The eponymous Des Browne.
Photograph: Steve Parsons/PAFew people ever talk about this, but for all the glottal stops and call-me-Tonyism of the New Labour era, the government has been remarkably resistant about letting any of its bodies go by the easy-going name of Des. Compare the supposedly vital "F" that makes the Department for Education and Skills the DfES, while the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs gets by fine without one as Defra.
Political blog Iain Dale's Diary carries the striking news that this tradition is almost broken. More astonishingly, it is in the Ministry of Defence - where the secretary of state also goes by the name of Des. Dale clearly finds it amusing:
"Even by the standards of NuLab, it seems a bit much that the secretary of state should be naming part of his empire after himself!"
The technical detail here is that the Defence Procurement Agency is to be merged with the Defence Logistics Organisation to form Defence Equipment & Support - or DE&S in the acronym-loving world of public administration. The bureaucratic planners who drew this up are presumably counting on everyone, not least the defence secretary, Des Browne, pronouncing that all important "&".
