Pity Debby Reynolds...Her Majesty Government’s Chief Veterinary Officer. Now the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds ( RSPB ) and New Scientist are going for her too. It seems there is a device called a Rapid PCR machine that can carry out instant diagnosis of diseases like swine fever, foot-and-mouth disease and…yes you got there before me...avian flu. A dozen of these located across Scotland might put the taxpayer back a few hundred thousand pounds but if the technology works and the technicians know how to use it then Debby's avian suspects would be diagnosed at £3 a time in six hours instead of six days.

But the conspiracy thickens. The New Scientist reports that 6 to 7% of birds should test positive for mild forms of bird flu distinct from the H5NI strain. DEFRA found only two cases of low-pathogenicity bird flu in 3343 samples collected in December - 0.06%. Hmmm! Dr Björn Olsen homed in on storage and collection. ‘Swabs should be immersed in a saline solution and then frozen,’ he tells the scientific journal. DEFRA shoves them at the back of the fridge and hopes for the best...or perhaps the worst. We are hearing murmurings from DEFRA about the need to bring free-range flocks indoors, to end organic farming and to ‘monitor’...but never introduce...vaccination. Cock-up or Conspiracy? The DEFRA website sets the tone. Here is DEFRA’s Guidance on Avian Flu. ‘Signs of disease may include increased mortality’.

It’s good to know that the boys at the International Monetary Fund are on the ball. They have just noticed that hedge funds...otherwise known as trust funds for the super-rich...have ‘adopted the practice of significantly leveraging the balance sheets of the companies they have just acquired so as to pay high dividends to themselves straight away.’ No! Surely not? Shock! Horror! Now there’s a surprise. But that’s hedge funds for you.Respectable establishments would not dream of behaving like this.

Actually they would. Yesterday Deutsche Bank was fined ten million dollars for ‘failing to observe proper standards of market conduct.’ Here's why. At 10.30 on 4th March 2004 Deutsche announced the sale of Volvo’s 64 million shares in Scania...a Wallenberg imperial asset...at SEK 234 to 236½ each. By 11.30 Deutsche had received ‘indications of interest’ for less than half. Whoops! This is not supposed to happen. But resourceful to the last David Maslen...boss of Deutsche’s Equity Trading Desk...dashed boldly into LSE's Open Market and bought up another 30% on the bank’s own account...but forgot to mention the identity of the buyer…echoes of Rogue Trader Nick Gleeson.

Of course traders had already noticed thatDeutsche's play was stalling so Scania’s shares slipped to 231½. But after Maslen’s Baring's Splurge they recovered to 233. At 12.30 Deutsche announced that 80% of the Scania shares were spoken for...but failed to mention that they had spoken for many of them themselves. By 1.30 demand for the Scania shares had dribbled to a halt. So, dynamic and resourceful to the last, Deutsche double-bluffed and announced officially that it was buying 10% of the Scania shares.

At 2.30...after four hours of dodgy trading...Deutsche closed the book...it’s really like betting on the horses...and set the offer price at SEK 234. Next day Scania shares opened at SEK 229. Nobody is telling which Nominee Companies and the Hedge Funds traded away on the inside as the Scania share price bobbed up and down between 231 and 237 kronor. But following the announcement of their fine by the Financial Services Authority out came the PR boys. ‘Deutsche Bank voluntarily reported the matter to the FSA and has fully cooperated with its investigation while also carrying out its own detailed internal investigation.’ So that’s all right then.

Despite much opposition Ken Livingston got himself re-elected Mayor of London…he ran the city for the Greater London Council back in the Age of Thatcher…and got the trains, buses and cars running. As a good socialist of the Old Labour persuasion perhaps he should now go for broke and set about squeezing the Golden Square Mile until the pips squeak. Perhaps they will even up sticks and decamp for Delaware or the Cayman Islands where their sleazy business belongs.

One contribution English voters could make to Global Justice would be to elect a party to get the English out of the killingry business with its gun-running and funny money dealings. Ken could start the Clean Slate Party…the CSP. Do we really need these suits walking upon England's mountains green? And were England's pleasant pastures really meant for armament manufacturers? Perhaps it’s time to discover what William Blake meant when he wrote about divine countenances shining forth upon our clouded hills? Surely we can do better than send Gordon Brown running around promising schools for the rest of the world…while ignoring the shocking state of socialist education back home?

What would everybody do after we got out of making weapons and loans? Make love and not war. Make music. We are actually rather good at doing festivals. A lot of us might like to return to the soil as Yeoman Farmers. In 1995 Britain produced 109% of its beef...now it's 71%. Ten years ago we had 476 000 acres of fruit 'n veg under cultivation...now it's 373 000 acres. There were 35 000 dairy farms ten years ago...now it's below 20 000. As a country we do have choices.