Yes Prime Minister - Bernard Woolley on defence capabilities

This is so ironic. Circle of Life..... except this time the Russian and NATO rockets are working

@@ndaku11 Nothing has changed I’m afraid. The same delusions.

That’s a funny comment, well done.

Hehehe 😂

Their mistake was that they invaded while the Ukrainian farmers weren't busy in the fields.

Bernard made it all happened.

Hear hear, most effective deadpan humor ever.

@Max Wylde Agreed. He was quite brilliant.

You only have to look at the remake and compare to see what it could have been.

Sun readers don't care, as long as she's got big tits on page three.

The truth is a subtle knife and foil for comedy.

It reminds me of something my dad once told me: “Don’t worry about World War 3, since it’ll only last about 5 minutes.”

:'-(

He was great in Yes Minister & Yes P/Minister and also great when he played the part of the Police Sargent in Heartbeat.

Chilling...in a masterful way.

Isn't that why the American's are helping in Ukraine?

No laugh track on that line. I guess it was too real.

It's not a laugh track, It's a live audience. They must have really "felt" it.

The other one is "Much cheaper to push a button"... pushing that button would be the most expensive thing in human history

How many times has peace been deferred because both sides misunderstood their adversaries so thoroughly as during the Cold War? Or any war, really but this old show is about my Father's Times, so, the Cold War.

"Da, Premiere"

Most historical events have been achieved due to sheer incompetence.

@exorientelux It was the Russians that started the first world war. Austro-Hungarian Empire only wanted to remove a a terrorist organazation which had assassinated one of the must senior leaders of the nation. USA did the same as the Austro-Hungarian Empire when they invaded Afghanistan. Afganistan and Serbia was the same the their gorvement was so much involved with the terrorist organazation. These mean that all other European countries have the moral obligation to invaded the USA to stop the country's spred of war and death through out the world.

>Russian Army was drunk half the time You fool that makes them stronger

i wonder, is there a bunker on the 7th fairway?

Thanks for the context info!

The Trident missiles are owned Jointly by the US and UK and are in a common pool. Every so often a submarine loaded with unarmed Tridents goes to the US and swaps them for other pool missiles. A missile could spend a couple of years on a British SSBN, Be sent back for maintenance and be loaded onto a US SSBN.

thedarknesscallingme - it was ALWAYS a comedy. Like all great comedy it accurately reflected reality. This series is as true today as it ever was.

hahaha great comment

yeah. =) it became a manual

and people are still writing comments 30 years on...its brilliant

To a point.

To be honest, you could delete the "among", I have yet to see one that is better.

Not only that, 40 years later and it's still so relevant to 21st century politics . No one has learned anything.

you wanted to say "documentary?

@@rottengirl4046 Of course!

They are the best sitcoms, in my opinion.

Well, he has certainly K*lled his country and economy with sheer incompetence 🥲

Exhibit A of why women shouldn't be allowed in the army.

@@StarboyXL9 a sketch from a comedy show is a reason why women shouldn't be allowed in the army?

@@StarboyXL9 No, because naval vessels on patrol should not have to make unscheduled returns to port to drop off female sailors who have gotten pregnant.

Are you referring to anal sex?

@@redrackham6812 it takes 2 to tango .

And good God, I'd rather have them at the head of government that the jokers we have now.

Administering Heaven..

Bernard will walk into the office and Jim Hacker will exclaim, “Ah! There you are, Bernard. Come in, Humphrey and I are about to discuss the the cutback in civil service bureaucracy...”

OH God I only knew that from this comment. R.I.P

May he rest in peace :(

Ever notice Russia Invades somewhere at Christmas, Likewise Israel-Middle East Escalations.

9-5 also if possible...

@Jacob Zondag So in other words, there was a leisure stalemate because the forces of both sides would rather get stoned/go home on the weekends rather than fight?

najhoant smart soldiers! Go for weekend, instead of fighting for what you don’t know about.

@@bigguy4u211 That is the nature of humans I suppose. Down right lazy. This is why we want AI. Always ready to do what they were designed for.

Rumour has it that this was based on an actual incident.

I didn't get that joke, could someone please explain?

