TV Review: Yes Minister, The Bed of Nails
Never say this blog isn’t current: today I’m going to review a TV show that aired closer to the Second World War than today. Yet, terrifyingly, it’s still remarkably current.
Yes Minister: The Bed of Nails
38 episodes of Yes Minister were made, yet only one focused on transport.
The Bed of Nails was broadcast in 1982 when I was one year old.
I’d love to watch it with a sense of being transported back to a bygone age. Yet while the hairstyles, bow ties and restaurant decor (and the complete absence of women!) are overwhelmingly retro, the issues are not.
There’s a wonderful moment at the start when Hacker is asked his opinion on transport policy. He desperately stalls as it becomes clear to the viewer that he has not considered it for a single moment. Sadly, he was not the last person to take on the transport portfolio in this condition.
In this eposide, Jim Hacker, the Minister for Administrative Affairs, is tasked with implementing an Integrated Transport Policy. As today, it turns out that transport is not something ministers generally want to get their teeth into. “Do you not realise”, Sir Humphrey yells when he finds out that Hacker has accepted the job, “that this hideous appointment has been hurtling round Whitehall for three weeks like a grenade with the pin taken out”.
He’s persuaded that working in transport is a “great honour’ but then finds out that no-one else wanted the job (even though it was nominally a promotion) because transport policy is the “ultimate vote loser”. Humphrey explains to the startled Minister that solving transport issues is in everyone’s interest “except the Minister who does it”. There are always more losers than winners, and the losers shout very loudly.
Hacker protests that if he succeeds it will be a big “feather in his cap”. But Humphrey points out that it will take ten years for anything meaningful to be delivered, by which time, Hacker will have moved on. “Or out”, he adds, threateningly.
This is why, he explains, issues like bus and rail services not meeting up at shared interchanges, lack of through ticketing between modes, lack of integrated timetables and lack of efficiency in employment practices have been allowed to continue. No Minister will ever solve them as its not in their interests to do so.
Remember, this was 1982.
Obviously, in the intervening four decades, these have all now been addressed…
As Hacker gets started, he discovers that the road lobby only care about roads, the rail lobby only care about rail and the aviation lobby only care about planes. Attempting to come up with an integrated transport policy risks leading to a rail strike or job losses, depending on the decisions taken.
Now desperate to lose his job, Hacker decides to write a paper outlining the local consequences of his plans on the PM’s constituency.
The desire to connect bus and rail services results in the bus station being moved next to the train station using the only available plot of land: a park. Integrating bus and rail services results in some duplicating services being withdrawn. Efficiency results in job losses.
The PM crushes the proposals but leaves him in post.
So he decides to stir up the Treasury by proposing the creation of a National Integrated Transport Authority, with full staff and budget.
As he predicts, this finally results in him losing the transport brief.
So what are the messages we take from “A Bed of Nails”?
That high ideals often clash with practical realities, leading to policy decisions that are more about political survival than actual effectiveness. That transport is woefully modally siloed, with modes competing for funding and resources as opposed to collaborating for customers. That Ministers are focused on the short term but transport policy requires long term thinking.
Today, the DfT is led by a female Transport Secretary (as was her predecessor) and has a very capable female Roads Minister. Sir Humphrey is now female, as was her predecessor. So something has changed. But, overall, “The Bed of Nails” is still disconcertingly current - and glorious fun.
