Help Freeze Britain's Floating Canal Cancer

His Majesty's Government and Loyal Opposition have no particular problem with green crap, provided only that it emerges from the bowels of our Mother of Parliaments in an appropriately British fashion. Moisture provision profiteers are allowed to turn rivers into sewers while the little people receive finger-wagging lectures about spending too long in the shower; fossil fuel corporations are handed an indefinite licence to pollute while the great British voter frets about the fictitious costs of low-emission traffic zones: such is the stuff of leadership. Even more world-beating in its potential is the Environment Act of 2021, which provides for on-the-spot fines of up to £300 for emitting visible wood smoke. Since most councils lack the resources to carry out continual and effective chimney surveillance, local authorities will have to rely on denunciations from public-spirited curtain-twitchers, thereby declaring open season on anyone who lives on a boat. Hard-working families with log burners, whose contribution to atmospheric poisoning has doubled in the past ten years, will be scrambling to cleanse their community waterways of filthy floating gypsies. Among the many great glories of British pragmatism, co-opting the woke tree-hugging agenda for the traditional purpose of traveller-bashing must surely have an honourable place.