Breathing British is a Privilege Not a Right

Well, here's a thing: despite the pellucid clarity of its pronunciamenti and the empyrean cleanliness of its rhetoric, when it comes to improving air quality the Government has been accused of dragging its feet. Four separate Commons committees made a series of joint recommendations in March, and in response the Government proclaimed that we are so far ahead of everyone else that any further action would be unsporting. Although we have the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove rather than anything so passé as an actual Environment Secretary, air pollution in the Recrudescent Imperium continues to cause some forty thousand premature deaths a year; but not generally among the kind of people the Conservative Party cares about. It is true that an interfering foreigner has accused the Government of flouting its duty to protect the health of the country's citizens; however, since Tin-Pot Tessie has withdrawn the privilege of citizenship from all subjects who disagree with her, this is a somewhat smaller problem than it might at first appear.