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Politicians and ministers, even Prime Ministers, come and go. But the bureaucrats and the Little Napoleons among civil servants get to stay. That's the reality in a Westminster-modelled government.

Of late, I have watching again-and-again the old BBC series, Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. One must learn how to out-smart the civil servants and it's tough, especially in Pakatan Rakyat-run states.

It's even tougher for a federal minister when he has to dress down a senior civil servant, someone like the Secretary-General of a ministry that deals with information machinery, like one Datuk K, or when to catch another with conflict of interests at work and at play.

I particularly like the lines in Episode Four, Second Season of Yes Prime Minister (1987-1988), titled: A Conflict of Interest. I'd like to ask you how much you know about the Malaysian press?

Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers:

• The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country;
  
• The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country;
  
• The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country;
  
• The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country;
  
• The Financial Times is read by people who own the country;
  
• The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country;
  
• And The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?

Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.

If I may, please help me to replace the British newspapers with Malaysian ones. Could we have a list?

BY THE WAY... Do you know the source of inspiration to Donald Rumsfeld's The Unknown? Try this, from Episode Eight, Season Two of Yes Prime Minister:

Hacker professes inculpability, on the grounds that he never knew.

Bernard: The fact that you needed to know was not known at the time that the now known need to know was known, and therefore those that needed to advise and inform the Home Secretary perhaps felt that the information that he needed as to whether to inform the highest authority of the known information was not yet known, and therefore there was no authority for the authority to be informed because the need to know was not, at that time, known or needed.

Them civil servants!