Finally Some British News I Can Report On!
The British news is still crushingly tedious, but I’ve managed to tease out something worthwhile from all my time spent reading it:
Telegraph - Notebook by Simon Heffer (fourth item)
A cheaper way to get rid of pigeons
Like most English taxpayers, I have long felt the Scottish Parliament has not wasted enough of my money, so I was delighted to hear that another means of doing so was devised this week. A nesting pigeon chick has been discovered at this building, even though the £430 million bill for it allegedly included anti-bird spikes. Health and Safety has now intervened, presumably fearing squadrons of these things are about to dive-bomb luxuriating MSPs. The solution is to spend £250 removing the chick to a wildlife sanctuary in Ayrshire, which will care for it until it is released into the wild. Officials at the parliament say any other course “would condemn the pigeon to death”. Pigeons are considered by law to be such vermin that they can be shot at any time. A shotgun cartridge costs 20p. Even if it takes the second barrel to do the job, isn’t that still £249.60 cheaper than the other option?
Hehehe.
October 1st, 2006 at 3:49 am
I have long felt the Scottish Parliament has not wasted enough of my money,
LOL! Ummm… Kinda rueful there.
October 1st, 2006 at 6:31 am
Ah, the poor Scottish parliament. They could have built it out of marble and solid gold filigree with every sort of pillar and pilaster you can think of for the same amount of money if they’d managed to hire all Eastern Europeans. It it was a lovely building, instead of a merely striking and important one, people wouldn’t mind so much. Not even the £250 pigeon removal. Well, maybe that. I still think it funny of imagine men in tweed firing shotguns at the upper parts of the building, with the politicians looking worriedly on from within their offices.
October 1st, 2006 at 8:39 am
I took Mrs Red for her first visit to the Parliament yesterday and she was utterly appalled. Then I took her over the road to the Palace of Holyrood House and The Queen has it beaten all ends up, real proper linen souvenir teatowels, lots of postcards of the boys, mugs and stuff and the best value lunch in Edinburgh so Mrs Red cheered up PDQ. I just feel sorry for HMQ because nowadays she’s got this bloody building over the road. If I were her I’d ask for a reduction on her council tax. Once you guys have sorted out the squirrel issue can you have a think about the pigeon question? THe problem is that some of the windows in the place are a bit, uh, inaccessible and the birds have a dealy aim.
October 1st, 2006 at 10:33 am
Don’t yawl have goldies and shotguns?
October 1st, 2006 at 11:36 am
Rueful,
Mrs Red is quite correct, though she appears not to have given vent to her disgust.
Unlike some house guests of ours…
PG
October 1st, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Shotguns? A boys with a slingshot would do that job. Gladly.
October 1st, 2006 at 12:57 pm
I’m seeing a group of Dickensonian young scamps lined up across the road, jauntily armed with slingshots offering their services to passing wary journalists. The fact that they’re calling “Git a pigeon for ya, guvnah?” in Edinburgh phases me not at all.
October 2nd, 2006 at 1:29 am
Ah, I see Mrs Red’s not the first, P-G! Though I wish you hadn’t come up with the term “numptorium”, it’s just too painfully accurate. Well, I did suggest that serving Holyrood-reared pigeons in the members’s dining room would at least have the effect of reducing the “food miles” involved.
October 2nd, 2006 at 5:46 am
ninme,
You forget that we are not as enlightened as you lot. We have neither “concealed carry” laws nor an equivalent of your second amendment.
I suspect that our elected representatives might jump conclusions should some fine upstanding members of the public appear in front of the “gathering place” brandishing shotguns.
The thing is, they would probably be right….
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:15 am
Aw, naw, you wouldn’t shoot Des McNulty? Mary Mulligan? Karen Whitefield? Say it ain’t so!
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:03 am
They could get it called a, um, …what’s that law where people have to let people walk through their kitchens because it was built on a historical trail? Convince someone that it’s an ancient (I’d say Indian but you don’t have those there either, so….) Celtic hunting ground, and what with Samhain almost upon us…
October 4th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
For the Archives
You knows you got a Ninme jones when you recall the exact number of comments from 2 hours before.
October 4th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
You gotta keep up with the joneses.
(ack)