Changes

==Portrayal of the Civil Service==

==Portrayal of the Civil Service==

Within the programme, the elected officials and ministers are portrayed as being controlled almost exclusively by the civil servants, who have been in their posts for much longer as they are not elected. The Civil Service is portrayed as being hideously overstaffed and overpaid and resistant to change anything about itself. Virtually all of the civil servants are upper-class with a grammar school/Oxford education but with little real understanding of the common people. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher commented that the portrayal of government was surprisingly accurate.

Within the programme, the elected officials and ministers are portrayed as being controlled almost exclusively by the civil servants, who have been in their posts for much longer as they are not elected. The Civil Service is portrayed as being hideously overstaffed and overpaid and resistant to change anything about itself. Virtually all of the civil servants are upper-class with a grammar school/Oxford education but with little real understanding of the common people. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher commented that the portrayal of government was surprisingly accurate.