Bang Up To Date

The New Labour solution to traffic congestion is to turn more of the country into road. The New Labour solution to the energy problem is to switch from dependence on oil and gas, which are not very common, to dependence on uranium, which is even less common. Accordingly, the Minister of Unfitness for Purpose has announced that the prisons crisis is to be dealt with by building more prisons, thus providing an extra 1300 prison spaces (or, in Standard English, presumably about 400 cells) which will solve the problem until the spaces are filled up, whereupon more prisons will be built, with a view to housing another eight thousand correctees by 2012, which will solve the problem until the spaces are filled up or until some private contractor wants to put a road through a site designated for incarceration. At the moment, fortunately, no such clash of priorities exists: "Hospital wards ... are being refurbished to house adult male offenders". It appears that the health service has its uses after all.