On this evening's PM, the ever-generous Evan Davis gave Michael Gove oodles of time to explain how he was making the UK environment better with his package of measures on house building.
The balance, he patronisingly explained, was that the catchment areas of England's rivers could take housing developments that marginally added pollutants while farmers could cut slurry spill with Government investment.
Evan wasn't able to cut through this nonsense, even with the mild question that wildlife groups seemed to be against it. Let's help Evan - none of these 'balanced' measures work in the long term. Just as planting 'more trees' when you rip up forests, hedges and farmland for new roads, isn't balanced, because National Highways abandons tree care once the striplings are in the ground; just as paying farmers around the world not to chop down trees in alleged carbon offset schemes is not an improvement in the current ecology; just as it's apparently OK to trade in North Sea oil and gas, because the balance of payments is more important than easy routes to net zero.
The housing developments that come first will be in the Home Counties, and between London and the South Coast, because they are the ones that will make the developers the most money. The slurry will be removed from chicken farms either side of the Welsh border, which are growing in size and number year by year.
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