Barnyard Noises

Keep calm and carry on. Everything is under control and nothing can go wrong. This is England and everything's fine. Mustn't grumble. Unfortunately, the enlightened sophistication of such arguments is beyond the grasp of many farmers, because their crude rustic sensibilities cannot rise to that refined degree of intellect which characterises a government whose central religious belief is that you can make a country more prosperous by withdrawing it from trade. Fortunately, the present Environment Secretary, successor to such luminaries as Owen Paterson, Andrea Leadsom and Michael Gove, has been doing what he can to straighten the poor yokels out. As usual, this benignant pedagogy consisted largely in boasting about future funds which may or may not materialise depending on how much the Government cares about flooded peons, as well as assurances to the ruined that there are hundreds of thousands of people far better off than themselves. There was a bit of extra finger-wagging at those who expect ministers to toddle about viewing the damage they have caused, for all the world as though official policy ought to languish under the crypto-foreign lash of mere reality; and the minister was moved to hint that he will push for the Government to deal with its self-created shortage of seasonal workers in much the same way as it has dealt with its self-created shortage of nurses, viz. by telling them how much it reveres them and then squealing that it deserves their most fervent and grateful obedience. George Eustice was apparently born on a farm, though it remains as yet unclear whether he originated in the pigsty or the chicken house; and remarkably enough, there seems some doubt among the peasants as to whether, as Environment Secretary in a government run by Dominic Cummings, he is quite so big a beast as he imagines.