A Very British Babel

Parliamentarians are "extremely disappointed" to discover that their sycophantic naming of the clock tower at the Palace of Westminster after a prominent tax-dodger will not be enough to lower the bill for its repair. In defiance of beastly foreign Health and Safety rules, the tower is smeared with toxic lead paint and riddled with asbestos in unexpected places; and thanks to the degree of environmental Britishness permitted under the mayoral régime of the People's Haystack, levels of local pollution are highly corrosive. Most appropriately of all given the tower's status as a national symbol, there is bomb damage from the Second World War which nobody has bothered to fix properly. It has even been suggested that there might be a need to employ some sort of expert chronometrical specialist wallah who knows something about clocks; presumably because the clock itself remains in such unpatriotic disrepair as to imply that time in Westminster is moving forward.