@@brandonholmes8485 OK - a torpedo landed on the golf course having presumably fallen from an aeroplane in error. These days it would be all over Facebook but then a military cover up and a mysterious new bunker on the course did the trick.

@@brandonholmes8485 I suspect that 'bunker' in this context might mean 'sand trap.'

@@princecharon you'd be correct with that translation of terms

Even the armed forces of larger EU nations like the UK are facing huge cuts. The UK has recently cut back from 386 to 227 tanks, +158 tanks in reserve. Compare that to Russia which has 2,562 active tanks and about 12,500 in reserve.

shpider has to be said that the russians do have a far greater undeveloped land mass in which to store them.

The Finnish army bought (some of) the used Dutch tanks.

The average tank battalion isn't that big, though. A warehouse or two could fit most of it.

+Harle Quin it is not the tanks, it's a battle ready crew that takes time and experience.

How ironic, considering the Belgrano was a USN cruiser in World War II. How odd to think the product of US shipyard workers in 1944 sank from torpedoes made British factory workers at about the same time. What would those ‘allied’ factory workers have thought if they knew.

@@TXGRunner USS Phoenix right? If memory serves me correctly (it probably doesn't) the only ship to survive Pearl Harbour.

No, no, no. He used Mk8s because Belgrano wasn't worth a Tigerfish or 2.

@@TXGRunner 1944? Phoenix was build in the 30s. The torpedo was probably newer. Regardless, your I take your point.

@@benwatson5787 No. Probably the most famous (because of the photo) but not the only. Battleships Maryland, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania were only slightly damaged. All 3 were at Surigao strait even tho Pennsylvania didnt fire. Heavy cruisers New Orleans and San Francisco were barely touched. Both would haunt the Japanese later. Light cruisers (and sisters to Phoenix) Honolulu, st Louis, and Helena all had active careers with only Helena being sunk. And then there were the subs.... oh yes, the Japanese paid dearly for ignoring the subs.

Very thoughtful of them I must say!🙄

Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union then. How can it be part of Europe now? They "invaded" themselves (the eastern part of Ukraine where the fighting is going is majority Russian speaking, with a lot of ethnic Russians).

@@plurabelle5 Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. Geographically . The Soviet Union is a political organisation. Europe is a geographical area.

​@@plurabelle5 Part of the Soviet Union, including almost all of their major population centers, we're in Europe.

Wasn't Basil Brush his right hand man?

Of course! Basil Brush doesn't work with just any old scruff, you know!

Actually, Mister Dereck wasn't the puppeteer was he, so you could say he didn't have a hand in Basil Brush - Boom, boom.

Fowlds was great with those. A great gesture actor.

When you need a reference to something obscure and unimportant, there's New Zealand right on cue.😀😄😉😊

They don't make comedy like that anymore,no wonder the bbc is crap.

@@patricklamshear6662 perhaps you missed League of Gentlemen, The Office, Fleabag, Episodes, Extras, Mighty Bhoosh, Rev, The Thick of It and Alan Partridge. You have some catching up to do.

@@seang3019 None of them as good as this!

...as seen on BBC kzhead.info/sun/eceomNOrj3tpoHA/bejne.html

lol; impeccable logic!

Their spies will eventually know you're faking it.

Absolute retardation.

@@jamesperkins191 no they wont trust me

Be amazing if it turned out that none of them actually worked for anyone and they only wanted each other to think they did.... talk about the biggest cover up since well... ever.

Always was the greatest medicine. Whenever I was over stressed my wife would slap in one of my old Benny Hill videos for the 1000th time and let me burst with laughter whilst reciting out loud the entire sketches, word for word.

Especially about Sun readers.

he was a master of the deadpan . . .

kzhead.info/sun/lrKgqN2EbKx7dKM/bejne.html

Sir Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn.

They were lax, but they will still quiet able to destroy the Americans in war games in Germany during the 80's.

Roodborst Kalf Yeah, who do you think sold the GIs all those drugs.

Does that qualify as chemical warfare?

In the mid-70s, French researcher Emmanuel Todd, who was writing about the decadence of the Soviet system, compares its army's disciplinar to the dutch one's.

