5.8.9 RC1

    There was silence in the office. I didn't know what we were going to do
    about the four hundred new people supervising our economy drive or the
    four hundred new people for the Bureaucratic Watchdog Office, or
    anything! I simply sat and waited and hoped that my head would stop
    thumping and that some idea would be suggested by someone sometime soon.

    Sir Humphrey obliged. 'Minister... if we were to end the economy drive
    and close the Bureaucratic Watchdog Office we could issue an immediate
    press announcement that you had axed eight hundred jobs.' He had
    obviously thought this out carefully in advance, for at this moment he
    produced a slim folder from under his arm. 'If you'd like to approve
    this draft...'

    I couldn't believe the impertinence of the suggestion. Axed eight
    hundred jobs? 'But no one was ever doing these jobs,' I pointed out
    incredulously. 'No one's been appointed yet.'

    'Even greater economy,' he replied instantly. 'We've saved eight hundred
    redundancy payments as well.'

    'But...' I attempted to explain '... that's just phony. It's dishonest,
    it's juggling with figures, it's pulling the wool over people's eyes.'

    'A government press release, in fact.' said Humphrey.

[p76 _The complete Yes Minister // The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister by
the Right Hon. James Hacker MP._ iii "The Economy Drive"]

Currently it's at

    http://www.ccl4.org/~nick/P/perl-5.8.9-RC2.tar.bz2

Please don't publicise that URL outside p5p  - instead

  ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/CPAN/authors/id/N/NW/NWCLARK/perl-5.8.9-RC2.tar.bz2

once it's had time to propagate to CPAN's mirrors. I'll post the announcement
to use.perl tomorrow evening, and all being well (unlike last time) the
release will be in 8 days*

On the subject of press releases (but hopefully not *government* press
releases), I've mailed TPF on the subject, but haven't yet heard back.

Nicholas Clark

*   But note that the above is only another 30 pages or so further in, this
    time from the third episode. With 18 more episodes, and *then* 12 of Yes
    Prime Minister**, there are *plenty* of good quotes left, so we're quite
    safe even if we need more release candidates than MySQL 5.1 should have
    had.***

**  http://www.jonathanlynn.com/Books/Complete_Yes_Prime_Minister/complete_yes_prime_minister.htm

*** http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2008/11/oops-we-did-it-again-mysql-51-released.html

• 5.8.9 RC1 by Nicholas Clark
• 5.8.9 RC2 (was Re: 5.8.9 RC1) by Nicholas Clark
• Re: 5.8.9 RC2 (was Re: 5.8.9 RC1) by Alberto Simões
• Re: 5.8.9 RC2 (was Re: 5.8.9 RC1) by Renée Bäcker
• Re: 5.8.9 RC2 (was Re: 5.8.9 RC1) by Rainer Tammer
• Re: 5.8.9 RC2 (was Re: 5.8.9 RC1) by Rainer Tammer