Wonk's return

When cabinets reshuffle, the ripples shift their policy advisers and fixers around as well. No problem for Iain Mackenzie, former University of East Anglia student union president and Southampton Institute press officer, when his boss Ann Taylor was transferred to the whips office - a place for which he was designed by nature and temperament. But there was rather less scope among the racks and thumbscrews for Mrs Taylor's other adviser, Nick Pearce. He had worked in opposition for higher education spokesman Bryan Davies, who risked being a policy expert cast into a policy-free department. A bit rough considering he had only left the Institute for Public Policy Research a few months earlier. But good fortune intervened when the IPPR's education expert Josh Hillman was made head of education policy at the BBC. Pearce will be back at the IPPR from the start of next week.