Talk is No Object

Britain's Head Boy has taken time off from his half-hourly COBRA meetings, and has convened a special assembly of prefects and ink monitors to try and find a better way to deal with the floods than throwing Eric Pickles at the victims. As the chief salesman for a government which has cut the budget for climate change adaptation by forty per cent in a single year, Daveybloke also wagged the finger at the rest of Big School, proclaiming on regional radio that everyone else had to do better next time. For his own part, Daveybloke intends to have a bit of a chat to his chums in the railway companies about letting the proles use first-class carriages in areas where transport disruption exceeds the national average. Daveybloke also intends to have a bit of a chat to his chums in the energy cartel about being "socially responsible", by which he presumably means that the next round of price increases ought to be a bit more tactfully managed than the last one. Daveybloke also said he did not intend to take sides about dredging, before saying that not dredging had been a mistake and that he supported dredging, especially where it made a difference. In a sudden glorious triumph of backseat generosity over localism, one of Daveybloke's spokesbeings ordained that councils should not charge for sandbags. Meanwhile, Nick Clegg said that he had not bestowed his own presence on any flood-hit areas without first checking whether a visit from Nick Clegg would be worthwhile to somebody or other.