That doesn't explain the the times when the US forces failed to turn up at their designated position or numbers of US troops being stoned and actually being in the woods- any other places with anything female they could find.

Trust me. In many training exercises we were really doing nothing, and not just "nothing".

You have to remember that this show was initially run in the 1980s when the US military was still recovering from the demoralization of Vietnam. So, while there was still a drug problem, (and it was even worse in the 1970s) the references were largely historical even then. Not the case of the US military today, which has a low tolerance for drug use. You also have to remember that this was a comedy, not a documentary. While it's based on fact, there is considerable exaggeration for satirical effect. I suspect that the Dutch, Belgian and Danish armies were just as stoned, especially after a weekend off.

@@allenjenkins7947 I went into the US Navy in 1979. Drug usage was rampant. Mainly pot, but there were other drugs being used as well. The best thing that the military did for itself was to institute a strict drug testing program. There were a lot of sailors getting busted for drug use in the early eighties after they started testing. I'd be willing to bet that the percentage of drug use in todays military is lower than it was when I was active duty.

This is first broadcast in 1986 so the worst of the drug riddled, low morale post Vietnam era is over but that’s were the comments are coming from.

Germans were telling similar stories before WWII. Yet it was Russians who came into Berlin.

History is replete with the sad fate of whoever has underestimated the Russians

mac history is also replete with the sad history of Russians not wanting to fight for their awful tyrannical leaders. Germany got to Moscow in a few months before people realized that they were genocidal and started desperately resisting.

@@chrisdelzell8467 but they did resist and overcome the Nazis they did so I am only saying what has happened in history,it is not just the Russians themselves but also the weather(cold and Rasputina) and the vastness of that country that makes invading it an impossible task if the people are commited to stopping the invaders

Actaully, in late '70s Soviet Army was absolutely at top of their game, with more and better equipment and training constrained by doctrine rather than by economic depression of 80s.

"I see convoys curb crawling West German Autobahns Trying to pick up a war" - Marillion

At the beginning of 80s, American Amry still had large discipline and morale problems. By late 80s, situation was quite reversed.

Even in the late 70's and early 80's the USA forces in Germany were solid fighting forces. I was there. The pot heads and druggies were being viciously weeded out.

Sounds plausible I heard stories like this in the early eighties from conscript Dutch soldiers who went on exercises with American troops in Germany in the early eighties. They were amazed how easy it was to destroy the Americans in these exercises. They were not impressed by the intelligence of said soldiers, but that said both sets of soldiers got along fine drinking, boozing and taking drugs together.

@Raw Engineer lol lol

An Argentinian cruiser built by the Americans in the 30s and that survived Pearl Harbour and the Pacific War, only to be sunk in the South Atlantic by a British nuclear submarine... Using WW2 torpedoes. Appropriate really.

You see it in modern gaming too. Rather than develop a game long term and using extensive play-testing, they release it in development (beta) so that they can get hundreds of thousands (or more) of free play-testers who find all the bugs for them while turning a profit during the development. Then they do it all over again with a sequel which somehow has all the same problems as the original that all need working out once more. Hell, even games that aren't released in a beta version are often released and then a few days later receive a massive patch to fix the myriad of issues with them to the point where it's less of a patch and more of a re-release of a 'fixed' version. Some games can take years to become 'complete'.

Except "Pentagon wars" kinda misrepresent the whole development

@@DomWeasel Hmm.. very interesting 🤔😊

@@fulcrum2951 I wouldn't be so sure. in 2018 they ran tests of the F35 in close air support situations versus the A10. Turns out they fudged every test in favour of the F35. Including lack of multiple moving targets, reduced payload to improve f35 maneuverability, no reference to sortie rates or fly time and a lack of testing against anti air capabilities. Do not underestimate the level of corruption that comes with trillion dollar military designs.

considering 90% of what they shot is truth, it wouldnt be a surprise. In a documentary on youtube you actually hear how the writers would take out MP's to posh dinner and get them to give them secrets. Like the Moral Dimension episode, its a 100% true story.

Nope. Tigerfish was built with small (90 kg) warhead, as speedy counter-submarine torpedo. Mk VIII carried 4x amount of explosives. Target was WW II era vessel.

Gobsmacking that they were even carrying a WW2 era torpedo.

