Southern Water

Although Gibraltar notoriously voted against independence from the Strasbrussels dictatorship, it has remained thoroughly British in its standards of hygiene. Lacking a waste-water treatment plant, the colony is pumping forty thousand non-Barbary primates' worth of raw sewage into the Mediterranean. Attempts to improve matters have consisted mainly in throwing taxpayers' money at a pair of private companies, of which one pulled out because of financial difficulties and the other decided that it would rather do something else instead. Fortunately, the British government has exonerated itself of all legal responsibility by removing the UK from the jurisdiction that ruled against the pollution; while the colonial administration has blamed eveything on the dirty dagoes next door. It is surely a hopeful and glorious sign when an issue can be kept unresolved by methods even more British than the problem itself.