The Thin End of the Hedge

In a superb access of Britishness, His Majesty's Government trumpeted an environmental improvement plan more ambitious than the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee, only to admit two months later that many of its thousands of miles of proposed hedgerows are in fact already in existence. The Minister for Turds and Turnips has announced that targets initially touted as new hedgerows are in fact targets for the eventual total; which means that the CCC's recommendations are to be exceeded only in the Johnsonian sense of the term. Evidently the standards of proof-reading in the exalted halls of Westminster have declined to levels below those attained on a daily basis by, among others, your humble correspondent. It would certainly be too much to infer that, even with targets which His Majesty's Government patently doesn't care about and has no intention of fulfilling, the standard dodge of presenting previously allocated funds as new investment has penetrated the secretarial subconscious and is now being applied by default.