Another Lego brick in the wall of waste
How Hyacinth is still Keeping Up Appearances around the globe
IF YOU have not heard of the TPA, no matter. The Taxpayers’ Alliance is a small research organisation that operates on a tiny budget, secured entirely by donations (of course!) and keeps a monitor on official expenditure of our money. It has just produced a record of wastage by officialdom over the past year. Permit me a few examples.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport saw fit to buy for itself a four-foot wall of 13,000 white Lego bricks for £24,000. Having a bit of wall space left in a senior mandarin’s office, it purchased an oil painting by an unknown artist for £107,250 to hang there. And they spent £34,865 transferring artwork to Tokyo. We must all hope the Japanese were duly grateful. The Ministry of Defence, as our Army is cut to the bone and into the marrow, spent £24,816 sending Covid-protective PPE clothing to the Ukrainian army. And there were we thinking British nurses were working without any.
And then the big disappointment. The same MOD spent £34,500 on non-refundable flights for officials to attend an overseas event that was cancelled. So they couldn’t go...or get the money back. Just down Whitehall, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was so brimming with your cash that it spent £912,455 investigating the effects of Covid on women’s rights in Libya. Some of us thought Libya was racked with civil war and its citizens rather concerned with staying alive. And they managed to get through £206,638 on redecorating their own offices, calling it “interior design”. Oh, and £25,831 on flowers.
The lists, department by department, go on and on. As our Scottish friends say, many a mickle macks a muckle, which I
think means that it all adds up. In total our Civil Service worked its way through £5,577,988,036, or something north of five and a half billion pounds.
So here’s a fun exercise to while away the day. Can you think of anything worthwhile that it could have been spent on? Like helping the old and the sick of Britain?
PATRICIA Routledge is finding it hard to keep up with her appearances all over the world – from Botswana to the Baltic.
Her social climbing character Hyacinth Bucket, “pronounced Bouquet”, is proving a global sensation 20 years after the popular BBC sitcom role came to an end.
And 92-year-old actress Patricia is invited to enjoy intimate soirées – Hyacinth’s favourite kind of gathering – from exotic locations.
She said: “I’ve been invited to a candlelit supper or two in South Carolina and places west. I’m just sorry that I haven’t been able to afford the airfare.
“Hyacinth is recognisable everywhere in the world. I was very big in Botswana a few months ago, that’s died down. I am now very big in the Baltic, I love saying that.”
Speaking at a Facing the Music live event for Chichester Festival Theatre, the Keeping Up Appearances star revealed she still receives fan mail from far flung places, despite the series ending back in 1995. She said: “I get really wonderful letters and very touching letters sometimes, telling me that someone’s been in dire distress through the loss of a husband or an announcement that they have a serious illness or something. But there I am on the box, and I’ve cheered them up.”
She added: “I had a wonderful letter from an eight or nine-year-old lad. He had written very carefully to say how much he and his Mum and his Dad and his Grandma and so on had loved the show. And then at the bottom, he said: ‘My dad’s been laughing at a woman like you across the road for years’.”
The actress said she loved Hyacinth from the moment she read the first script which gave her the starring role alongside late actor Clive Swift, henpecked husband Richard.
Now BritBox screens Keeping Up Appearances in the US where it is a big hit.
Patricia added: “It’s 20 years since I did the last series, but it’s still shown everywhere.”