For and Against National Service | Yes, Prime Minister | Comedy Greats
Why Hacker News recommends it
Linked whenever surveys or polls are suspected of manipulation through question wording.
What it is
A Yes, Prime Minister scene in which Sir Humphrey shows how leading questions can make a poll produce either answer on national service.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2022 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Cites Macha · 2022-05 · on “Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11”
Yes Minister covers it well: [this video] Tell them you're going to have their messages scanned on behalf of the government and nobody wants it. Tell them you're going to introduce measures for online safety and to crack down on child abuse, and everybody wants it. Unless you're pre-informed on the issues, whoever presents it to you can just pick the side that gets you to the answer they want.
Cites OliveMate · 2023-10 · on “It seems Gen Z is just fine with parents knowing where they are all the time”
When talking surveys, it's always imperative to bring up this scene from Yes, Prime Minister which describes how these surveys work - [this video] For reference, National Service was a national conscription service between 1949 and 1963. Since then a lot of conservative-leaning folks have been clammering about saying that bringing it back would fix the badly behaving youth.
Cites dunekid · 2024-05 · on “Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices”
I am not sure how many people were surveyed and what were the questions in these. I am reminded of this from Yes, Prime Minister [this video]
Cites throwaway71271 · 2024-05 · on “Germany may introduce conscription for all 18-year-olds”
> kind of a fringe take (PS: I just finished watching the movie Her and am in a weird place) I thought we are closer to robot soldiers, Geoffrey Hinton said US army wants to have 50% robots by 2030, seems strange to invest in human soldiers when they are gonna have T-800 fairly soon. Is there some populist reason for conscription, or perhaps a weird twist to get into UBI? Reminded me of this episode of Yes, Prime Minister: [this video] are you worried about the raising crime amongst teenagers, do you think there is a lack of discipline in schools, do you think our young people lack authority and leadership in their lives, would you be in favor of introducing national service? are you worried abou
Cites rsynnott · 2025-09 · on “The story of DOGE, as told by federal workers”
It's all about how you ask the question; there would be a lot of people who want a thing _called_ small government, because they have been told that that is a good thing, but the _benefits_ of big government (ideally without the _costs_ of big government, but realistically most people in the US do not care about the deficit; if they did Trump would already have been deposed). Sir Humphrey summarises it fairly well, as usual: [this video]
Cites hnlmorg · 2025-10 · on “You can't build tcc from Nixpkgs if you are in the UK”
Is it popular? I’m a parent and none of my parent friends like it. I suspect this law isn’t popular. Just the messaging of doing nothing is more unpopular. So it gets spun as this is popular. [this video]
Cites SanjayMehta · 2026-03 · on “False claims in a widely-cited paper. No corrections. No consequences”
Social Studies practitioners' surveys, for which they use statistics, depend heavily on the wording of the questionnaire. [this video] It's not a science.
Cites upboundspiral · 2026-05 · on “Iran mulls taking control of all 7 cables passing through Strait of Hormuz”
Your solution (of tackling unemployment by tacking it onto national defense), is eerily close to what they discussed in an episode of Yes Prime Minister in the 80s. [LINK] [this video]