Britain is also the home of habit and custom, fine in the Yeatsian sense — "Ceremony's a name for the rich horn/ And custom for the spreading laurel tree" — but indolence of disposition means we get used to anything, especially to the idea that economic imperatives must rule our lives, and to bovine acquiescence, like cows who graze on contentedly as fighters roar overhead.

A civilised society should not subject its capital to such cruel and unusual torments, even if its citizens wearily acquiesce. The Tories seem on the right side of this argument on Heathrow's third runway, but how robust will they be in office?

Where is our national pride? Have we stopped hearing ourselves as others hear us? People in Paris or Berlin do not endure anything on this scale. Yet there is the free-born Englishman, cowering in his bed, earplugs affixed, sheet over his head, trying to grab an hour's sleep between five and seven o'clock before giving up and preparing for another zombified day.

A fine time to raise such piddling concerns, it may be said. But environmental matters, as we are fast discovering, are indivisible.