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“Stewart has been rebranded as the ‘floods minister’”
Question: When is a water minister no longer a water minister?
Answer: When huge swathes of the country are up to their necks in the stuff.
Rory Stewart, previously known as the government’s water minister, has been unceremoniously rebranded as the more topical “floods minister”; responsible for tackling the nation’s increasingly frequent flooding, and bearer of the government’s increasingly frequent excuses.
And now Stewart can add “scapegoat duties” to the list that already includes wielding wellies, high-viz jackets and damp apologies. Thousands of residents in Cumbria focused their frustrations on the well-meaning minister after a botched attempt to curry some favour over the first weekend of the year.
Stewart, with transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin, set off to meet residents of the Cumbrian villages of Soulby and Pooley Bridge only to arrive 20 minutes late and find that the eponymous bridge had washed away.
The ministers were left on the wrong side of the raging river without a proverbial paddle, but luckily a particularly patient farmer saved the day by making a 30-minute trip by quad bike to the stranded ministers to escort them to the local meeting.
The incident has already gone viral on social media, sparking comparisons with the kind of omnishambles usually found in an episode of political comedy The Thick of It.
It might all be enough to leave Stewart feeling a little nostalgic about his simpler days as water minister.
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