Utility Week

Community the "picaninny smiles" of black people in an old Daily Telegraph column. Now he's being dogged by journalists questioning him about his views on eugenics. It's a far cry from the new PM's stated agenda of getting back to the things "ordinary people" care about, like hos- pitals and the police. Indeed, his o• ce has twice released footage of him breaking in a new Cabinet by leading them in a truly cringe-worthy question- and-answer sing-song, where he asks things such as "How many hospitals are we going to build?" and they have to chant back in unison with correct answer. In this case, "Forty!" He clearly wants to drill into the public's consciousness that crime and the NHS are his top priorities, but this is in danger of getting drowned out by all the noise about scrapping the BBC, attacking judges and hiring nutters to dri… about the place injecting some lateral thinking into the business of government. I'll be damned Another person who's thinking outside the box – well outside, reckons Disconnector – is Sjoerd Groeskamp, a Dutch scientist who has proposed guarding against the threat of rising sea levels caused by climate change by enclosing the entire North Sea with two dams, one 500km long stretching between Disconnector Publishing director, Utilities: Ellen Bennett, t: 01342 332084, e: ellenbennett@fav-house.com; Content director: Jane Gray, janegray@fav-house.com, t: 01342 333004; Editor: Suzanne Heneghan, t: 01342 332106, e: suzanneheneghan@fav-house.com Digital editor: James Wallin, 01342 332015, jameswallin@fav-house.com; Intelligence editor: Denise Chevin, 01342 332087, denisechevin@fav-house.com Energy correspondent: Tom Grimwood, t: 01342 332061, e: tomgrimwood@fav-house.com; Policy correspondent: David Blackman, e: davidblackman@ fav-house.com; Reporter: Adam John, t: 01342 332069, e: adamjohn@fav-house.com; Water correspondent: Ruth Williams, e: ruthwilliams@fav-house.com, t: 01342 332069 Production editor: Paul Newton, t: 01342 332085, e: paulnewton@fav-house.com; Business development manager: Ben Hammond, e: benhammond@fav-house.com. t: 01342 332116; Business development executive: Sarah Wood, e: sarahwood@fav-house.com. t: 01342 332117 Conference sponsorship manager: Sophie Abbott, t: 01342 332062, e: sophieabbott@fav-house.com; General enquiries: 01342 332000; Membership enquiries: Peter Bissell, t: 01342 332057, e: peterbissell@fav-house.com. 2,500 Average circulation Jan–Dec 2018 Membership subscriptions: UK £950+VAT per year. Contact Jo Nikiforov on: 01342 332077 Utility Week is a member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), the regulator of the UK's magazine and newspaper industry. We abide by the Editors' Code of Practice and are committed to upholding the highest standards of journalism. If you think we have not met those standards and want to make a complaint, please contact the Editor. If we are unable to resolve your complaint, or if you want more information about IPSO or the Editors' Code, contact IPSO on 0300 123 2220 or visit www.ipso.co.uk. Even as Utility Week goes to press, news ' lters through that Sabisky has resigned, blaming "media hysteria" about his "old stu' " online. He been in post for less than a week, and no-one knows what his post was, except that he was hired by Dom. It occurs to Disconnector that for all Cummings' contempt for the namby-pamby arts graduates running Whitehall, they at least have the good sense to put in place a recruitment process that includes some sort of vetting procedure. If Dom can't bring himself to chummy up with the HR depart- ment, might Disconnector sug- gest he avail himself of Google? Singing from the same hymnsheet So what does Cummings' boss, Boris Johnson, think of the ruckus? It's di• cult to tell. Johnson has a brass neck, but when he was running for leader of the Conservative party even he looked uncomfortable when repeatedly questioned by journalists about referring to Wanna hear something weird? Boris Johnson's chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, is proving to be the gi… that keeps on giving, at least as far as the media are concerned. A few weeks ago he advertised via his personal blog for "mis' ts and weirdos" to join him in his quest to revolutionise Whitehall, but one of his ' rst hires, Andrew Sabisky, turned out rather weirder than Dom counted for. Sabisky is certainly an advocate of thinking outside the box, if by box you mean common decency. Among his, shall we say less conventional, views are that "women's sport is more comparable to the Par- alympics than it is to men's"; one of the ways of stopping the lower orders from having out kids would be to "legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of puberty"; and black Americans are more likely than white Americans to su' er from "intellectual disability". Such was the hue and cry about those indefensible nug- gets of lateral thinking that the fact he has argued for feeding all children a mind-enhancing drug called Moda' nil, even at the cost of "a dead kid once a year", went largely unremarked. UTILITY WEEK | 21ST - 27TH FEBRUARY 2020 | 31 Scotland and Norway, and the other 160km long between Cornwall and France. Groeskamp outlined his proposal for a North Sea Enclo- sure Dyke in the American Journal of Meteorology, where he insisted that the project was technically and ' nancially fea- sible. Indeed, based on the cost of mega-dams built in South Korea recently, he put the bill for both dams at no more than £500 million, which given that HS2 was last week costed at £100 billion, seems a little optimistic to Disconnector. However, it occurs to the great man that the real problem is not the cost, or the fact that it's barking mad (Boris loves a big, bold project, and the madder the better), or indeed that it would close o' the North Sea to shipping. No, the real problem with the dam is that it would dispro- portionately protect mainland Europeans from rising sea levels rather than Britons. Mr Groeskamp clearly hasn't been keeping abreast of the zeitgeist here in Blighty of late, but our friends and partners overseas can take a hike, thank you very much. We're going to be stepping up and taking our rightful place as leaders of the New World Order, and a bit more water between us and those ghastly Europeans might be just the ticket.

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