UK Bureaucrats replace EU Bureaucrats. What are Novichok Nerve Poisons and How Do They Work

Painkiller crystals

The solution to ridding ourselves of EU bureaucracy and bureaucrats is - increasing our own! This is according to a study just released by the Institute for Government independent think tank. It is particularly galling to find that a government that has been cutting public spending in a major austerity program has been dramatically expanding the number of civil servants over six departments to cope with the administrative burden of Brexit, to an anticipated tune of up to £2 bn.

DExEU: adds 650 new staff
DIT: employs 800 extra staff
DEFRA: Harvests 1200 new brexit related staff
Home Office: expects to bring 1500 staff in by September
HMRC: anticipates requiring 3000 to 5000 extra staff by March 2019

Oh, and that is just the start to cover us for the transition, costs will rise in the period afterwards.

Most amusingly, the EU manages to dealing with agriculture, fisheries and the environment with1,657 staff in three departments (457 more than DEFRA)- but that's for all 28 countries including the UK!

Full details can be gleaned from the downloadable PDF from the Institute for Government site.

Some putative Novichok forms

The Prime Minister announced to parliament today that the nerve agent used to poison former double agent  Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, as well as a policeman, was a Novichok agent. 

Novichok agents were developed by Russia with the following aim, according to several sources referenced in Wikipedia:

• To be undetectable using standard NATO chemical detection equipment;
• To defeat NATO chemical protective gear;
• To be safer to handle;
• To circumvent the Chemical Weapons Convention list of controlled precursors, classes of chemical and physical form.

Their name means "Newbie" or "Newcomer"

These nerve agents belong to a class of chemicals known as organophosphates. They target an enzyme important in nerve message transmission, called acetylcholinesterase and stop it from working.

The way it works is as follows:

Source: Macalester on Nerve Agents

Normally a nerve signal releases a compound called acetylcholine from the nerve to get a muscle or gland to act (like putting your foot on an accelerator).

• After transmitting the signal, Acetylcholine is quickly broken down  by an enzyme called acetycholinesterase, to stop the signal from persisting (like taking your foot off the accelerator).

The figure on the left, from Macalester's article on Nerve Agents, shows the process in more detail.

• Nerve poisons stop the acetylcholinesterase from working (they are acetylcholinesterase inhibitors).

• This allows acetylcholine to build up (foot permanently rammed down on the accelerator). 

• The consequences, muscles are locked into permanent action, glands overproduce their hormones. Eyes begin to stream, mucus to flow and important muscles like those for breathing or the heart are locked. That is how they kill.

The Prime Minister has given the Russians 2 days to come up with an explanation how one of their chemical agents was used for an attempted assassination in the UK, potentially endangering a wider group of people.

On a lighter note. I was quite chuffed today to get a request from an US researcher to use some of my fruit fly pictures (of Spotted Wing Drosophila) from another blog for a conference talk they were going to give next week.