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>
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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>
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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>
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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>