A fishy tale

Sometimes you come across something that you couldn’t make up. This is one such time.

In deepest darkest Derbyshire they are currently spending vast sums of taxpayer largesse to widen the Via to reduce congestion. No doubt the driving population there can’t wait to get to where they are going without snarl ups and hold ups. 

No doubt too the roadworks are adding to aforesaid snarl ups and hold ups. And everyone will be pleased to see the back of the diggers, cones and men standing around leaning on spades that typify building works on the viae, no matter in what part of the country you live. It is the price we pay for a smooth travel experience by chariot.

However it now appears that this multi-million pound socially useful scheme has been held up because the navvies have found….wait for it….a colony of…….are you sitting down?......crayfish. Well admittedly White Clawed Crayfish as if that makes a difference.

And because of this all digging and standing-around-leaning-on-shovels work has ground to a halt while the eco-mentalists celebrate this find as if we had just opened Tutankhamun's tomb.

To the drivers of Derbyshire, Cicero feels your pain. To everyone else, you really could not make this sort of stuff up.

It surely is not beyond the wit of man, who after all can send rockets into outer space to arrange in short order the technology to lift and transfer said fish from the roadworks to some other stretch of H2O nearby. It is not as if Derbyshire is short of H20.

And nor is the technology all that complex. When Cicero was a lad he used regularly to transfer goldfish from the fair to home. And some were even still managing to swim around by the time home was reached.

Cicero estimates that this could be done in half an hour at the outside. The cost impact would be minimal.

But once again we are in thrall of the eco- and enviro-mentalists who no doubt believe that in their warped logic the destruction of this crayfish habitat will no doubt lead to more wonky weather and the demise of the polar bear.

Cicero often does wonder who and when these greenie sandal wearing bearded vegans (Bill Oddie is pictured in the article Cicero read on this narrowly averted ecological disaster which proves the point) were given the power and responsibility to hold up, delay and even postpone anything they like just because they think a tadpole is going to be crushed. Did you vote for these people? No. Neither did Cicero. So where does this power without accountability come from?

So bag up the fish and let’s get back to work and get the via finished. Can you imagine Thomas Telford or John Macadam or Isambard Kingdom Brunel stopping work because there was a little fishie in the way? Mercifully they didn’t.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Lightbulb moment

Is it only me...but I now know why I am making a spectacle of myself these days.

For years and years I had perfect eyesight and while other people were squinting to read things at distance this was never a problem for me.
‘Can you read that?’ many people would say to me with incredulity and surprise.

And my ability to read things whether close up or long distance was done unaided. No spectacles, contact lenses or monocles for me.

It was a gift.

But in recent years my eyesight has rapidly dimmed and reading anything, unless in the biggest of prints, is now only possible with lenses of some sort. This is annoying and inconvenient. A faff and a hassle.

No longer can I just pick something up and read it or quickly skim a piece of paper thrust under my nose. Glasses have to be located now before any reading takes place. And no matter how small the confined space, spectacles have the habit of making themselves scarce when wanted as much as the TV remote does.

For months I put my vision loss down to age. After all my eyes are almost as old as the rest of my body. But now I think I have found the real reason. Last week I had an epiphany, a Eureka, a lighbulb moment. I was wrong.

Now maybe it’s only me but I think my vision loss can be squarely blamed on the enviro-mentalists.

In their drive to save some polar bear on some ice floe somewhere these madmen (and no doubt mad women) cloaked by spurious scientific fundamentalism have deemed it necessary that we all have too much light.
And as a consequence it is now illegal, and yes I do mean illegal, to have light in our homes, offices and factories, which is bright, clear and healthy. Instead we have a kind of neo-light which is dim, grey and unhealthy. But it is low energy, low emitting light so that should put an end to our Wonky Weather-and if you believe that you will believe anything.
You might even believe that the eco-mentalist fundamentalists are right.

And because I do a lot of reading and because in this country there are many times when it is not possible to read by natural light, I am obliged to read by unnatural neo-light which is causing untold damage to my eyes. My eyesight is therefore being sacrificed to save a polar bear. I hope it’s grateful.

Given that the Health and Safety Gauleiters have made more noise about far less, I can assume that at some point they will take a close interest in neo-light before as a nation we run out of cute golden Labradors. For once we can live in hope that these Jobsworths might do something useful. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

In the meantime have a great week and should you be interested in reading what you should study to get ahead in business, check out ‘A question of degree’ at The Marketing Comic (www.themarketingcomic.blogspot.com).

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.