Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, was incandescent. A piece in the Education Guardian by Roger Kline, the University and College Union equality chief, on government plans to cut funding for English for speakers of other languages was "a gross distortion of the truth", he said.
The line that caused most upset was the suggestion that the proposals were the "worst learning and skills decision taken since 1979". This claim, he said, was "choice", given the Tories' 14 per cent cuts in further education funding. What was really "choice" was the typo that transposed 1979 for 1997.