No doubt David Blunkett was within his rights in accepting a company directorship when he left the Cabinet. Whether he should have done so - or whether the rules should have allowed him to do so - are very different matters.

For some of us, Mr Blunkett's swift transfer to a director's chair smacks of the phrase "indecent haste". It suggests strongly that his first priority after signing his letter of resignation was to look after himself.

But isn't that the priority of most, if not all, in government? With the brisk traffic between Cabinet Office and boardroom long before our eyes, we can hardly be blamed for our cynical belief that it is so.

The DNA testing company that Mr Blunkett joined would no doubt find his knowledge and experience as former Home Secretary useful. You can imagine a gleeful chairman rushing from his office: "We've got Blunkett.'' Legal and above board, except perhaps for a possible technical lapse by Mr Blunkett in not informing some rubber-stamping committee or other.

Not for the first time, we have high-ranking colleagues of Mr Blunkett assuring us he is a "decent, honourable man", positively weighed down with "integrity". Naturally. Goes for them all, doesn't it?

Of course it would be taking integrity too far to expect any Cabinet minister to adopt as a guiding principle a determination, clearly stated, not to be available for boardroom-bidding on leaving office. Would it not be truly wonderful if this could be guaranteed without some legal bar, which we badly need, on ex-ministers taking industry's shilling within a stated post-Cabinet period.

Having given up his directorship on returning to the Cabinet, Mr Blunkett is free again to act solely in the best interests of the nation. But since he has already shown himself to be up for grabs by industry, can we be sure that it will always be the good of the nation that is foremost in his mind?

Of course, this question hangs permanently over every British Cabinet. It signals that the rot of our now thoroughly rotten system of government goes to - or rather stems from - the heart.

Beavers are back in the wild. You might expect a country lover like me to be wild (sorry about that) with delight. But I'm not so sure.

The British countryside has changed vastly since beavers were hunted into extinction 500 years ago. Then, it was much more wooded. Its river banks would be far more of a tangle. The rivers' drainage role was less important. Beavers felling young trees and creating dams would make only a minor impact.

But now, enough damage is done to trees by deer and squirrels to make the reintroduction of the beaver, of which six have been released in Cornwall, very questionable.

A long running minor mission of this column is to expose the sheer pointlessness of those April Fool's stories that newspapers persist in publishing. Pointless because better April Fool's stories appear all the time. Here are two I spotted recently. Trained wasps may be used to detect terrorist bombs. Texting meets teamaking: scientists have invented the ReadyWhenUR kettle, switched on by a text message, so you needn't leave your sofa.

A giant casino to make Middlesbrough a "destination''? What a paucity of vision.