Doing Even More of Even More

Having been forced by legal action to publich its national cleanup plan (those with nothing to hide have no reason to feel accountable to the proles), the Government has retaliated after its usual fashion. The Conservative manifesto included a pledge to "continue to do even more to tackle air pollution", which makes nearly as much sense as Michael Gove's concept of averages; and of course, under the present religious orthodoxy the spending of public money on anything except Trident and tax cuts counts as doing worse than nothing. By a benign coincidence, the Government's new, dynamic initiative means that blame for the country's illegal levels of air pollution will henceforth fall upon local councils, which have been opportunified to clean up their act with a fifty per cent cut in air quality grants.