Stop that pigeon

STROLLING along to the Dog and Blunkett yesterday evening after a splendid repast (swan pate and chips, since you ask), I came across a disconsolate Blow Dry Burton sitting on a bench.

It appears that the village’s Hairdresser to the Stars (Terry Scott, wee Jimmy Krankie and that bloke off Magpie) has just suffered his worst day’s trading since The Beatles went mop topped. The reason? Some wag had taught Winston, the fearsome African Grey parrot who lives in the shop, to say “Atishoo!”

Now it’s not funny, you know. Am I the only one to think that after years of taking advantage of the animal world (think smoking beagles and a mouse with an ear grown on its back) nature is now taking its revenge on us?

Everywhere you look there seems to be a militant menagerie. Who would ever have thought that an otter could chase off a crocodile? But there they were on Planet Earth the other week, harassing the beast mob-handed until it turned and fled. (And I’m still having sleepless nights about that baby elephant that wandered off …)

Then there are the reports from Northumberland of a giant rabbit that’s terrorising allotment holders to the point that they’ve called in armed guards to protect their produce.

“It’s no ordinary rabbit – it’s a monster,” a shaken Jeff Smith told The Sun. “Its prints are huge. One ear is bigger than the other. It’s a brute.” With a striking resemblance to Andrew Marr, apparently.

Add to that big cat sightings, rats that are immune to poison and now flocks of sneezing pigeons and it’s no wonder that panicking women are ringing up Radio 5 phone-ins asking if it’s safe to handle chicken nuggets. (And what part of a chicken are nuggets anyway?)

I DON’T want an identity card. I don’t need one. I’ve already got a passport, a driving licence and a National Insurance number. I have multiple credit cards and a mortgage. I use water and electricity. I’m on the electoral roll and in the phone book.

The taxman knows who I am and manages to locate me with alarming regularity. So I don’t see the need for yet another piece of plastic telling me my name and collar size. So I was quite pleased when it was announced that you wouldn’t have to apply for an identity card if you renewed your passport before January 2010. Mine runs out next year and it looked as if I’d be able to dodge this new form of State meddling.

Yes, well to a point. It now turns out that while I can indeed opt out of the ID card scheme, I will still have to pay the £30 fee as if I’ve had one. And that’s on top of the £63 for a passport.

It’s an absolute disgrace; an underhand way to fine people who refuse to comply with Big Brother’s demands. What price freedom? Thirty quid, apparently.

THE SCARIEST sight of the week was the picture of those two poor Asian women who’d been dragged down to their local canal in Swansea by social services and given a compulsory fishing lesson (complete with safety goggles for Health and Safety reasons).

What is going on out there? Which publicly-funded numbskull at the Environment Agency suddenly decided one morning that angling was horribly white, male and middle-aged and that Something Must Be Done? And who signed-off the decision to spend £100,000 of our money on tackling the perceived “problem”?

The huddled figures you see grouped on the riverbank are overwhelmingly white, male and middle-aged because this gentle pursuit is their means of escaping from their womenfolk. The last thing they want is gaggles of gossiping harridans disturbing the peace and tranquility. And anyway, who’d be at home getting the tea on the table?

IT IS entirely appropriate that this misuse of public funds takes place in the Principality of Wales. Let’s face it: they’re past masters at pocketing the taxes we English pay.

The latest example of this largesse is the revelation that the Welsh Assembly (funded from Whitehall) is spending £12.5million this year on “the promotion and facilitation of the use of the Welsh language”. And presumably that doesn’t include all the money they waste on bilingual road signs and markings.

I do not believe that there is a single person in Wales who cannot speak perfectly good English. The only use for this dead language is so that sullen oiks in North Wales pubs can insult with impunity the English tourists who put bread on their table. And so that a few schoolteachers and mad vicars can dress up in sheets and spout bad poetry at each other once a year.

And anyway, given £12.5million, just think how many Asian women you could teach to fish, safety goggles included.

THE BBC, that hotbed of dangerous Lefties, is launching a radio show specifically for Gypsies – well-known, of course, for religiously paying their licence fee.

Never one to resort to casual stereotyping, I shall resist the temptation to suggest a revival of that famous programme Take It From Here, or that Gardener’s Question Time should tackle the best way to grow lucky heather.

O The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this website, of anyone not mourning the demise of Mike Baldwin, of anyone not looking suspiciously at their budgie, or of anyone who isn’t bored by the News of the World’s fake sheikh, but wishes that it wasn’t that arrogant arse George Galloway who brought him down.