@@Internetbutthurt If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

@@Internetbutthurt Keeping what works pays off. The superbly effective M2 Browning machine gun is an early 1930s design and WWII era replacement parts are still issued. The Colt M1911 pistol is even older. B-52 bombers are still in combat and none are newer than 1962!

They were all controlled by the Russians so they're just being honest

This show was made in the 80s when Russia was much stonger and had a better army you can't really compare it with modern times

@@4wheal Precisely. The "other side" back then was actually the much larger and more powerful Soviet Union, which included Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, Moldova and several 'Stans. It also included all of the Warsaw Pact countries. Yet we nearly always referred to them in popular speech as "Russians". Most westerners didn't know that the RSFSR was only part of the Soviet Union. Many still don't.

@@allenjenkins7947 before Soviet Union was found, rfsfr included Ukraine Belarus and Caucasian states.

Been thinking about that lately myself. I sort of put it as, "Russia" is kind of like "America"; it means... a few different things. (Just ask non-American Americans.) We tend to say "Russia"/"Russian" when we mean something like "the cultural-influence-sphere of the former Russian Empire and/or USSR."

Well if the British couldn’t hold the Russians for 72 hours back then it seems likely they could do it now.

​@@kingstarscream320I mean Ukraine has been able to hold the Russians off for 72 hours about 20000 times over at the moment

@@Bagster321 Yep. I was very wrong. We all knew Russia was a shadow of its former self but I don’t think many predicted their army would be this incompetent. I’m not complaining. Good for the Ukrainians.

Citation needed. Oh, wait, Yes Minister series have a record of citing actual documents... BERNARD!

Yeah, maybe for a week.

@W H Fitzgerald Three continents are supplying weapons, what did you expect?

It was Paul Eddington who visited Australia (portrayed PM Jim Hacker) and not Derek Fowlds! Derek was the PM’s private secretary!

Paul Eddington you mean. The same happened when he went to Japan.

72 hours

Wrong. The idea of a Conventional torpedo was to create a hole so large that it could not be repaired at sea and could not be drained thereby sinking the ship. Modern torpedoes are designed to go right underneath the ship to its keel and detonate there effectively breaking the ship in half. Torpedoes in WW2 sometimes managed to break a ship's back if it was lightly armoured, but they were designed much in the same way that a traditional tank shell is, by just smashing through and doing damage. Modern torpedoes are like the STAFF shells, smart and aiming to efficiently exploit the weakness of a design.

@@_Anato_ Yes-no. Tigerfish had very small (90 kg or so) warhead which wouldn't do a squat to WW II era ship, like Berglano. Mk. VIII on the other hand had 340 kg. In order to successfully use method you mention you need ultra-reliable fuse and monsters like Spearfish or Mk.48. @Lachy T - Spearfish was not available to Conquerer at the time.

Galtieri seriously misjudged Thatcher on the Falklands - he didn't think that she would bother about islands in the Southern Hemisphere that have more sheep than people.

This show was a masterpiece! I remember this scene from when I was a kid in the early 90's. so funny.

Maeda Toshiie And maps from 1890´s were used in the Bay of Pigs’ invasion.

+Squadron266 everyone knew the new Tigerfish torpedo didn't work it started design in 1959 and it wasn't until 1987 that it worked. The design requirements where simply to advanced the for technology of the day. The Spearfish replacement which started design work in the mid 70's (15 years after the Tigerfish) entered service just 9 years after the Tigerfish and just 5 years after the Tigerfish actually worked.

Yep those were the ones that worked, they had been tested.

Noooooooo you've spoiled the joke 🤐🤐😥😥😥😀

They can't, because in Russia the joke's on you.

What about the picnicking in the woods with lady soldiers?

@@TomFynn - Why not? 😆 I'm sure _that_ happened. When I was stationed in Germany, I was a part of a two-soldier team of mobile electronics techs, and Denise and I drove here and there by ourselves maintaining remote unmanned microwave comm stations. We never picnicked, per se, but we could have. She was a very nice lady, and we got along well.

hahaha, your love for tea is much better than many love stories in hollywood

"The only thing that changes is the names."

Oh how I miss the roar of the Vulcans.