The wobbling white triangle of terror

ZIMBABWE IS crisis. Iraq is still a mess. Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Our roads system is approaching gridlock. Our filthy hospitals are killing patients. Most school-leavers can’t read or write. House prices have collapsed. The economy is in meltdown. Banks are being propped up by state money. And what does Wee Gordie Broon do? He breaks off from an 18-course banquet in Japan to give us a lecture on the evils of throwing away some three-day-old Brussels sprouts.

It really does beggar belief. The poor bloke has lost the plot to the extent that you wouldn’t be surprised to see the men in white coats sneaking up to the door of Number 10 with a straightjacket.

He was even at it again the next day, insisting that all cars in Britain should be battery-powered by 2020. And even more offensively, smirked that this revolution would be brought about by the pain of rising fuel prices. Has he really thought this through? This is, after all, a man who doesn’t drive and doesn’t even have a licence.

According to a list of electric cars in the Daily Telegraph – and in The Sun, which had scaled down its UFO coverage for the day – the average range of an electric car is between 40 and 60 miles. Well I don’t know about you, but that would get me to work but not get me back again. I’d be condemned to living in a Travelodge on a distant dual-carriageway, a bit like Alan Partridge but without the Big Plate.

And another thing. As Top Gear and the great man Clarkson recently proved, some electric cars produce more carbon emissions and are less economical than some modern diesels. And finally, what about people who live in the countryside? They need their cars just to get through everyday life. Public transport is a joke: my village gets two buses a week.

So it’s alright for some smug townie to gloat over rising fuel prices, but out here it’s a very serious matter. Take away my motor and I’m going to really struggle to get to the next virgin sacrifice, I tell you.

NOW I’M second to no-one in my demands that the defence budget should be more than adequate to keep our soldiers, sailors and pilots as safe as is possible, particularly when they’re off fighting silly wars on behalf of silly politicians.

So you would think that I would be pleased that we’d just signed up for two new aircraft carriers at a cost of a mere £4 billion. (We’ll set aside the fact that we can’t afford the planes to use them. After all, better to be safe than sorry and you never know when the Germans are likely to get stroppy again. You might also think that this money might be better spent on army vehicles which offer more protection that a Citroen 2CV to roadside bombs, but that’s another matter.)

So well done, our Scottish Prime Minister, and our Scottish Chancellor, and our part-time Scottish Defence Secretary, for awarding these job-preserving contracts to shipyards in … err … Scotland. True, some work will go to Barrow-in-Furness (John Hutton, Labour) and some to Portsmouth (Sarah McCarthy-Fry, Labour), but the bulk of the work will stay north of the border. How expedient.

WHILE WE’RE talking about political expedience, can anyone explain to me the government’s cowardly ducking of the undoubtedly uncomfortable decision to cull badgers to stem the spread of bovine TB?

Now anyone who has ever seen badgers at play in the late evening will acknowledge their ‘teddy bear’ factor, but sometimes hard decisions have to be taken.

While steeling myself for a full-on assault from the bunny-huggers, I will rehearse the facts as we know them: a parliamentary select committee has recommended a cull; the government’s chief scientific advisor, Sir David King, has recommended a cull; so why did Hilary Benn (the alarmingly vegetarian Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) choose to ignore this advice?

A cynic would suggest that this Labour administration receives funding from animal rights groups and, given its precipitous financial situation, is loath to lose that support. Furthermore, one might reasonably expect Labour votes to be thin on the ground in rural England come the next election, while a flicker of hope might still remain amongst badger-loving urban voters who view the countryside through rose-tinted blinkers, rather than as Tennyson’s “red in tooth and claw” environment.

This is not an X Factor for cuddly animals; this is about the livelihoods of thousands of dairy farmers who have already seen almost 20,000 cattle slaughtered in the past year alone. It might be a difficult decision, it might upset nature lovers; but isn’t that what our MPs are there for? Cheap popularity contests should always come second to doing what is obviously right. Sadly, they clearly don’t.

TO THE dreaded country show at the weekend. Now as you’ll see from the above, I like wildlife as much as the next man, but I have to admit that if I never see another flapping falcon failing to return on cue to its mouse-waving master, then it won’t be too soon.

And then they bring on the Royal Corps of Signals White Helmets motorcycle team. If someone could explain to me how a pyramid of white-helmeted berks perched on motorbikes fits into the training of the modern army then I’d be much obliged. Perhaps it strikes mortal fear into the fuzzie-wuzzies when this fragile assembly of semaphore-flagging clerks comes wobbling across the plains of Kandahar. I somehow doubt it.