YES, that old excuse beloved of unaccountable bureaucrats everywhere. “Health and safety”. A fear of bird poo has seemingly led the county council or the fire service to, at public expense (an FOI request is on hand to find out how much), chop down trees used as a roost for starlings.

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Set aside for a moment that a starling murmuration is as spectacular a sight as herds of wildebeest on the Serengeti, the cutting down of the roost was a daft act. What exactly are the health and safety issues? Excrement landing on someone’s head? Has any bureaucrat anywhere done a study to determine this ‘risk’? No, because there isn’t one. Did the council/fire service think the birds would just disappear? No, they will simply try to move on, perhaps to the trees near the Royal Mail sorting office about 100 yards away. Will those trees be felled on these spurious health and safety grounds? Where will it end?

This is an example of man thoughtlessly misusing his power over nature. When will we learn that we have to live with the natural world, not try to corral and overpower it. Man has been doing that for hundreds of years and look where it has got us.

When police officers complained that their nice shiny cars were being spattered by excrement, someone with a bit of intelligence at the county council/fire service should have said: “Sorry, but tough, you will just have to clean them a bit more.”