Beaver, Away

Connoisseurs of the Department for Effluent, Fracking and Reactionary Antagonism will rejoice that the Government appears to be reverting to traditional British values on the beaver question. Hunted to extinction in the sacred name of commerce while Britain was becoming great for the first time, the animals have recently been reintroduced into the wild, where their dam-building and wetlands-condoning behaviour tends inescapably to create an environment which favours insects, birds and bats over sewage dumping. It is even rumoured that the dams themselves incorporate concrete crumble, let alone asbestos, in quantities that are disproportionately meagre. Accordingly, the Government has been dragging its feet over implementing any policy that might encourage further invasion, and may also be considering withdrawal of the beaver's protected status. This would, of course, be entirely in keeping with the Conservative Party's current grand strategy of creating swathes of political scorched earth which Team Starmer can then pledge not to reconstruct.