Legalise pot, ban Pink Floyd
… and maybe find Harry a minor honour, like an Earldom or something, for services to badgers

The south-eastern corner of England is facing a water shortage this summer. Water companies are applying for drought orders and drawing up plans for a desalination plant on the Thames estuary. Journalists have stopped writing articles about how London subsidises the rest of the country and could survive as an independent city-state.  Instead, they are reviving the old demand for a national water-grid.  London may yet have to go cap-in-hand to the rest of the country for its water.

Outside the South-East, the problem is much less severe. Most of England has had a dry winter but only the area within 70 miles or so of London is deemed at risk of drought. This is partly because south-eastern England has less rain in an average year than the rest of the country.  Thames Water’s antiquated leaking pipes don’t help either. The main cause of the problem, though, is that there are just too many people living in and around London.  Like the shortage of housing, traffic congestion and high property prices, the water shortage could be eased by rebalancing the population. Read More

The Euston Manifesto critique #1
An anti-American replies

A wry look at Anglo-Scottish narrow-mindedness, reminding us why it is unhelpful both for the Scots to support “anyone but England” and for English comment-writers to attack Westminster MPs just for being Scottish.

Polly on water
… or why Tim takes his with a twist of the private

All this background chatter means it’s almost time to get the bunting scrubbed up for Blair’s departure. As part of those preparations, over the next couple of weeks Chris and I are conducting a little experiment. We need your help: that’s all the readers and contributors here, including and especially those of you who don’t usually comment. Read More

‘Ave it ‘Ackney!
How Nike nicked my council

Cameron’s can of worms
Conservatives of the world unite — you have nothing to lose but etc. etc.

Blair shamed by Edward I
From the Jews to the dodo, via Boudicca

Veteran satirist Tom Lehrer said that the world of comedy changed in 1973 when the greatest living war criminal, Henry Kissinger, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. ‘At that moment, satire died. There was nothing more to say after that’.

If, during Bono’s cosying up to the G8 last summer, I’d done a sketch about him launching a consume-to-give campaign, urging people to buy products made by sweatshop barons Nike and Gap, it would’ve seemed like a cheap shot.

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