Chapter 162: Yes, Minister (Edited)

The new Secretary of State for Administrative Affairs, Jim Hacker, has been in hot water lately. One commentator posted an article attacking the bureaucracy, in which Hacker was mentioned (not good, of course, to appear in such an article), saying that Harker had failed to deliver on his political promise to streamline the administration, which is a crushing blow to a politician. "Hacker must be fired, at least to save one man's paycheck," a statement that so frightened Hacker that he resolved to launch a "savings campaign."

As a newcomer to politics, Hacker still had a certain goodness about him and was really willing to do something, so he was really willing to make good on his promise, which naturally met with savage resistance from officials.

Then, after the "Thrift Movement" began, Hacker's life was inconvenient. His chauffeur had been transferred, the "tea lady" was gone, his secretary Bernard had no subordinates, had to do everything himself, and was as busy as clockwork. The night cleaner was also dismissed, which caused the cleaning schedule to be changed to daytime and noise filled the administrative affairs department.

A more deadly event came later, when "by mistake" the paperwork Hacker was supposed to discuss with others about layoffs was sent to the union reps, and it was a layoff! The union rep couldn't take it and organized to "beat up" Hacker.

It so happened that the room was leaking and it rained all night. Tonight, Hacker had a banquet arranged by the French ambassador to attend. As a result, on the way to the French embassy, it rained heavily and Hacker's car shut down. It rained hard, as the saying goes, "All fortunes come and all fortunes go together, and heroes are not free." Hacker's wife, Annie, couldn't take it anymore and turned around and went home. Hacker went to the embassy in the rain, not daring to miss the party. The French hold grudges the most, and it would have been a very bad diplomatic thing if Hacker had broken his promise this time.

How narrow-minded are the French? As small as a foreign student defending in English, if he dares to defend in English, he will face endless questions that will make him doubt his life, feel like a loser, and finally the professor will add: why is he defending in English?

"You have to learn French!" That's what teachers like to say, whatever the subject.

If you defend in French, the world line changes. No matter what your accent is, professors will keep a cheerful mood and finally say in a very friendly way, "Wow, you did a great job with your presentation.... I have a few more questions here..."

It's not hard.

When Hacker arrived at the French embassy, he was in a sorry state like a tramp, and at first the French didn't believe him: with the state of a British minister, it's hard not to have a bus....

As a result, when the ambassador came out, he was surprised to discover that this guy was actually the minister of the British Empire!

After Hacker had had enough to eat, put on clean clothes and drunkenly left the embassy, the rain had stopped. The French had kindly made a Renault available to Hacker, but the "careless" staff had forgotten to give Mr. Hacker a driver.

He went to the borrowed car, but the keys fell into the gutter and he had to drop to the ground and try to retrieve them. He was in a sorry state and, to top it off, his appearance was photographed by two reporters.

This is what Harker was going through when Tom met him.

Hacker nearly collapsed.

Seeing how drunk he was, Tom walked up to him, pointed to the drain, and Hacker's car keys went flying.

"Sir, your car keys." Tom handed him the keys.

"Ah, thanks, hip-" Hacker hiccupped, took the keys and opened the door with a shaky hand, sat on the passenger side and made a motion to hold the steering wheel.

"Why didn't the steering wheel respond when I turned it on today? What's wrong with my accelerator? Huh? The brakes are gone too!"

Tom covered his face: this guy was really drunk! Wouldn't it be a death sentence to let him drive in that state? If he got caught by the police, it would be very troublesome, wouldn't it?

At this point, Tom didn't know who Hacker was; he only knew the Prime Minister as far as political figures were concerned, but not the Speaker of the House or the Leader of the Opposition. After all, in this day and age, the medium of information is still newspapers and television, and ministers like Hacker don't get much exposure.

In the 1990s, even 30 years later, when information flowed at the speed of light, the average citizen would only know the British Prime Minister and perhaps the Speaker of the House, who liked to shout "order."

If he knew Hacker's identity, at least he wouldn't worry about the police arresting him. Ministers of Hacker's level had something called a "traffic silver badge," a privilege granted to ministers by the Crown, which allowed them to drive into police lines or stop in places where parking was not allowed: theoretically useless for drunk driving, but in practice immune.

Traffic police could only report up the chain of command, and ministers only had to make one trip to the Home Office to make sure they hadn't made a mistake and were safe. If it was the honeymoon period with the Cabinet Secretariat, there was no need to go to the Home Office.

Tom looked at Hacker in the passenger seat, struggling to get the car started, and realized that the man was now unconscious. He considered that it would be irresponsible to leave him here, and irresponsible to pedestrians. Out of sympathy, Tom scratched his head and said to Ron, who was standing behind him, "You can drive a normal car, can't you?"

Ron poked his head out of the car window, looked at the dashboard and confidently expressed that he could definitely drive this car.

Thanks to the fact that there weren't too many car jobs in the 1990s, Ron can drive a Ford and, of course, he can also drive a French Embassy Renault.

"Repair!"

"Aguamenti!"

A jet of water spurted from the tip of Tom's wand, and the cold water hit Hacker's face, followed by a flash of light, and the next moment Harker was awake and his alcohol-numbed brain was in motion again.

"Ah, I... Oh, thank you!" He replied, mumbling his thanks and awkwardly trying to climb awkwardly into the driver's seat.

Tom looked up at the completely darkened night sky and the empty street, it would be hard to get a cab at this hour, so he stopped Hacker, "Sir, you're too drunk to drive, so we'll give you a ride home. But in return, could you lend us your car and we'll take you to Charing Cross?"

Hacker hesitated for a couple of seconds and agreed. He was confident, this was London, he was a cabinet minister, they weren't going to steal his car, MI6 agents weren't useless, maybe they couldn't do anything about American and Soviet spies, but they could catch a car thief no problem.

