PRICE: NIL
Director warns of Whitehall plot to make the Bureau look like a bit of fun
Other departments are “rattled” by the national dog screening programme, says the Director, and have gone to the papers.
This week The Observer published an article about the Bureau under the headline “Is your dog rightwing? Meet the man who can tell you”. The Bureau has read it carefully. It has read it again, slowly, in a darkened room. It has reached a troubling conclusion.
The article treats the screening of the nation’s dogs for far-right views as a light-hearted matter. It calls the Bureau a website. It suggests the whole operation was built by one man with a computer. The Bureau does not believe that a serious Sunday newspaper arrived at these conclusions on its own. Somebody has been briefing.
The Bureau knows why. In its first week it has screened more than 2,500 dogs, on time, on budget and without a single public inquiry. This has not gone unnoticed in Whitehall, where a number of departments are finding the comparison uncomfortable.
DEPARTMENTS UNDER OBSERVATION
A national telephone line for motorists to report traffic cones they felt were unnecessary. It closed after three years, having removed very few cones. The Bureau, meanwhile, has identified a Jack Russell in Swindon that has been barking at the same traffic cone since 2019. It has not moved the cone either. But it has never once stopped believing.
A plan to give people a few pence back for their empty bottles, first announced in 2018 and still not up and running. The Bureau, meanwhile, has identified a Labrador in Cheltenham that has been returning bottles to the recycling unprompted for years. Nobody cares that much about recycling without an agenda. It is now a person of interest.
Floated in 2020. The Lords remain in London. The Bureau screened a Yorkshire terrier in under a minute.
Faced with a department that works, the rest of Whitehall has done what it always does: it has called the press. The aim is clear. If the public can be persuaded that the Bureau is a joke, nobody will ask why a website can screen 2,500 dogs in a week when a scheme to give people a few pence back for an empty bottle is in its eighth year.
“The Bureau will not be laughed at, except by authorised personnel.”
The Bureau notes that the article finds room for a pug in Rochester, a German shepherd in Brighton and a black Labrador in Ipswich, yet does not mention the Bureau by name once. The Bureau was not asked for comment. It invites readers to draw their own conclusions.
None of this is the fault of the journalist concerned. They were, in the Bureau’s assessment, the unwitting instrument of forces far larger than a Sunday newspaper. The Bureau thanks them for their interest, and holds those forces, whoever they are, entirely responsible.
Those forces should know that the Bureau is not easily intimidated. It has today opened files on the Department for Transport, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the House of Lords, and has asked each to submit its dogs for screening by Friday. Screening continues. The Bureau will not be trivialised.
The DirectorBUREAU OF CANINE POLITICAL AFFILIATION
P.S. Departments wishing to discuss their own delivery record are invited to submit a dog first. The Bureau will deal with it in under a minute, which it suspects is the problem.
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OUT OF CHARACTERWe loved the article, and the journalist was lovely. Read it in The Observer →