Hot Air

As we all know, because Daveybloke has informed us of it, the modern Conservative party is a party of pretty straight sorts of chaps. Daveybloke believes in fairness and looking after the small folk, so Daveybloke has reduced his own salary and thereby sacrificed money he doesn't need in order to justify his next-door neighbour depriving people he doesn't care about of the money they do need. Daveybloke believes in economic efficiency, so Daveybloke has thrown what passes for his political weight behind a fiscal policy which risks pushing the country into a longer and deeper recession. As he recently reported back to Mike Freer, Daveybloke is vaguely in favour of keeping the planet habitable provided that adequate profits can be made from the enterprise; which is no doubt why Daveybloke's Cuddly Defra has stood up to its responsibilities by shunting the blame for London's atrocious air quality onto the London Haystack. The EU environment commissioner observed that air pollution "reduces human life expectancy by more than eight months on average and by more than two years in the most polluted cities and regions", thus neatly summarising the advantages of London's present conditions from the viewpoint of the pensions crisis. Naturally, New New Labour's pitiful efforts at greenwashing will quickly be axed by George the Progressively Osborne, partly as a gift to his party's chums in the oil, airport and nuclear industries and partly as a placatory offering to the Huntin', Shootin', Fishin' and Windmill-kickin' crowd on the back benches. As a pathfinder for Daveybloke's Big Society, where all good chaps do their bit without interference from Stalinist bureaucracy, the London Haystack has done so much for the greening of the city that Britain now faces unlimited fines for having breached EU safety rules; how reassuring that at least some of the money George is saving us will go in a good cause.