You Get the More or Less Scientific Conclusions You Pay For

Daveybloke's badger-busting environment secretary, Owen Paterson, has at last emerged from the discreet silence which surrounded him in the wake of the recent sandbag shortage in southern England. Unfortunately, he has not emerged because of some glamorous action like giving a pensioner his last sandbag or protecting Royalty from a badger onslaught or anything like that. Instead, he has been caught trying to sell off the Food and Environment Research Agency, which investigates things like pesticides, GM crops, bees and other matters of no great concern. Hitherto the agency has been part of the hated public sector, with all the gold-plated pensions and uncommercial values one would expect; but twenty-nine organisations have expressed an interest in taking it over and bringing its ethos into line with that of the faith-based community to which Paterson and his intellectual peers belong. Paterson also plans, if that is the verb I want, to merge the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency with the inspectorates for bees, plant health, seeds and genetically-modified parliamentarians. The new agency will be part of the hated public sector, but no doubt it will be prevailed upon to outsource its duties to a more doctrinally correct provider.