Waste Ground

Still smarting from its failure to sell off Britain's forests, the greenest government ever is plotting to concrete over the country's national parks. Nick Boles, who warned earlier this year that the approaching property bubble would mean building on any ground which the Department of Badger-Busting considered "environmentally uninteresting", has returned with yet more dire predictions. It appears that some rural communities are in danger of becoming "embalmed"; in other words, preserved from the ravages of time. This sort of thing is not looked upon with favour by the modernised Conservative Party, whose ideals for twenty-first-century Britain incorporate Victorian sanctimony, Regency corruption and Imperial foreign policy. Nick Boles is concerned that, without a few supermarkets, office blocks and car parks, the unfortunate communities will become as empty and lifeless as the deserted, depressing wasteland that is Yosemite National Park.