It's Red Tape Challenge Time

The greenest government ever is to announce the loosening of environmental regulations on such trivia as asbestos, industrial pollution, and protection for wildlife and common lands. The massacre is part of the Red Tape Challenge, a Daveybloke-Osborne game show hosted by Oliver Letwin, the man who thinks the world is in such dire straits because people in the north of England fly about too much. Throwing himself into the Challenge with his best foot in his mouth, Letwin convened a star chamber, ordered the environment to cut its regulation from several thousand pages down to fifty, and left it to get on with things. Letwin did not invite the Government's environmental token and failed forest salesbeing, Caroline Spelman, to debut at his court, and Spelman has retaliated with the observation that Osborne's sworn enemy, the EU habitats directive, may not be as bad as all that: half of one per cent of affected projects have suffered problems, and what problems there have been are not achieving resolution through abolishing the rules. What is likely to be achieved, however, is that the environmental and financial costs of the ostensible money-saving exercise will fall upon the taxpayers, the poor and the future, rather than on anyone Daveybloke is likely to want to be chums with.