E-petitions site: Death wish FAIL

The Coalition government's E-petitions website remains open for business today but has been flooded with wishy-washy anti-hanging advocates. Yesterday's launch was marred by downtime and a flurry of pro-death sentence petitions following a campaign by Guido Fawkes and the Daily Mail. But the antis are getting organised and " …

[WonkoTheSane]

"staff at Direct Gov working to remove duplicates."

"staff at Direct Gov working to remove duplicates."

Wouldn't it be better to merge duplicates rather than remove them?

[Anonymous Coward]

No

And run the risk of a select few bitching that their name is aginast a petition they never signed? There is a difference between "equal" and "similar", and if I was in the shoes of the gov, I'd do exactly what they do: take the decision that comes with the least potential backlash.

I think that the people to blame here are people starting peptitions without checking that there is one existing already, which is inexcusable because firstly the death penaly petitions top the list so can't be missed, and secondly because this leads to a dilution of the votes (i.e. they are shooting themselves in the foot).

[Richard 12]

Nah, that would require too much intelligence.

More seriously, the text of many 'duplicates' will be different - it's not like bug reports where the all the various ways of phrasing an issue will refer to the same fault.

Someone might be 'for' one wording, but not agree with a slightly different wording - so anyone who had signed the 'rejected' duplicate should be told which one was retained and asked if they would like to sign that instead.

Precision should be extremely important in lawmaking, it's a great shame the last lot preferred to write vague and all-encompassing laws.

(On the downside, it does give them a very sneaky way to effectively delete anything they don't like - have a patsy make a load of duplicates, then remove all the ones with lots of signatures and leave an 'empty' one.)

- There's an idea. How about using Mantis or Bugzilla for Government?

"Bug report: Professional politicians are dangerous to life, liberty and the economy, suggest hanging them all" "Rejected: Berne Convention"

[Ru]

How about using Mantis or Bugzilla for Government?

I rather like that.

I forsee a whole lot of WONTFIX in your future though.

[Tom Wood]

Splitting the vote

is a "feature" of our political system.

Apparently the alternative - some system of preference voting - is too complicated for our little heads to understand.

[PsychicMonkey]

some system of preference voting

not only too complicated, not popular with the electorate either.

[Uncle Slacky]

Only because...

...Murdoch's papers ran an effective FUD campaign against it.

Satan icon for obvious reasons.

[crowley]

Re: some system of preference voting

Too complicated?

The parallel of 'Shag, marry or kill' is too complicated?

Speak for yourself?!

Like the other poster, I blame Murdoch for pasting FUD across people's minds.

[PsychicMonkey]

well I don't think it's too complicated, it was an attempt at sarcasm

just not a very good one.

anyway, it's beer o'clock have a good weekend wether you have it alternative or not!

[nyelvmark]

beer o'clock = 18.16 on Friday

Young bull: Look! a field full of cows! Let's run down there and shag a couple!

Old bull: No. We'll WALK down there and shag them all.

I must be an old bull because beer o'clock this week was sometime on Monday for me.

[Craigness]

RE: some system of preference voting

Almost as popular with the electorate as the Tories were at the last general election. If there were a few alternatives to AV instead of just the one then AV might have been chosen. Which shows why we need AV.

[MonkeyBot]

Re: not popular

You'd be surprised how many people think we have proportional representaion already.

A lot think that the seats a party holds in parliament are proportional to the number of votes they get.

[Anonymous Coward]

@MonkeyBot

Help me out here, are you being sarcastic?

[Anonymous Coward]

If

the public did favour a system of preference voting, that might suggest they really weren't fit to vote. The difference between somebody's fourth and fifth preference is likely to be similar to choosing between drinking bleach or drinking disinfectant. The only sensible PR system is AMS. So we WON'T get that!

[crowley]

vague and all-encompassing laws

I think you'll find the reason law is to give judges latitude in interpretation.

When a case has completed it becomes precedent for future interpretation of the law in relation to specifics, and may be overturned or nuanced as future cases are completed.

All to do with having an unwritten constitution apparently.

It theoretically makes it harder for autocratic elements to ride roughshod over our rights, because the intricate web of precedents is too complex!

