THERE’S nothing ministers like better after a hard week’s work than a bit of televised doom - in someone else’s department.
So newly-appointed Minister of State Estelle Morris tuned in for a dose of health service chaos on the weekend’s double bill of Casualty. But she was horrified to find the plot hijacked by a secondary school of staggering incompetence.
First, she explains, a youth apprehended for making threats was allowed to keep his knife - for fear, bafflingly, of pressure from the governors. Then, when the school burned down, as they do, the headteacher turned out to have given two separate classes at opposite ends of the building to a single supply teacher.
Most implausible, says Ms Morris. Fearing for her own blood pressure, she has promised a stiff letter to the BBC.
