Late last year, the government's nuclear-pushing, badger-biffing, demob-happy chief scientist, Sir David King, stated that a GMO breakthrough in Africa had increased crop yields by 40%-50%. But the project he described had nothing to do with GM crops. He also said Britain was losing 'billions of pounds' a year by not adopting GMO in farming. Brian John, of GM Free Cymru, wondered what this 'fact' was based on. No more than speculation, it seems. Joanne Lawson, of the Government Office for Science, says King's statement 'was intended to reflect the potentially much larger European and global markets that he considers would have existed had public concerns about the new technology been understood and addressed'. John, flabbergasted, wrote back: 'I have never heard such vacuous nonsense. The figures have just been plucked from the air.'