Not that I'm a fan of the last lot, nor sure I've addressed anything but the 'vague' accusation, but I read a bit about it recently and thought it interesting enough to share.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of 'the last lot'

You also need to consider where they learnt all their bad habits. Trying to be "more like the Tories than the Tories" has left them with very little ammunition to use now they are in opposition.

[Ian Chard]

Alternatively they could get rid of this farce altogether

or at the very least withhold the signer numbers until the petition closes to prevent bandwagoning.

[PsychicMonkey]

bandwagoning

if that isn't already, it certainly should be slang for a sexual position.

Not sure which one though....

[Wize]

Would have to be...

...where everyone gets on.

[peter 45]

Snigger

.......and gets off.

[Anonymous Coward]

as Sir James Goldsmith said

if you spot a bandwagon, it's too late, you've already missed it

[Tom_]

What a waste of time

On the one day per month, your issue can be debated by the three MPs who can be arsed to turn up for it.

[SteveK]

Does not compute

The 8821 and the 4941 for these two petitions alone add up to 13,762, which is already more than the 13,676 total signatures that you say have been received for all petitions. So does the site allow the same person to sign the same petition twice or does something just not add up?

[DAN*tastik]

Duplicates not allowed

Every time you vote, you receive an email to register your vote.

If you vote for the same petition twice, when you click on the confirmation link of the second email, it tells you that you have already voted for that.

Given that most people I know have more than one address though, I can sort of think of a way around it...

[Bluenose]

Designed to fail

the amount of duplicated petitions seems to indicate that this whole thing has been set up to fail. One wonders if that is why the govt allowed so many bring back hanging petitions as it knew it could split the vote and thus make reaching the 100K mark that much harder. Mind you that is also true for the leave EU, get rid of human rights act and of course the keep the ban on the death penalty.

Piss up and breweries comes to mind.................again

[Richard 81]

If so

If so, that is possibly the most sensible thing the government has ever done. Balls to democracy. If the idiot turkeys decide to vote for Christmas, they need saving from themselves.

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, what?

Is it the Governments fault, the web site designers fault or the people who insist on making duplicate petitions without bothering to do a basic search first? I mean it’s not hard, just looking at the top 10 most signed petitions would show that you don’t need to create another one.

Then again it could just be a sign of the intelligence of those who want to bring back capital punishment...

[jonathanb]

Maybe not

It is possible that the duplicates were submitted before the first pro death penalty petition was approved.

[Hardcastle the ancient]

@johnathanb

If there is a moderation process, then, how did the duplicates get approved?

[ColonelClaw]

Fame Whore

Unfortunately I expect traffic has been up 10-fold at Mr Fawke's piss-poor blog since this story broke.

...ah, surely all along it wasn't about self-publicity?

[Will's]

Incresse the speed on motorways

Who gets to chose that the remove speed limit, increase to 90 and increase to 100 petitions are all "the same"?

And why oh why oh why can't we downvote some of the more stupid ones?

If we had up/down votes then the list could be sorted by popularity, not just number of votes, so the system would help gauge the mood better.

[Anonymous Coward]

E-Petitions...

...are a waste of time. They do provide a thin veneer of "We're listening, honest" for the state. There is only on action the state understands - and that is direct. Which is why the state is so keen to promote e-petition and curtail your rights of protest.

As for the death penalty; whilst it is "nice" to think that one could execute a paedo-rapist ("Think of the children!") we can look to countries that have capital punishment and see just how well it works.

It doesn't. All it does is permit the middle class and elite to "solve" the problems of the poor/underprivileged/sick in an economically expedient manner; and that's before we consider the potential of executing an innocent person.

[Matt Bryant]

RE: E-Petitions...

".....Which is why the state is so keen to promote e-petition and curtail your rights of protest....." OK, I'll bite - how exactly ha the Government restricted your right to protest? The UK has very permissive protesting laws, as long as you abide by the laws. What I'm guessing is that (a) you're from one of those whacky groups that like to clainm they have majority approval, but actually have only the tiniest of loser followings, and (b) your e-petition is one of the ones gettign zero interest.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried...

...protesting near parliament recently? Or wearing a t-shirt with a message near there? How about going on a protest and being filmed and marked out as "trouble" for merely doing what should be your right? Even holding certain political views is enough to get you in trouble - thought is now a crime it seems.

