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Joe Lyons
• Although there is, in the ante-room to his Whitehall office, a cupboard well stocked with the makings for a civil service style "cuppa". Mr Joe Lyons, the Government's new director-general of research, is in no way concerned with the tea trade—except, of course, by way of fatuous remarks from people like me who cannot resist allusions to his namesake. Aged 54, he is well used to them, and on a £9000 a year salary can afford to tolerate them.
Mr Lyons took up his latest appointment on February 15—Decimal Day—and was promptly laid low with influenza, "It sounds", he said. "as though I took one look at the job and went sick." He's like that, this broad-shouldered, balding technocrat. In the midst of an erudite discourse on the Gross National. Product he will laugh and make a joke —as he did when I told him that this column is headed "Meet".
But he was very serious about the task that Mr Peter Walker, the Environment Secretary, has given him, which is to coordinate the work that has hitherto been done individually for Ministries and Departments by six separate establishments, the road, water pollution and forest products laboratories and hydraulics, building and fire research stations. Much of his time will be devoted to expanding the application of cost/ benefit analysis, "One of the main tools for deciding priorities", he said. In what order did he rate his priorities? Pollution, being so urgent a problem, was obviously of major importance. Transport? "Very high on the list."
During the past five years, when he headed the Road Research Laboratory, Mr Lyons was building up a transportation division to study such matters as new means of transport, problems of freight movement and car/bus interchanges. One can expect that these exercises will now be accelerated.
Before he went to the RRL Mr Lyons was for 28 years at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, researching on ,aeroengine design, aircraft electronics, guided weaponry and ballistic missiles.
His hobby is making pottery, his favourite sport ski-ing. He lives in Fleet in Hampshire and has seven children ranging from 13 to 27 years of age. B.H.