Beyond Materialism

Surprisingly enough given its well-known appetite for independent advice and challenge, the faith-based community at Whitehall has gradually divested itself of mere scientists; even more surprisingly, somebody has noticed. The chair of the science and technology committee for the House of Claimants has registered concern at the fact that several government departments do not have chief scientific advisers, and several more have filled the posts in accordance with the Bullingdon-Blairite Cosiness Coefficient, whereby scientific truth is determined in accordance with political agendas and competence is equated with willingness to further the same. The chief scientific adviser at the Department for Faith Schools and Profitable Pedagogy, for example, is an economist (i.e. the Westminster equivalent of court astrologer) whose educational interests are just about sufficient to warrant ticking a box, and whose qualifications include acting as a policy adviser for the department whose policies he is supposedly there to critique. On his advice, the Department for Faith Schools and Profitable Pedagogy now intends to remove practical scientific training from the A level and GCSE syllabuses, so that future generations can appreciate, without the hindrance of materialistic pedantry, the coalition's contribution to their well-being. Presumably the only reason we have not yet been ordered to testify that the sun orbits the earth is that the Bullingdon Club and their chums cannot see the cash value of the assertion.