"a) you're from one of those whacky groups that like to clainm they have majority approval"

Nup, I am neither Tory, LibDem, Labour nor pugilist.

"b) your e-petition is one of the ones gettign zero interest"

Nup, don't have one. Don't see why I should validate their charade.

[Anonymous Coward]

title

What about the need to register your protest with the police who then decide if it can go ahead?

If you don't register it, just take the example of the kettling you saw at the student protests in 2010 or the blatent provokation by the police for violence (that van planted to be damaged for example) as the resultant attitude towards your right to express distaste at the government of the time.

What about our right to use parliamentary footage for use in satire as a form of protest?

[Anonymous Coward]

Auto Fail

Question: "How exactly ha[s] the Government restricted your right to protest?

Answer: "The UK has [...] protesting laws".

[DAN*tastik]

How well it works

I believe it depends on how it is implemented.

In the USA it is not a deterrent. But there aren't many executions happening there.

In Dubai they are a bit more trigger happy so to speak.

A friend of mine moved there for a while. In London he was going through quite a bit of charlie. In Dubai he couldn't find any at all.

Not sure if they are as strict with alcohol smugglers, but you couldn't find much of it either. There is a licence to buy it from supermarkets, or something like that, for which you can apply after 1 year of residence.

When i visited him, all the wine that was left in the glasses ended up back in the bottle for next time, and he said it was quite common practice because of its scarcity - free zones were a completely different environment, but you couldn't take any at home.

That convinced me even more that, if enforced, it works. Against or in favour, and which crimes should it be enforced for, it's a different thing.

It is still used in many countries of completely different cultures - USA, Singapore, Dubai, China, for example -. A more objective argument would be an evaluation of the results achieved by all those different countries. "But it doesn't work int he US" doesn't seem, to me at least, to provide a full picture.

[Richard 81]

Perhaps

You then need to consider the possibility of getting it wrong. While your system is fallible, you can't allow capital punishment to continue.

[CD001]

Only if...

Only if you place a particularly high value on human life - I suspect that if the wrong "witch" got burnt at the stage in the 1600s the response would have been, "well she must have been guilty of something!"

You CAN have capital punishment as long as your moral/ethical compass is a little bit wobbly - there's almost 7 billion hairless monkeys out there, accidentally terminating one here or there ain't gonna make any difference now is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

in the u.s.

it works fine. It's for eliminating the problem of people with the wrong skin colour.

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC

No - that's prisons and inner city projects.

[Naughtyhorse]

nah you got that all wrong

being on death row increases the life expectancy of black people.

ergo it's positive discrimination gone mad

[Tom 7]

Its a bugger

when you put something to test and discover that the majority in favour you've been bullshitting about all your life turns out to be a minority.

Never mind capitalism will have to do for now - ooh f**k

[Anonymous Coward]

Announcing your marginal political views directly to a government agency..

...saves them alot of time when they make up lists.

McCarthy must be kicking himself for not thinking of that.

[Richard 81]

What

Speaking as someone who is first hearing about this nonsense right here, it sounds an awful lot like you're pro-capital punishment. I feel I must have a faulty sarcasm detector, because I was sure El Reg didn't employ "that sort".

[Red Bren]

Polarised views

Like on most contentious issues, there will be many commentards on both sides of the fence. A bit like the "Which is the best OS?" question, but obviously not as important...

[Richard 81]

Commenter yes

Well I come to expect that from our community, but I was actually referring to the article author.

[Naughtyhorse]

easy answer to that

hang all fanbois

[JimC]

> didn't employ "that sort"

are you suggesting that employment at el reg ought to be conditional on holding the "correct" political viewpoint? What other organisations to you think that sort of policy should apply to?

[Richard 81]

Tends towards Godwin's Law

All of them, my good fellow. Providing the "correct" political views are those of right minded non-bastards, i.e. those who don't go in for death penalty, human testing, torture, genocide etc.

To take your argument to it's ultimate conclusion, are you suggesting that an organisation should employ EDL, BNP, all the way up to (neo-)Nazis, regardless of their political views?

[JimC]

> an organisation should employ EDL BNP etc..

[wipes post. thinks, mustn't feed the troll - surely this *has* to be a troll - doesn't it?]

