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With Old Sparky: "The report on a Green Investment Bank represents a bold and truly brazen grab by capitalism for the entire green enterprise…"

With M.D.: "Many employment contracts still have gagging clauses and most doctors who invoke the Public Interest Disclosure Act to raise concerns about unsafe or fraudulent practice reach a settlement with their employer to prevent concerns being made public. When you look at the experience of those who refuse to be silenced, there’s no great incentive to do the right thing…"

With New Bio-Waste Spreader: "If this ‘super-dairy’ gets the go ahead, many objectors will accuse the farmers behind the enterprise of cruelty to their cows. Others will accuse the supermarkets of cruelty to their dairy farmer suppliers. But the party perhaps most to blame for the industrialisation of British dairying hardly ever gets a mention: the consumer…"

With Dr B.Ching: "It hasn’t taken rail minister Theresa Villiers long to realise that a cardinal rule of transport policy is giving multi-millionaire Stagecoach boss Brian Souter what he wants…"

With Piloti: "A representative from Sandwell council complained on Radio 4 that some of the local schools ‘date back to the 1920s, and clearly that is not conducive to good quality of education.’ Really? Why not? Has the cretinous councillor not noticed that pupils at Eton and Winchester are being educated rather well in much older buildings?…"

With Lunchtime O’Boulez: "German-based publishing house Schott is throwing a tantrum over a British film about Carl Orff, the high-earning composer of Carmina Burana and other macho scores…"

With Bookworm: "Whereas we might have felt a certain indulgence towards Simon Schama as an author of fine unpopular books who is suddenly required by publishers to come up with a book every year, like some Tom Clancy of the campus, we suddenly realise that he is actually proud of this stuff…"

With Slicker: "Topshop billionaire Philip Green was keen to stress just how much tax he and his companies pay, if less keen to talk about how much was paid by his Monaco-based wife Lady Tina. A comforting first-year tax-free income approaching £16million will no doubt take care of life’s little necessities for the Greens. Cocktails in Monaco are certainly not cheap…"

Ratbiter: "Network Rail’s two-day-a-week, £250,000-a-year chairman Rick Haythornthwaite wrote to those who dared raise the Eye’s reports of vast sums going to Iain Coucher and the suppression of allegations of sexual harassment: ‘Whilst I appreciate members would like answers to their specific questions on demand, I hope that they appreciate that a balance must be struck between time spent in the actual delivery of our primary governance role and the time invested in your secondary governance role of seeking assurance on our leadership’…"

For all these stories and much, much, more, buy the latest edition of Private Eye, available now from all good newsagents.

Issue No: 1269
Date: 20th August 2010
Price: £1.50

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Next issue in the shops: 31st August

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