In Competition No. 2561 you were invited to continue in verse or prose the statement ‘The gentleman in Whitehall knows better…’
Another exercise in spleen-venting, this attracted a weighty postbag. The quotation is from Douglas Jay’s The Socialist Case written in 1939. In full it reads, ‘In the case of nutrition, just as in the case of education, the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves’ (probably the only words for which that gentleman is remembered). His pronunciamento marks the birth of the nanny state, though luckily Jerry came along and put things off for a few years….
The entries below get £20 each while the bonus tenner goes to Basil Ransome-Davies.
The gentleman in Whitehall knows better
Than to dictate and sign a letter
Unless its meaning is at least ambiguous
And possibly exiguous.
What he writes may be highly verbose, but still it’ll
be noncommittal,
And the outward display of civility just underscores
That the message is really ‘up yours’.
Does he only aspire to enhance his own status
In the state apparatus,
Or does he nurse secret dreams,
While annihilating the bourbon creams,
Of grooving in denim and shades,
Of dancing in the streets, rainy day women and
barricades?
Does he long in his heart to line up our rulers and
have them all shot?
Probably not.
Basil Ransome-Davies
The gentleman in Whitehall knows better than to say
Precisely what he thinks of this or that;
Indeed, from top to bottom, the accepted Whitehall way
Is to keep one’s thoughts beneath one’s bowler hat;
A shrewd ‘Sir Humphrey’ wins the day
By saying what he has to say
In that adroit, convincing way
Which so befits the polished bureaucrat.
The gentleman in Whitehall is the politician’s bane,
A crafty, cunning, calculating foe,
A servant, civil seemingly, and charming in the main
But full of guile and too much in the know;
He understands how Whitehall ticks,
And knows exactly how to fix
What matters most in politics —
The preservation of the status quo.
Alan Millard
The gentleman in Whitehall knows better
Even than Mama or Papa.
You must follow his rules to the letter
So that you’ll always know where you are
He looks out for the health of the nation:
So eat five bits of fruit every day
And you won’t need hospitalisation
(And there won’t be a bed anyway).
He keeps records and cannot confuse them!
No one in the world has more brains.
It’s all safe (though he does sometimes lose them,
By leaving his laptop on trains).
So don’t get into mischief, not ever,
If you misbehave he will see!
The gentleman in Whitehall is clever,
And he’s got you on CCTV.
Brian Murdoch
The gentleman in Whitehall knows better
Than the common man or woman on the bus,
Judging from on high he sees no reason why
He should listen to the simple likes of us.
As he closes our post offices and schools,
What will happen to the English countryside?
When the damage has been done, he’ll be lazing in the
sun
While our little towns and villages have died.
He does his best to stifle our enjoyment
With his massive book of Health and Safety rules;
He must be raving bonkers to stop us playing conkers
Or to curb adventure outings from our schools.
‘With us,’ he says, ‘your data is quite safe;
Security’s the thing that matters most.’
But here we go again, his laptop’s on the train
And his compact disc’s gone missing in the post.
Tim Raikes
The gentleman in Whitehall knows better than you do.
He has the education; he can take the longer view;
Hard brainwork never hurt him and he isn’t passion’s
slave;
He’s more evolved than you, and somewhat cleaner,
so behave.
Don’t whinge about red tape or sneer at bureaucratic
rules.
Such knee-jerk derogation is the vice of drunken fools.
The senior civil servant is the appointee of God.
To argue with his wisdom means to join the awkward
squad,
Since did he not exist you’d meet a ghastly Hobbesian
fate,
Predated by your fellows in an atavistic state.
The mandarin in Whitehall, elitist though he be,
Has your concerns at heart. He is your friend, not
enemy.
Misunderstood but patient, he will never cease to
strive
To make the faceless masses feel it’s good to be alive.
G.M. Davis
The gentleman in Whitehall knows better,
Dear Cheltenham ladies. Your letter
Was, as always, welcome. As ever,
You raised valid issues. However,
Our spokesperson says you are wrong.
Today, immigrants feel they belong.
GCE results prove that our schools
Are succeeding. New hospital rules
Have imposed an infection-free state
On the wards. In our cities the rate
Of crass juvenile violence has dropped
And underage binge-drinking stopped.
Dearest ladies, your worthy concern
Does you credit. We know that you’ll learn
With the greatest of pleasure that all
Is a glorious success in Whitehall.
Shirley Curran
The gentleman in Whitehall knows better. Is it the Greek and Latin tags with which he peppers his bureaucratic Double Dutch that lend him his unassailable superiority? Or perhaps his cool urbanity, derived from being paid irrespective of the outcome of his interminable recommendations? Whatever the answer, you can be assured of his absolute (by which he means absolving) impartiality which is really only indifference got up in its Sunday best. Discounting the confusing omnifaceted world revealed through experience and anecdotal evidence, he prefers the facile clarity of statistics; they never lie. He glimpses Utopia not through but in the cloudy acronymbus of schemes, initiatives and programmes which occlude it entirely from the rest of us. His implementation strategies engender the slow-motion havoc of unintended consequence while he moves blithely on, ruining agriculture by organising its salvation, or ordering contingency stocks of body bags against the eventuality of Armageddon.
Adrian Fry
No. 2564: Spoil sport
You are invited to submit a feature (150 words maximum) looking back at the Olympic Games, written in the overblown style of a sportswriter with literary pretensions. Entries to ‘Competition 2564’ by 25 September or email lucy@spectator.co.uk
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