[yeahyeahno]

Re: > didn't employ "that sort"

Why not? Most other publishers employ that kind of filter. I mean, how is it that you think the Daily Mail only employs rabid European hating, immigrant hating, pro hanging, middle class mob culture, Conservatives?

[JimC]

> Dailyy mail only employs rabid...

You anti fascist fascists (well that's what you sound like) surely don't believe that the Daily Mail only employs people with those views do you? How delightfully naive:-). You'll be telling me next that you think every single employee of the Guardian is a right-on leftie:-)

I'd be very suprised if the majority of their employees who don't write stuff have pretty much the same range of viewpoints as the rest of their population - why should the owners even care what the political views of the security guard on the front door are?

As for the journalists: hell, they are, after all, professional journalists and any writer with a half competent imagination should be capable of writing from the viewpoint their employer requires without having to hold all those views themselves. That's part of what being professional means. After all fiction writers do it all the time...

[Naughtyhorse]

well...

i can give you a pass on the security guard thing

but professional writers, and newspapers??

would you like to have another go at that one?

[Richard 12]

@Naughtyhorse

"Professional" only means you're getting paid to do it.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean you're any good at it - just that you were at least convincing enough at interview to get hired, and aren't bad enough to get fired.

[Gav]

new cross-site scripting opportunity

I was going to start a petition against moronic "armchair-activist" petitions. But my keyboard was out of reach and it would have meant getting up, so I couldn't be bothered in the end.

Perhaps someone could write some script that'll think/vote for me? This website only goes so far in allowing my opinion to be heard on issues I've barely thought about, and can't actually be bothered to do anything about other than browse a website. Influencing government policy shouldn't involve so much effort. It needs to be made easier.

[Cameron Colley]

Why are they asking for hte death penalty on a UK governemt site?

The first port of call would have to be the European Court of Human Rights -- until you've got them to change their ruling so that member states can make their own decisions about capital punishment it's pretty pointless re-instating it here, unless these people want the EU to kick the UK out and ban all trading with us?

OK, so the last bit might not happen -- but I wouldn't be surprised.

[Richard 81]

Consequences

You'll find that those who support capital punishment would love to see the consequences you describe. Without actually considering what that would mean, or course.

[SteveK]

Human rights

Oh, there are petitions also calling for us to scrap all human rights agreements too...

Steve.

[Anonymous Coward]

"petitions also calling for us to scrap all human rights "

Why not give them *exactly* what they are asking for and employ some of Saddam's ex-torturers to dispose of them?

[Jimbo 6]

Good thinking

...or indeed, some of Dubya's ex-torturers. (Oh, wait - they're still gainfully employed...)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the wrong way of doing it...

I've never been convinced by petitions of this sort. Just because someone collects 'x' names for some cause, that's meaningless unless you have some sort of idea of what proportion 'x' represents of those who may have an interest. And even if you had an idea of what the proportion is, what proportion of those who didn't sign up disagree, what proportion can't be bothered either way, etc.

Surely a much better way of doing it is to collect a For and Against count for each issue. A petition that collects 100,000 votes for and 100,000 votes against, is - perhaps - less worthy of debate than a petition that has 50,000 votes for and 2,000 votes against. Any sufficiently specious issue could collect 100,000 votes across the population of the UK if the organisers were determined enough but what is relevant is how many are against the issue as well.

Of course, all of this is then subject to who has got the best mobilisation amongst their supporters, but you're faced with that either way.

Anyway, just my tuppence-worth... Can I hereby claim a patent on this... is that how it works these days?

[CD001]

AKA

AKA "A general election"

[crowley]

Re:AKA

No, a referendum.

"each issue"

[iGoto]

F1 Petition has 6200+

The 'Official' e-petition to keep the F1 on the BBC has over 6200+

The link is http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/57

If any reg readers are also petrol heads I urge you to sign this.

[Anonymous Coward]

@iGoto

You want my BBC tax to pay for a private-owned organisation who's 'sport' is riddled with corruption to get richer and more corrupt?

No thanks. Let's let the commercial markets support their own shall we?

[badger31]

@AC

No. I want MY BBC tax to go towards showing a motor race every other weekend, so that I don't have to face paying Rupert Murdoch £400+ quid a year for them. I may be in a minority here, but I bet I'm in an overwhelming majority amongst the British F1 fans.

