After her first year in what Caroline Spelman describes as the "challenging but crucial" job of secretary of state for environment, she has been "has been reflecting on some of the green successes since taking office".
Naturally, she has not, in public at least, been reflecting on the failures: the forest sell-off U-turn, the huge cuts to flood and coastal defence spending, the zero-cost, zero-sense badger culling proposals or Defra's dunce's hat for missed deadlines. But let's look at what is in her article.
I'll start, unusually for me, with the unambiguously good. The near doubled funding for Higher Level Stewardship scheme, which means more farmers will work in environmentally friendly ways, is great. And people have spoken warmly to me about Spelman's performance at the UN biodiversity summit in Japan last year.
Now, what else does she mention?
• "We're leading calls to end the disgraceful waste of fish discards." Leading? I've googled Hansard and I can't find any mention of the issue by Spelman or Richard Benyon before Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Fish Fight show aired on Channel 4.
• "We've also built support among member states to push for an EU-wide ban on illegally logged timber entering the European market." That would be admirable, if vague, if the government had not reneged on a coalition pledge to ban that very same practice in UK law.
• "The government can be most effective when it sets the right regulatory framework and policy direction. Our Natural Environment White Paper will show how we will improve our environment for future generations, changing how we value our green spaces." I have written before how important a good white paper could be, but how does this pledge to set the right regulatory framework tally with the dumping of all our most cherished environmental rules into the "red tape challenge".
• "We have created 15 new Marine Protected Areas since last May to conserve marine biodiversity," Spelman writes. A good thing, but hardly worthy of a boast when there are already about 200 of these and it was the last government that passed the Marine Act.
On Saturday, it will be a year since prime minister David Cameron made his now infamous green pledge. He has been silent ever since, but his cabinet have not. Spelman ends her ruminations with another repetition of the promise: "The idea of being the greenest government ever isn't a sound-bite or a quick fix solution. It's about embedding the value of our environment and its resources in the economy and our national consciousness. Forever."
I absolutely agree. But can this government actually deliver? The omens are not good.
