Final Monday, the Conservative authorities introduced plans to scrap the water air pollution guidelines that shield rivers from environmental harm attributable to close by housebuilding. Some individuals accuse Sunak’s authorities of being a zombie authorities, trapped by infighting and incompetence in legislative inertia, incapable of seeing any process via. That is unfair on zombies who, given sufficient time, usually overwhelm procuring malls, eat individuals’s brains, or combat sharks underwater. If a barely sentient zombie can do all this, it makes the Conservative’s failure to Cease the Boats ™ ® and Get Brexit Performed ™ ® appear even much less spectacular.
However throughout their time in workplace the Conservatives will at the least have achieved the excellent choking to dying of our pesky seas and rivers, as soon as teeming with unruly life, offering leisure alternatives to ungrateful peasants, and providing employment alternatives to the ne’er-do-wells who don’t vote Conservative – surfboard rent operators, conservationists, and a Spanish hippy who sits on the prow of the boat on a cruise spherical Camden Lock, serenading you relentlessly with detumescent Neil Younger covers on a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar.
Michael Gove ought to be made to face on one leg on the sting of a polluted river and eat rats
On Tuesday, the Conservatives’ necrotic new coverage was defended on Sky Information by the transport secretary, Mark Harper, the MP for the Forest of Dean, the place the now totally befouled and as soon as so stunning River Wye slopes alongside beneath the sylvan cover, a slow-moving open sewer of unregulated chicken-farm waste runoff, turds, moist wipes, and feckless water firm sewage discharge. Harper ought to swim in it day by day, bare and alone, his mouth compelled open with garments pegs, till he vomits himself inside out, or, resulting from some Marvel comics-style chemical accident, turns right into a half human, half hen Conservative supervillain, divebombing Sadiq Khan with radioactive eggs filled with lies.
Harper voted stay, as everybody ought to have, however now parrots the determined anti-EU bullshit of a cowardly loyalist, making an attempt accountable each unwell on an imagined enemy that’s not particularly within the distant bleating of our now internationally impotent nation. And Harper, when immigration minister in 2014, employed a cleaner who didn’t have permission to be within the UK, whereas on the similar time overseeing a marketing campaign through which lorries drove round London sporting hoardings that learn: “Within the UK illegally? Go house or face arrest.” I wager Harper needs he’d held on to that cleaner. Perhaps they may assist dredge the human shit out of his constituency’s main open sewer, the identical magnificent River Wye as soon as so memorably memorialised by Turner, Wordsworth, and Netflix’s teen drama Intercourse Training.
Talking to Sky’s clearly exasperated and baffled Jayne Secker, Harper toed a Tory line within the sewage-stained sand, and wanged on thus: “The scheme is about ensuring we will construct as much as 100,000 new homes with the brand new freedoms we’ve got now we’re exterior the European Union… to ensure individuals have the houses that they need to reside in, however we’ve obtained essential guidelines to guarantee that we proceed to enhance the water requirements in our rivers throughout the nation.” All proper Mark! See you for a swim within the Wye then, why not? Don’t neglect to deliver your sick bag. And a cork to stuff up your Symonds Yat!
Given the Conservatives’ observe report on implementing environmental protections, I’m certain we’ve got nothing to fret about. As a result of, as Michael Gove promised in November 2017, we might really enhance our environmental requirements exterior the EU. “Leaving the EU provides us the chance to place the setting on the coronary heart of policymaking, whereas guaranteeing important protections for our landscapes, wildlife and pure belongings are usually not solely maintained however enhanced,” Gove defined in a authorities assertion, allaying environmentalists’ worries that the removing of EU laws would result in an open season for polluters. And keep in mind, David Cameron as soon as posed with a husky in some snow, so there was nothing to concern.
In March the next yr, in a speech to one thing known as Prosperity UK, an excited Gove even promised: “Brexit, with the appropriate selections, can improve our pure setting.” In the meantime, in June this yr, the River Roding Belief reported: “Our native heron on the Roding has modified its behaviour in the previous few months; standing with its again to the river wanting on the financial institution, somewhat than surveying the water for fish. Immediately we came upon why: the dearth of fish within the river has apparently made it hunt rats as an alternative!” Perhaps, as a celebration of the Brexit freedoms and new environmental alternatives his Brexit campaigning received us, Michael Gove ought to be made to face on one leg on the sting of a polluted river and eat rats as nicely. I’m certain he has ingested extra lethal substances than mere rat. There isn’t a report of how the River Roding heron voted within the EU referendum, however it’s mentioned to be wanting ahead to the abolition of EU rules that prohibit vacuum cleaner energy to 900W.
So why are the Tories scrapping extra environmental regulation to encourage extra housebuilding? As standard, the punk rock water bailiff Feargal Sharkey fished out the reply on Twitter. In Might this yr, the Unbiased reported: “Housebuilders and builders – who up to now have accounted for round a fifth of all donations – have turned off the faucets… The Residence Builders Federation has accused the federal government of getting ‘anti-development and anti-business’ insurance policies which threaten to dramatically sluggish improvement. And in December the federal government was slammed by builders for scrapping constructing targets.” Clearly one thing must be carried out concerning the housing scarcity, however does it must contain herons consuming rats?
In different information, horrifying photos have emerged of 1000’s of tents merely deserted by Leeds music festivalgoers as, their revels ended, they give up the scene and depart the mess for another person to repair. The outgoing Conservatives are doing the identical to our nation, and we didn’t even get to see Think about Dragons.
