Trussing Up the Trees

Britain's Head Boy's token filly at the Department of the Environment has bidden fair to prove herself an even more dazzling excuse for a minister than Owen Paterson. Liz Truss, whose previous achievements include anticipating Jeremy C Hunt's diagnosis of the great British prole's need for Chinese working conditions, has used her first major speech to show that, while Paterson may habitually have talked out of his rectum, Truss can pull numbers from hers. Not just any old numbers either, but big ones with lots of noughts.

Truss has decided that the way to save the environment is to slap a price tag on it, much as a previous token filly tried to do with the forests before being laughed out of office. The ambitions of Truss go a bit further than that: she has had all Britain's soil and rivers valued as well, and has come up with an asking price of "at least £1.6 trillion". The arithmetic involved in this calculation may defeat a lesser mind than that of Liz Truss, a former commercial manager for environmental enthusiasts Royal Dutch Shell plc. For example, it seems that while a tree is alive it is worth fifteen times more than if it is chopped down for timber, apparently on the grounds that all living trees are equally useful and all timber is worth the same, whether it goes to build someting useful or is wasted on roof-rafters for prole-homes. It is as yet unclear what market value would be placed on Liz Truss if she could be used as an umbrella stand or a novelty support for goldfish bowls; but she would certainly be a better bargain than she is at the moment.