Lowe's brush with fox

The dawn raiders have been raided. Staff at the Commission's competition department were surprised last week to find a fox in the enclosed garden behind the departmental library. The authorities had to admit to a breach of security. “He wasn't wearing a badge,” Philip Lowe, the director-general, said, adding that the visitor was “very inquisitive – so we assumed at first that he must be working for a law firm”. DG Comp officials speculated that the unauthorised visitor might be a spy from Rupert Murdoch's Fox Television or someone seeking revenge for a 2004 steel tubes cartel case, which famously disputed the significance of the phrase “neutralise Fox”.
Lowe is capable of fox-like cunning himself, so naturally he turned his suspicion on other departments. Perhaps Vulpus vulpus was a plant from nearby DG Agriculture. “I called up Director-General Jean-Luc Demarty and he denied it absolutely.” But how to get rid of the visitor? Although DG Competition officials are supposed to be expert in analysing rescue aid, they cannot actually practise it and, having alerted Demarty to the presence of the fox, the prospect loomed of a clash between biodiversity fanatics from DG Environment and DG Agriculture ‘chasseurs', baying for blood. Lowe was obliged to ask the Commission's Buildings and Infrastructure Office to bring in some specialists who shipped the roaming Renard off to the Forêt de Soignes.