinand Marcos fled the nation after twenty years of rule because of the People Power Revolution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corazon_Aquino
1994:
Israeli physician Baruch Goldstein opened fire on Muslim Arabs praying at the mosque in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, killing 29 people and wounding 125 others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_the_Patriarchs_massacre
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
plenary (adj): 1. Fully attended; for everyone's attendance.
2. (theology or law) Complete, entire http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/plenary
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Every intelligent child is an amateur anthropologist. The first thing such a child notices is that adults don't make sense. --John Leonard http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Leonard