Puce Alert

Gurgles of relief bubbled across the waterscapes of England and Wales today as it emerged that Britain's Head Boy is to take personal charge of the flood relief thingy. An elderly relative of Daveybloke's has been visiting some of the disaster areas and, unlike the democratically-elected Owen Paterson, found time to listen to the afflicted proles and express sympathy with their plight. Evidently the prospect of seeming more out of touch with the real world than the Prince of Wales has galvanised Britain's Head Boy into wishing to appear to be seen to be doing something or other. He is, of course, eminently qualified for dealing with floods; partly because he has the complexion and intellectual substance of a family-sized rubber dinghy, but mostly because he can call meetings of a thingy called Cobra and bluster about making the European Union wait for its money until Britain has dried out a bit. Daveybloke also helped out with a bit of tough and decisive finger-wagging at the Environment Agency, which hasn't done nearly enough despite all the efficiency savings the coalition has imposed, and which is to blame for everything else because it does not believe in dredging. Daveybloke does believe in dredging, because it "did work, frankly, for decades and centuries", rather like horse-drawn vehicles, stone tools, slavery and so forth.