What’s all this? The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection are recruiting for a new Chief Executive. But it was less than two years ago that they announced the appointment of a new Chief Executive - Adolfo Sansolini.

At that time his appointment was described as “an exciting new episode in the BUAV’s long history”. Obviously it was not exciting enough.

Whatever the reason, we can understand why this top job has become vacant again. After all, what do rats do when the ship is sinking?

I only heard Mr Sansolini on the radio once. Without putting too fine a point on it, he was hopeless at getting any sort of argument across. During his almost two-year tenure, his organisation, with a budget of around £3 million, got less profile than an enthusiastic bunch of Oxford students with an expenditure of less than £3,000.

So will the new person fare any better? The job advertisement is asking for a dynamic, forward thinking, visionary and pragmatic leader with a high intellect, integrity, energy and creativity. Some hope! How BUAV squares that with the need to conform to the distorted, narrow-minded, old-fashioned, scientifically illiterate and hopelessly ill-informed approach of antivivisection is a mystery.

Our prediction: BUAV is going downhill, and fast.