In Competition No. 3260, a challenge suggested by a reader, you were invited to reveal the existence of a hitherto unsuspected government department by means of a speech by its minister explaining its important policies.

Among those entries with a distinct whiff of plausibility was Alan Millard’s Department for Silly Talks, which aims ‘to encourage the proliferation of senseless gobbledegook amongst politicians, professional groups and the general population so that anything anyone says becomes too unintelligible to understand’ and to thereby ‘disseminate utter confusion amongst the populace forcing them to accept parliament’s decisions by being too bewildered to challenge them’.