In the BBC comedy Dad’s Army, the bank manager Captain Mainwaring commands a Home Guard platoon. His deputy at the bank, Sergeant Wilson, is also his sergeant. Wilson often questions Mainwaring’s judgment, but quietly. He regularly asks: “Do you think that’s wise, sir?”
A Routine Operation
On 29 March 2005, Elaine Bromiley was admitted to a private clinic for routine sinus surgery. During the operation, a nurse fetched a surgical airway kit and told the consultants that she had brought it in. Elaine Bromiley died on 11 April 2005.
According to an account of the case, the nursing staff “didn’t know how to broach the subject with the doctors.” Her husband, Martin Bromiley, is an airline pilot. In 2007, he formed the Clinical Human Factors Group.
Freedom to Speak Up
On 11 February 2015, Sir Robert Francis published his review Freedom to Speak Up. He reported that staff of the National Health Service were “afraid to speak out” about problems, and he described a “climate of fear.”
The review called for a “Freedom to Speak Up Guardian” in every local NHS organization, “appointed by the organisation’s chief executive to act in a genuinely independent capacity.” Its task is to support staff who raise concerns.
His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition
In 1826, in a speech in the House of Commons, John Cam Hobhouse spoke of “His Majesty’s Opposition.” He is credited with the phrase, often given as His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says it implies “the continued loyalty of a major party when out of power.”
The leader of the largest party opposing the government still holds the title Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.
The Cambridge Lecture
Ian Gilmour was Lord Privy Seal in Margaret Thatcher’s government. He disagreed with her economic policies and became the most outspoken of the ministers her supporters called “wets.”
In February 1980, in a lecture at Cambridge, he argued: “In the Conservative view, economic liberalism à la Professor Hayek, because of its starkness and its failure to create a sense of community, is not a safeguard of political freedom but a threat to it.”
Thatcher believed he was privately briefing journalists against her. He was sacked in September 1981.
Be Kent Unmannerly
In the first scene of Shakespeare’s King Lear, the Earl of Kent contradicts the king in front of the whole court: “be Kent unmannerly / When Lear is mad.” He asks: “Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak / When power to flattery bows?”
Lear banishes him. Kent has five days to prepare and must leave the kingdom on the sixth.
Broken Bats
Sir Geoffrey Howe, Deputy Prime Minister, resigned from Margaret Thatcher’s government on 1 November 1990 with a carefully worded letter.
On 13 November, he explained his reasons to the House of Commons. Of the way her public remarks on Europe undermined her own ministers, he said: “It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.”
Nine days later, on 22 November, Thatcher withdrew from the contest for the Conservative leadership.
Courageous
In the BBC comedy Yes Minister, the senior civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby has a way to hinder a minister’s plan without opposing it. He calls the policy “courageous.” The word reminds the minister that “a controversial policy will lose votes, whilst a courageous one will lose the election.”
Jeeves Disapproves
In P. G. Wodehouse’s stories, friction between the valet Jeeves and his employer, Bertie Wooster, usually begins with a new item Bertie is excited about, such as bright purple socks, a white mess jacket or a garish vase. Jeeves’s disapproval shows as a period of coolness between them.
Bertie calls Jeeves’s opposition “hidebound and reactionary.” Usually Jeeves finds a way to help Bertie with a problem, and Bertie agrees to give away the item Jeeves disapproves of.