Stagnant

Fourteen per cent of English rivers have a small enough sewage content to be of good ecological standard, and none are of good chemical status: an improvement of nil or less since the Environment Agency's last publication of the data four years ago. Treacherously, the devolved governments in Wales and Scotland have acceptably clean waterways in over sixty per cent of cases, doubtless as a result of emulating the Nazi-Soviet bureaucracy of the beastly Euro-wogs. Since the Secretary of State for the Environment self-evidently has better things to do than worry about the environment, his ministry extruded a filly who admitted that the data did not make her comfortable and said that somebody ought to do something about it. During less unsettled times the Government did allow that it might get around to the problem by 2027, but as people aren't praising it enough the deadline has been blurred into the more comfortable "as soon as possible."