peterbirks | Gulls On Film

I see that the father of disc jockey Emma B (who I wish was named Edgar Broughton, but apparently isn't) has been given a conditional discharge and £400 costs for battering a seagull to death and then stringing it up (presumably "to encourage the others") because said gull shat on his wife's hair and lunch, in that order.

I was cheering the man to the rafters until I got to paragraph 3 of the story, where it was pointed out that Mr Broughton was a member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and claimed that "he didn't enjoy killing it".

Well, bloody hell, I would have. I hate seagulls with a passion. Whenever I stay on the coast, they drive me mental. All reasonable liberal sensitivity goes out of the window. If there is one species ripe for and deserving of ethnic cleansing in the Birks Book of Birds and Mammals, it isn't the pigeon, it isn't the grey squirrel, and it isn't the fox. It's the fucking seagull.

Fortunately, I live nowhere near the coast, so the paths of seagulls and I rarely cross. You might see the occasional tourist in Trafalgar Square who has flown up the Thames in search of the bright lights, but as a rule, seagulls stick to the coast and I stick to inland. Long may it continue.

Volcano Merapi Update: A total wimp. C'mon, either blow or piss off the pot.