EVER heard of an outfit called Qinetiq? Me neither. What about the Defence and Evaluation Research Agency? Same again.

Well, until 2001 Qinetiq WAS the Defence and Evaluation and Research Agency. For how long it had operated under that title I'm not sure. Probably not all that many years. For Qinetiq/the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency is simply - or perhaps not so simply - the defence-research arm of the Ministry of Defence. Among its gifts to the world are the liquid crystal display and microwave radar, much superior to the original.

In 2002, the Government partly privatised the agency. A 31 per cent stake was taken by a US investment company, the Carlyle Group. Now, the Government is reportedly about to complete the sell-off of this important public asset, which is to be floated on the Stock Exchange.

The company's predicted value of £1.1bn will lift the worth of Carlyle's stake to £341m - a tidy gain on the £42.4m it laid out less than four years ago. Some individual profits will be no less handsome. The Qinetiq chairman, Sir John Chisholm, is likely to see the value of his original £129,000 investment swell to a bloated £20m. But pity the poor fellow and similar Carlyle beneficiaries. For there is likely to be an arrangement preventing them from cashing their shares immediately.

This "lock-in" clause is, of course, a token, hollow gesture aimed at quenching criticism of the deal. But where is the concern?

In 1986, at the height of the Thatcher era, this sell off would have provoked widespread outrage. Now, the signs are it will barely register with the public. We have largely ceased to protest, not because we are any less dismayed by the profit-driven shift of assets from public to private hands, often lining pockets in the process, but simply because we recognise that that's the way it now is.

Meanwhile, here in the North-East the Government continues its assault on democracy. The ranks of its storm-trooping force, the development agency One NorthEast, expanded by 50 per cent last year - from 225 to 338.

Amazing when you consider that 78 per cent of voters in the region's referendum rejected an elected assembly. The unelected North East Assembly, virtually the parent body of One NorthEast, holds sweeping powers, for instance on new housing and industrial developments. Why don't the elected authorities confront it, by ignoring its diktats? Yes, this would mean confronting the Government too, which requires the local authorities to work to the assembly's brief. But why not? Someone has to.

MEDICAL scientists in France have come up with a finding that will surprise no-one fond of Britain's lonely places - like our Pennine hills or the North York Moors. Silence is not simply the absence of sound, but a positive thing, to which the brain listens as attentively as to a noise.

Though the scientists don't say so, there are degrees of silence. I've always maintained that the midwinter silence, especially, of the North York Moors is therapeutic: you can almost feel it soaking into you - and doing you good. The French scientists believe such profound silence could have a role in certain rehabilitation programmes. But alas, most people today seem unable to live without noise.

SIR Jimmy Savile says he would appear on Big Brother for £3 if it was in Yorkshire. As a fellow Yorkshireman I would do my damnedest to conceal any connection with the ghastly show.