Rehabilitating Recidivism

Compassionate Conservatism, as formulated and practised by the late Head Boy, decrees that everyone above a certain income bracket deserves a second chance; and it appears that the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK is prepared to show similar clemency in the case of the environmental criminals who have spent the past few years steadily poisoning the plebs. Pollution levels from nitrogen dioxide have been illegal since 2010, much to the indignation of Tim Farron, whose party during the Conservative administration of the time was evidently out the back mending a puncture on Boris Johnson's bicycle. The Government was defeated in court over the pollution levels eighteen months ago; it promised to mend its ways and has now been hauled back into court and defeated again because it has continued to break the law. In line with the present religious orthodoxy, ministers relied on projections which accentuated the positive and didn't do the country down, while treating with appropriate disdain the nasty, pessimistic, unpatriotic opinions of people who merely knew what they were talking about. Fortunately, as in the cases of Coulson, Hunt, Fox and others of similar fragrancy, the provisions of compassionate Conservatism decree that mistakes are there to be learned from, and even promoted for; especially if they are the tough, ambitious, patriotic sort of mistakes that can lead to fifty thousand excess deaths a year.