Joke Schauvliege, current Minister of Environment, Nature and Agriculture for the Flemish region in Belgium, has never been one to use a spoon full of sugar to make the medicine go down. Quite the contrary, she seemed to have mastered the skill to have the worst one-liners attributed to her. When she was assigned to the department of culture, she congratulated one of Flanders’ most celebrated actors with the wrong name. Last week, she warned her Flemish constituency (with a traditional drive to build houses) that little gardens with play sets for children will soon be a thing of the past. To make things worse, in an interview for this morning’s paper, she said that a tree’s purpose is to be cut down. Well, rightly so, in the same way a person’s function is to be buried. Not a smart move in this digital world of one-liners and online click-bait, Joke. And while we are on the case, please don’t refer to yourself in the third person on your own website, Mrs. Schauvliege. #fail