I want to take you back to 2011, the summer of the riots.

It was one year later that we had the Olympics and it was no surprise that we performed well given that most of our young folk got free sportswear the year before.

After the 2011 riots Boris Johnson bought two water cannon. Not for personal use, he was London Mayor at the time. He spent £320k on two water cannon.

It turns out they were never used. We didn’t have any more civil unrest and that makes sense. We’re British.

Our default position is to be sitting in a bad restaurant, eating a terrible meal and the waiter will say, “Is everything OK?”

We reply, “Oh, yeah, great thanks,” as we swallow without chewing to answer. We just don’t complain well.

There’s been some good news. After those water cannon were left dormant for years the issue has now been resolved. They have finally been sold to a scrapyard in Nottinghamshire for £11,000.

£320,000 in 2011 to £11,000 in 2018. Be fair, that’s kind of the same graph you get for the value of the pound.

A lot of people have been having a go at Boris, saying it was the biggest waste of money he’s ever presided over. No. It is not the biggest waste of money he’s caused.

That would be the garden bridge.

If you don’t remember, that was a plan to build a bridge over the Thames with a big garden on it. It cost £46million of public money but then plan was ultimately scrapped.

That’s the real shame here because if Boris had created a big garden on a bridge, trying to water it would have been difficult, unless someone had two big water cannon laying around.

@mrstevenallen