iF I ever have worries that I might not find anything to write about in this column I only have to pick up a newspaper to find inspiration and proof that silliness is increasing by the second all over the country. Just a few days ago there were two stories, side by side, which indicated that the ministry of silly walks is alive and kicking. The first one reported that somewhere up in the Manchester area a fire service was considering taking disciplinary action against some of its senior officers. Their crime? They hadn't been 'resting' on the new reclining chairs which the service had supplied, at some considerable cost, but had had the audacity to prefer the floor, wrapping themselves in their own sleeping bags. So these brave people, who at the drop of a hat rush out to face danger on behalf of the public on a daily basis and who would no doubt be quite happy to go without sleep should the occasion warrant it, were being hauled over the coals. The service said that it had provided the chairs so that their staff could 'rest' but not sleep, but some had been committing the awful crime of sleeping in sleeping bags because the chairs weren't really comfortable. As anyone who has tried to get a decent night's kip on a chair will testify, reclining bits of furniture rarely are comfy. No doubt some little jobsworth had been spying and reporting back this flagrant breach of regulations, and no doubt is very pleased with his or her work and its outcome. I'm tempted to start some kind of anti-jobsworth website, reporting the worst of such behaviour. It could be called Jobsworths Endanger Reasonable People's Sanity. Which makes it JERPS, I wanted JERKS but couldn't find a suitable word beginning with K. The papers, in general, are full of gloomy news. In a particularly depressing fortnight I noted that Gordon Brown is thinking of taxing people on the size of their garden; that the government wants to charge people for using their cars rather than public transport even when there isn't much of it; that similar financial penalties could be incurred by people who use their car for business matters, even those who use it for voluntary work and only get their petrol reimbursed; and that there are plans afoot to put microchips in dustbins to catch people who don't recycle. Mind you, we're safe in South East Cornwall, we don't have dustbins and I don't think microchips would adhere well to black plastic bin liners. Then there was good news, or so I thought. The plan to make people buy housing packs when they want to sell their property was being shelved because not enough people had been recruited to do them. Oh great, I thought, even though we have no intention of selling. Then I noticed the sting – except for people who have four bedroomed homes, said the report. These housing packs were, you may remember, the government's answer to the complicated and stressful way we have to buy and sell property. The results of which have made, extremely unfairly, estate agents among the most disliked professional people, somewhere between traffic wardens and income tax inspectors. And yes, I'm sure journalists are in there somewhere too. And it's not their fault. The estate agents I mean. The system is at fault. Where else do you have to be hung on tenterhooks right up to the moment you put the key in the door of your new home? Why do you have to look for a house, make a bid on a house, haggle over prices, pay for a building society survey, pay for another survey for yourself, wait weeks for searches then sign a contract which has to hang around until the seller is willing to sign his or her contract? Then there's the exchange of contracts, which I always imagine is like something out of an old black and white thriller, where the villains only hand over the cash when they've got their hands on the secret formula, so they have to do it simultaneously. Then there's the wait for the completion and the phone call to say they've got the money. And at any time in these weeks of nerve-wracking tension, something can go wrong, like a pyramid of acrobats, where the top one looks smug and safe until one at the bottom comes over funny and faints, and the whole lot come tumbling down. Plus, at the same time, most people are not only trying to buy but sell as well. The solution was simple, adopt something like the Scottish system where buyers and sellers are bound by contract almost at once, and either can lose a considerable amount of money if they back out. But oh no, we had to think up something a lot more complicated, and a lot more expensive. Surprise, surprise. Now, people with bigger houses will have to get these packs, but the powers that be (I hate that saying, I promise not to use it again) don't seem to know what constitutes a four bedroomed house (and presumably houses with more bedrooms than three are also included). Often, a fourth bedroom is described as bedroom/study, so does that count? If it does we could all turn our bedrooms into something else. A box room, an office, a sewing room, a gym. Then, if we all sleep in same room for a week or two, with the judicious use of dividing it up with curtains and plonking the smallest of us in the wardrobe, we don't need a pack. Simple! The second piece in the paper next to the sleeping firemen took my breath away with its sheer absurdity. On its website, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), has stopped using the word cock when describing masculine feathered friends and substituted the words 'male bird'. This is in case it offends anyone. Is there anyone, I ask, in this day and age, who would throw up their hands in horror at the sight of a mere mention of the offending word? Little old ladies in Victorian costume might have, indeed it is possible that Queen Victoria might have been offended, although from all accounts she was a game old bird with a sense of humour. But anyone else, I don't think so. On their forum, the society had a reply from someone who pointed out while the word cock had been banned, the word 'tit' hadn't, for some strange reason. So it is still possible to write that you've seen a pair of great tits in the garden, but not that you've seen a cock sitting on the wall. I suppose it also means saying goodbye to a lot of other things. Cock robin will have to be male bird robin, magnificent peacocks are out (peamale birds) and the morning sound of cockadoodledodo won't sound the same when it's malebirdadoodledo. Oh, I could go on forever. Male bird au vin, Malebirdfosters, a bit of a male bird up! According to the RSPB the problem is not that they've made this momentous decision themselves, it's that they have a filter on their website which automatically takes out offensive words and replaces them with asterisks. Blue tits are safe because nobody has yet deemed the 'tit' word to be offensive to anyone, although don't try to prove this on a sensitive female. What a load of poppymalebird!
