Competition | 13 September 2008

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.