Our Fingers Belong in Pies, Not Dikes

Mere bureaucrats are once more seeking to undermine the benevolent efficiency of the faith-based community at Westminster. The Committee on Climate Change, which ought to be advising Owen Paterson how best to keep badgers from causing hosepipe bans at the Daily Mail, has instead expended its energies upon the recent minor discrepancy in flood defence spending. The Government's own scientists have identified floods as the most damaging likely impact of global warming on the UK, so it was only to be expected that cutbacks would be made; and the CCC has calculated that the efficiency savings so far achieved amount to all of £750 million, at a likely cost of only £3000 million in future damages. Still, shale-frackers use water, so we can rejoice that there'll be plenty of it.

As may be imagined, the previous rabble would have done no better. If, as Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, the Bullingdon Club proposed to let something rot, the Reverend Tony's Glorious Successor would have had that same something demolished by terror suspects dressed in orange day-glo before the month was out, for fear of looking soft on environmentalists. Anyway, a spokesbeing was duly extruded to proclaim that the present rabble is spending more than ever before on flood defences, provided that money which hasn't been spent yet is taken into account; the spokesbeing then let fly with an unnerving rant about what might be spent under the second and third Bullingdon administrations assuming that Owen Paterson and his chums can amass enough fingers on which to count it all.