As I’m ill-equipped to dissect the budget – Ploutos has refused to digitalise my abacus – I’ve taken a stroll in the countryside to try and digest it. What have I found? While your stand-in focuses on embracing centenarians, the place is drowning in plastic and other waste, and the landscape and beaches are vanishing in a sea of concrete. Still, appearances can be deceptive and perhaps a host of reforms and legislation is about to flood the Assembly – once the budget speeches and the recess are over. And perhaps tomorrow snow will fall in Souillac.

Meanwhile, the kitchen cabinet has a dilemma. The exciting budget proposals are all very well, but are there enough competent ministers and officials to implement them? You actually try and get things done yet, however unfair it may seem to one as virtuous as yourself, the public perception of your integrity has taken several knocks. Your latest haul hasn’t helped, especially as there’s been some confusion between sums due and compensation, even if the Government Chief Valuer wasn’t involved this time.

In desperation at the state of the environment, even if minds are concentrated on the tax cuts, we can still exchange a few ideas on how to take things forward. Trump-style, you might spare a moment to clear the swamp in the ministry. Not that ancient times provide much of a good example. Rubbish was thrown onto the streets, and left there, although by 500 BC attempts were made to ensure nothing was dumped less than a mile from the city centre. We can’t even mange that 2,500 years on and nothing in the budget will change things.

By 300 BC, a system for waste removal began to evolve in Greece and in the Eastern Mediterranean. At least most waste was biodegradable. Archaeologists studying ancient rubbish dumps, as they do, don’t often find broken tools and pottery so early civilizations must have repaired and reused as much as possible. That was before the obscene arrival of built-in obsolescence. In ancient Rome, property owners were responsible for cleaning the streets fronting their buildings. There’s an idea. Moderns could also be made responsible for maintaining their pavements. It wouldn’t upset la campagne because they don’t have many.

At least no-one back then thought of inventing plastic, hailed as a scientific wonder a century ago, which indeed it was, enabling progress to be made in many sectors. Unfortunately, like splitting the atom, it has had regrettable side-effects. Surely there must be bright young things in the Ministry with ideas of how to recycle waste? Counsellors love handing out rubbish bins so why not equip every household with recycling bins for paper, glass, tin and other easily recyclable items – it would sensitise people to the problem. If it’s too expensive to have another one for plastic containers, slap a heavy deposit on them and make shops take them back. They’ll soon put pressure on the manufacturers to find alternatives.

The main national problem, whether driving or dumping, is the lack of any sense of civic responsibility, with lorries and individuals dumping waste and bodies all over the place. Heftier fines could have an impact but they could also be made to hit where it really hurts. You could chat to your journalist friends and get them to publish photos of those guilty of littering and dangerous driving. It would help fill their pages in the absence of news and be easier than manufacturing stories. “Do what you like as long as the neighbours don’t know about it” is the only law people follow, making naming and shaming a great device.

Yours sincerely,

Epi Phron