[Anonymous Coward]

They are not all the same petitions ...

... but may be variations on a theme

Hang all politicians

Hang all lawyers

Hang all bankers

Hang all journalists (except El Reg of course)

Hang all commentards (except me)

Or maybe hanging isn't good enough for them.

Behead all politicians

Behead all ... etc etc etc.

[Jason Hall]

Good luck with that

"To be successful, petitioners need to score over 100,000 signatures. Their issue will then be discussed by backbench committee which has a limited amount of time to schedule debates – about one day each month that the House is sitting."

... Their issue will then be discussed by backbench committee where it will be laughed-at and ignored no-matter how sensible/good an idea it is.

[Gwaptiva]

*sigh* This is why some consider democracy to be a bad idea

For one, even if the "bring back hanging" (e-)petition got 200,000 votes, and even if there would be a parliamentary majority in favour, it still won't bring back the noose. For that, the UK would first need to withdraw from just about every European treaty it ever signed: EU, Council of Europe, etc etc.

And if they did that, having a death penalty or not would be among the least of one's problems

[CD001]

I consider...

I consider democracy a bad idea - I've met some of the voters; I'd not trust them to lace their own shoes let alone have a say in electing a government.

Governance by the lowest common denominator. It's just a shame dictators always turn out to be arsehats.

[crowley]

Governance by the lowest common denominator

Old way: one man, one vote

New way: one IQ point, one vote

Should help out there...

[sabroni]

people with high IQs..

..often seem to have less common sense than us dullards. I'm not convinced this would bring better laws, just lots of incredibly clever ones with blatant faults that only the simple would spot...

[James 100]

Threat to trade

Cameron Colley: To 'ban all trading' with the UK would violate other international commitments on free trade, as well as being self-defeating since the EU as a whole runs a significant trade deficit - they'd be on the losing end of that move, both economically and legally.

The ban on the death penalty wasn't in the original ECHR, it's a later addition. I wouldn't object to scrapping the entire lawyer-buffet (though I would definitely want some replacement safeguard of actual human rights in place) but I have read we could withdraw from that extension without giving up the rest at the same time. EFTA/EEA membership (to protect free trade and movement) would seem a better option than full EU membership, too - and, I think, get around any other issues about foreign jurisdiction over UK courts.

I imagine the issue will be "debated" for about 30 seconds by 5 MPs, then filed away for another decade, but it will be nice to see politicians at least paying lip service to public opinion for once.

[Cameron Colley]

@James 100

As I said, the trade embargoes bit was maybe too far -- but ignoring a major EU ruling would make it pretty damned difficult to be part of any others, so being squeezed out of the EU still seems feasible to me. I'm not going to get onto whether that's good or bad -- my point was more that MPs can't debate the death penalty because it is banned, to unban it we'd have to make changes first so the petitions are irrelevant and pointless as things stand.

Also, if we didn't leave the EU then surely anyone implementing the death penalty would be hauled before the courts and jailed anyhow?

[yeahyeahno]

That would be me

"The self-explanatory "Don't listen to idiots signing e-petitions" has 101 self-hating supporters."

That would be me!

I signed loads of petitions (only those I found acceptable) in the hope that I can help make the system collapse by getting so many issues before parliament that they realise what fools the executive have been to implement this system.

[Annihilator]

Confused much?

Erm, the anti's are effectively requesting the same debate. A debate "for" the death penalty is effectively the same as a debate "against".

[Dr Insanity]

Why not

Why not put all the petitions onto facebook? if you get over 1 million likes then it goes to parliament for discussion, and you can name your firstborn son Megatron!

[Anonymous Coward]

moderator?

When submitting a new petition why can't they just use a moderator to check - maybe some zero paid intern, who could simply reply to the petitioner with "this is a duplicate, numbnuts".

It works here on el reg and sometimes a single story has over 100 comments.

Oh wait, i'm doing that thing again where i apply common sense to politicians.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not how Government employment works

Government works by making a really big mess, then paying people to clean up that mess.

They can't go around stopping the mess happening, that would just be crazy.

[John A Fotheringham]

Aren't pro and anti the same?

