If your name’s not down, good

It was a gift to Schadenfreude fans everywhere: the British National Party’s membership list leaked on to the internet in what the party, which opposes the Human Rights Act, described as a breach of the Human Rights Act.

Birds have to fly, fish have to swim and FErrets have to ferret around - but it was still a disappointment to scan the list and find it included at least three purported staff and a handful of students at FE colleges.

Other alleged BNP members on the list are proudly boasting of their vocational qualifications, something FErret would normally celebrate, but which seems just a little bit hollow in these circumstances.

Especially when one of them, among the witches, gun-nuts and sword collectors, announces his “NVQ in Slaughtering”.

How he thought such a bloodthirsty qualification would be of interest to the peace-loving consensus-builders of the BNP is a mystery. He should be aware that the preferred PC, Marxist, communist, anti-British terminology is “meat and poultry processing”.

Spot the difference competition

The Learning and Skills Council, October 29: Asked to comment on claims that the company responsible for the botched education maintenance allowance payments, Liberata, was about to be sacked, said “it is not true”.

The Learning and Skills Council, November 19: “The LSC has been in talks with Liberata about the future of the contract for the past four weeks and has decided to move the contract to another supplier.”