Everyone is entitled to their opinion

I'd be the first to agree this is true.

In fact I love a good argument and the more diverse the views the better (well OK, within reason, I admit I abhor racism and I'm unconvinced about PFI...) - after all we have to test our assumptions, right? And where would nights out at the local boozer be without the odd 'heated debate'.

This is probably why I like to start my day with the Today Programme on Radio 4. Well that and the tension release of yelling at the radio in the privacy of ones own home...

Talking of assumptions, I eat a reasonable amount of organic food, particularly organic meat... so I guess I'm assuming its good for me (and, natch, the planet, man); there's a big taste thing too of course, especially with the meat - don't believe me, try it?...

However when Lord Dick Taverne appeared on the Today Programme earlier this week (I contend that one can appear on radio, right?) Anyway, as I was saying, when Lord Dick Taverne appeared in my bathroom earlier this week (shudder), and stated that he had 'no personal interest' in codemning organic agriculture as a con - as he was to do in a speech later that day, my radar was alerted to the sweet smell of lobby-spin.

This simply isn't true. Unless of course he meant no current financial interest. Though I guess he's made a few quid out of his book 'The March of Unreason'. And there was that business with his lobbying firm Prima Europe and 'The Case for Biotechnology', the GPC merger...

Incidentally, political conspiracy theorists will also be interested in the links this Lib Dem Peer, former Labour MP and SDP founder-member, has with an entertaining selection of wanna-be opinion formers (or was that 'distorters') that ranges from Derek Draper, through Lord Sainsbury to Living Marxism's Tracey Brown and Ellen Raphael...

Like I said everyone is entitled to an opinion but I think one has to be clear about where one stands if one is 'engaged', not to say employed. Dick Taverne is certainly engaged, so its ironic that someone who 'is keenly concerned to prevent media distortion in relation to biotechnology' and who claims the media's 'sloppiness' on GM issues is 'undermining the health of our democracy', should be so sloppy about telling Radio 4's listeners what his interest in rubbishing the organic food movement actually is.

I hold no particular torch for GM Watch, and think that failure to give kids the MMR vaccine is socially irresponsible (there is a link but find it yourself - OK, basically I'm just explaining that I'm not a Luddite...) however I see no social advance in developing crops which are designed to survive higher and higher doses of Monsanto weedkillers. One, it harms biodiversity and two, it ties farmers here and in the third world into increasingly dependent relationships centred around single suppliers and, of course, the use of a lot of very specific chemical products, the vast majority of which I'd prefer not to eat.

Taverne, in full flow in defence of GM among other things, co-authored the article 'Over-precautionary tales: The precautionary principle represents the cowardice of a pampered society' (Prospect, September 2002), with Tracey Brown , who is the director of Sense about Science, the lobby group of which Taverne is Chairman. Taverne also once memorably argued in the Lords, 'There is a moral imperative for the Government to do everything they can to encourage and promote the spread of this technology [ie GM]'.

And, by the way, would you trust a man who used to head a firm that lobbied on behalf of BNFL?

I don't know I must just be over-precuationary or something...

...anyway I'm off for a pint and a few fags...