Be Fruitful and Multiply

Everyone who deserves it is doing well in Tony's Emporium of Prosperity and Moral Hygiene; and few better than these sterling little chaps. The number of brown rats in Britain has increased by nearly forty per cent since Tony and his chums began dropping their blessings among us.

According to the National Pest Technician Association's survey for 2006, it appears that people are littering, fly-tipping and putting out too much food for the birds; but no doubt such peccadilloes will be soon prevented by the introduction of identity cards. Nevertheless, several other causes of the increase are New Labour through and through. Urban properties are standing derelict, thanks to New Labour's dynamic housing programme. Always ready to provide a disincentive to public health measures, sixty per cent of councils now charge for dealing with rats; so people are less likely to report sightings. Preoccupied with the business of supplying water, for which so many of them are manifestly unqualified, private water companies have neither the time nor the resources to clear rats from their drains.

The brown rat is not an effective carrier for bubonic plague; that talent belongs to its relative, the black rat, which according to Wikipedia thrives mostly in warmer regions, such as Britain is now becoming under New Labour's dynamic environmental policy. Of course, like the war in Iraq, the Great Plague of London was a Good Thing in the end, because it eased overcrowding and paved the way for the Great Fire and Sir Christopher Wren's new design for St Paul's Cathedral, which is a profitable tourist attraction.