Gove Does It Again

Britain's best argument in favour of entomophagy, Michael Gove, has been having trouble with his figures again. Now that he has successfully arranged for every state school to have a signed copy of the Bible, Gove sees no reason why non-private pupils should waste their time playing sports on spaces which could be put to better use by supermarkets and the like. Ministers at the Department for Juvenile Resource Preparation have approved the sale of thirty-one school pitches, and in five cases during the past fifteen months the approvals have been against the advice of Gove's own experts. Gove has not seen fit to explain why he knows best, which is perhaps a wise move for a supposed education secretary who doesn't know the difference between thirty-one and twenty-one.

Among the ten schools which were omitted from Gove's original disclosure was one which had hosted the Olympic flame and which is now selling off part of its land to Tesco; self-evidently, the reason for the omission was the technicality of the school's academy status, rather than news management or the mysteries of Govean calculus. "Playing fields are better protected under this government than at any time before," Gove told the BBC; which in Gove's own terms is no doubt perfectly true. A playing field with a Tesco's on top of it is about as protected as anyone could hope for, assuming one wished to protect it from being played on.