Surely a petition to hold a debate to retain the ban, is the same debate (albeit phrased differently) to that advocating the reinstatement? If that's the case, all these "anti" petitioners are hastening the day when there will be a debate on the subject.

On top of which, how exactly do parliament debate to leave a law unchanged?

[Naughtyhorse]

uhh.. .quietly

bliss

[Anonymous Coward]

Urgh.

The majority of the British public is ignorant.

They watch x-factor and other crap, and read gutter trash such as The Sun and The Daily Mail.

I'm not for the death penalty, but I am for cleaning up the gene pool. Removing these morons would be a good start.

[Naughtyhorse]

majority

60 million and change populace....

sun and daily fail shifting a couple million copies a day...

need to get a petition to have the OED to alter the definition of majority methinks

(alright i hold my hands up on the x-fucktor thang... actually no i dont! they dot get 30 million odd fuckwits in everyweek do they)

[Geoff Mackenzie]

Oh dear

"As of 4.20pm yesterday, the site had received 2,260 petitions and collected 13,676 signatures."

And yet, it's creaking under the strain. I dread to think how much WTF is to be found in that tiny web app. Personally I like the fact that the "ouch, I'm way too overloaded" error actually suggests refreshing that page; I'm betting at least half of the load is from serving the error page repeatedly to swearing users.

[joeblurton]

The Rise of the Idiots

If anyone's remotely interested, I expanded on the self-hate here:

http://shrubhill.blogspot.com/2011/08/dont-listen-to-idiots-signing-e.html

Yours,

An idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

My jaw dropped when I saw this.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/3177

>NO JURY - desicion based on facts!

People really are fucking morons.

[Hardcastle the ancient]

Amateur Hour

I just tested it, and it is quite happy to accept a commercial postcode as a home address, and to send a validation email to a mailinator anonymous dropbox.

Stupid.

[Shannon Jacobs]

More evidence of too much ignorance?

Interesting piece, but I think the primary problem is the breakdown of the political system due to an information dysfunction. You can't have rational democratic or republican debate when you can't even agree on the most basic facts. It has always been true that people tend to believe what they want to believe, but the Internet now makes it possible for you (or anyone including the most extreme crazy person) to find an infinite amount of 'evidence' in favor of whatever you want to believe. Okay, so it isn't really infinite--but your time is finite and you can certainly find more 'nice' evidence than you have time for.

Yes, of course it is possible to use the Internet to gather every kind of information. You can read broadly and get outside of your comfort zone. It's even possible to learn things that will change your opinion--but you can just as well spend all of your time reading about a lunatic conspiracy theory with time machines.

[Alan Firminger]

We pinkos are winning

Currently : no capital punishment - 16k , F1 free to air - 12k .

Does the site have a cultural bias ?

[The Morgan Doctrine]

Anybody game for legalizing CYBER PRIVATEERS?

While I'm not a UK resident and cannot initiate a petition, I just wondering if any of you Brits want to initiate a petition to see if you can get 100,000 signatures to:

1) Abrogate the Paris Declaration of 1856 that outlaws privateering;

2) License and bond CYBER PRIVATEERS; and

3) Demand that the cyber privateers follow THE CODE outlined at www.cyberprivateer.com?

This is…The Morgan Doctrine

[Zog The Undeniable]

One would have thought

that Guido Fawkes would have been somewhat disapproving of the death penalty, given that he was hanged, drawn and quartered* himself.

*although history tells us he was clever enough to jump and break his neck, thus being happily dead for the nasty squelchy bits later.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another cynical erosion of democracy

I am surprised at the figures posted regarding the EU referendum. The daily express campaign reached 40000 signatories on the 2nd August.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/262590

According to UKIP it is now up to 75000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL8JUElL0ws&feature=feedu

The government's e-petitions team are doing a great job reporting 2842 supporters and will face some interesting questions when the media find out. Perhaps that they have found that all 2842 supporters are duplicated 25 times. The express will hopefully have evidence to the contrary.

Successive governments have shown that politicians are not there to represent the electorate but the bankers and oil rich who give them such good backhanders. They will never listen to our bleating. The internet makes politicians obsolete as it allows all of us to represent ourselves in real time, we have the civil service to run the day to day matters.

Were yes minister / prime minister comedy or prophesy?