To witness the benighted stupidity is worth the price of admission.

The Oxford Botanical Gardens. Established in 1621 just as the pilgrims on the Mayflower were settling in and learning about maize and tobacco. Gorgeous. Meticulously cared for and marvelously presented - and then this.

In 2011 the curator of the gardens was a climate change freak - weren’t we all? He decided that in order to cash in on all the government grants sloshing about back then, remember that, he’d have to come up with something, too. He must have said, look, it’s taken 400 years for us to get the gardens weed free and looking nice, why don’t we get a grant to bring weed seeds from all over the world and toss them into the middle of the garden. We can stop tending it and watering it and just make note of which weeds do the best. We’ll say it’s all about sustainability or something or other.

I know, every farmer in Australia is going to look at that and predict the thistles will take over. Fair enough. But will they? Let’s just see, shall we?

You know what, they sat a PhD student out in the weeds for weeks on end counting bees. They all thought they had done something important towards saving the planet.

Our guide asked what we thought of this. I said bloody disgraceful.

Why? Because it’s a waste of otherwise brilliant people who could have been doing something actually useful. Such waste is the root cause of inflation and inflation is the real existential threat to our vulnerable little planet. Inflation kills.