"Sure!" He readily agreed, then gave up the driver's seat and gave Tom his address.

When the car started, Tom asked Hacker, curiously, "Why did two journalists just take a picture of you?"

"Reporters? What reporters?" Hacker, who had been in the car and was a little drunk, sobered up and immediately realized the seriousness of the problem: he was defending a "conservation campaign" and was lying drunk in the street.

He could already think of tomorrow's newspaper headlines: 'Savings guru drunk in drainage ditch after champagne reception', 'Hacker exhausted and out of control after ambassador's reception', 'Minister of State for Administrative Affairs overexcited like a fool'."

He slumped helplessly in his seat, "I'm Hacker, just a guy down on his luck..."

"Hacker?" Tom immediately turned his head to look at the man, indeed, decently dressed, odds were good, "That Hacker?"

"Yeah, that Hacker, have you heard of me?" Harker looked up.

"Yeah, the driver mentioned you earlier in the cab, he thinks you're going to be relieved of your duties soon."

Hacker covered his face.

Suddenly, Tom had a bold idea.

"Mr. Hacker, it looks like we can help you," he said, asking Ron to stop the car immediately, now that the two reporters hadn't gone far, and he saw the corners of his clothes disappearing around the corner.

Before the car could stop, he jumped out of it and ran toward the two reporters. They weren't journalists, they were just paparazzi who took pictures of celebrities and sold them to newspapers.

They were animatedly discussing which newspaper they should sell their photos to when Tom came running toward them at a fast pace. The paparazzi's instincts made them realize something was wrong, so they tried to run away.

"Obliviate!" There were two flashes of white light and the two men looked dazed and confused, and Tom took the opportunity to grab his camera and pull the film out of it.

When they came back to reality, Tom was already gone.

The two men had completely forgotten the events of the night.

"Phew..." Tom exhaled and passed the film to Hacker, "Here's the negative, stay with it. Don't worry, no one will remember what happened tonight."

Hacker: "!!!!"

"Not the...," he panicked a little, the man in front of him had not silenced the two paparazzi!

"Don't worry, no one was hurt." Tom realized right away that Hacker had misunderstood, "If you're not sure you'll be able to read the papers tomorrow, I promise it will be as if nothing happened tonight."

Hacker was still looking suspicious and unenthusiastic. But he relaxed considerably as Ron drove the car home with his guide.

"Anyway, thanks for today." Hacker shook hands with Tom and the others, "Why don't you go upstairs and have a hot cup of tea before you go?" Hacker looked at his apartment and thought thoughtfully. Out of politeness, he offered the three boys an invitation.

Naturally, Tom was more than happy to oblige, so five minutes later they were in Harker's living room with a black tea prepared by Annie, Mrs. Hacker.

"Doesn't your situation sound optimistic?"

When they met, they didn't just drink the tea, but naturally got to talking, and the conversation turned to Hacker's own situation.

Hacker sighed, "Things are not going very well at the Ministry of Administration, as you know, I took the initiative to start a savings campaign, and I just found out that in order to implement my campaign, the Ministry has to add four hundred civil servants! Let them do an exhaustive study, let them gather facts and figures..."

Hacker looked exceptionally frustrated.

"All these measures require manpower," Hacker reached for his black tea, which by now he felt like replacing with whiskey, so he could get drunk, "And if I'm going to insist on getting the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Conquest up and running, I'm going to have to add another four hundred new positions! Damn it!"

Tom, Harry and Ron: "..."

Everyone saw something strange, obviously, some people were dissatisfied with Hacker's new policy, so they adopted this attitude of passive resistance.

When Hacker came to the issue, he felt a big headache and didn't know what to do.

Tom thought for a while, "I have an idea, maybe I can help you."

"Oh?" Hacker was a little more animated, but he wasn't too hopeful: what could a middle-aged, enthusiastic man of unknown origin and two small children come up with?

"You could suspend the savings campaign, stop construction of the building department's inspection office, and then you could put in a press release that you've managed to cut eight hundred jobs."

Huck: ah this ...

"In fact, I'm sure your cabinet secretary has one of those proposals already drafted in his hand, just waiting for you to sign it!"

Harker: "!!!!"

What little conscience he had left made him hesitate a little, "But no one has filled those positions yet!".

"Then you can still count the eight hundred layoffs as performance." Tom didn't care about that, Hacker needed a solution, so he proposed it, and it didn't have a bad impact anyway. Britain's problems could not be solved by a savings campaign. The country was like a broken-down car going downhill, you could leave the brakes on, but it was better not to turn around and end up stepping on the accelerator.

"You've just taken office and you shouldn't reveal too much ambition when you're not on a firm footing. Once you know the department, you can deploy people to do what you want."

The words struck a chord with Hacker.

Tom looked at the wall clock, "By this time, your secretary should be asleep, why don't you call him and tell him to get the proposal ready?"

Hacker and Tom looked at each other and smiled, sensing this would be a lot of fun.

"Humphrey~," Hacker's voice soon rang through the room, full of energy.

"Yes, Minister!" The conversation ended in an old, weak, sleepy voice. When he hung up the phone, Hacker only felt refreshed.

Annie frowned thoughtfully and said, "Honey, you seem to have forgotten to ask Humphrey to put in the severance pay."

"Ha! Good." Hacker picked up the phone and Annie pressed, "Call him back in fifteen minutes."

The two looked at each other and laughed.

The mood in the living room was much more cheerful after twice managing to rouse Sir Humphrey, who had been causing Hacker trouble, from sleep. Hacker and Tom had a more pleasant chat.

"I'm not going to lie, but I'm a fiction writer and cartoonist, and these two are like my students." Tom opened his mouth with various identities, "A minister like you must have a lot of great stuff, right?"