Alex Allan, the High Commissioner to Australia between 1997 to 1999, is a career civil servant who is undoubtedly a fine choice to succeed Sir Hayden Phillips as permanent secretary at the Department for Constitutional Affairs.
His official Whitehall CV drives home the point - former principal private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, under-secretary for international finance and for general expenditure policy, and principal private secretary to former Prime Minister John Major.
But for those who would like an even greater insight, Obiter suggests a visit to Mr Allan's own Web site (www.whitegum.com).
Here we discover that 'the thing that's taking most of my time at the moment is chairing the Rottnest Island taskforce...
Rottnest Island is a government-owned island about 20k from the mainland off Perth.
It is a favourite holiday destination for Western Australians, and has a beautiful, unspoilt coastline.
It is also home to the quokka, a small marsupial that gave the island its name when early Dutch explorers mistook it for a rat'.
The site is also full of entertaining pictures of Mr Allan cycling and windsurfing around Oz.
There is even a shot of 'Alex and a sheep (inspecting a prize marino ram at the Royal Easter Show)'.
But perhaps most interestingly, we learn from the site that Mr Allan is a deeply committed fan of 60s West Coast pot head rock band, The Grateful Dead.
Indeed, a whole section of the site is devoted to 'Alex's Grateful Dead song and lyric finder'.
Perhaps this really does signal a significant change of mood in relation to drugs policy in the Blair government.
Regardless, Obiter would like to remind the 53-year-old Mr Allan of the salutary lyrics of another singer-song writer, former Eagle Don Henley, who wrote in his 1970s song, The Boys of Summer: 'Out on the road today, I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac; A little voice Inside my head said, "Don't look back.
You can never look back"'.
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