A Poultry Excuse For A Legacy.

Maybe I'm missing a few things here but, why is there all this mass panic about bird flu?
I mean, I love animals, don't get me wrong, but if a few chickens, ducks and turkeys end up feeling a bit achey, with a runny beak and a cough, it's not the end of the world, is it? A few days in bed dosing up with paracetamol and they will be back on their feet in no time. It's not as if going down with the flu will mean they will have to take time off work. Farmers may not be my favourite group of people but I don't think they have yet resorted to yoking up foul to pull their Range Rovers around.
Ok, maybe one or two pensioners in the national flocks may not pull through but I don't think that should come as a surprise - Darwin covered this principle, I believe. Shit happens.
What's the worst case scenario? Birds start dying left right and centre? Well, what exactly were they being bred for? To become computer programmers? To enter the medical profession? To fight our wars? To enter government? No, I kinda think their career prospects were somewhat limited from the moment they hatched. Instead of having to run around screaming manically, covered in blood and wielding a machete, farmers will instead have their work done for them by Mother Nature (although that will doubtless take a lot of the fun out of farming for them!)
Then we come to the food chain. A few people in China and such places who spent their lives up to their arses in chickens were supposed to have contracted bird flu and died as a result. Well, you will pay the price of not getting a proper job - like on the Stock Exchange, or in investment banking. Over in this country, who puts themselves in such a similar position, surrounded by millions of chickens? Yes, it's Bernard Matthews. Are you seriously trying to tell me that the loss of old Bernard would lead to months of national mourning?
Then his and his fellow farmers' birds end up being bought by us and so we are all supposedly at risk. Well, I will admit, people who eat raw chicken could face tricky times ahead. Then again, with the possible exception of people who frequent McDonalds, who does? You see, COOKING KILLS OFF THE NASTINESS - just as it kills off salmonella, botulism, Deng water fever and all the other bugs our birds are doubtless already infected with. If you are a shite cook, you die! Tough but fair.
No, there is a hidden agenda here. Have you spotted it yet? Yes, that's right. The Blair Government wants to create another panic and then leap into action to fuck things up even more spectacularly than could ever have been imagined. After all, the pressure is on Blair to surpass Inspector Clouseau's record for fuckwittedness. He's bollocksed up The Dome, made a complete arse of tackling Foot and Mouth, jointly started an unwinnable, illeagl war in Iraq, wasted billions of pounds of our money bringing the NHS to its knees, presided over an explosion in crime which has made Columbia seem like genuinely safe place to live, totally and utterly fucked up education in this country, ushered in the demolition of fundamental principles of the legal system and stuck a large, red-hot rivet up the bottom of racial tolerance. Not a bad record, you might think, but Tone needs his legacy. The complete and utter farce which will be the 2012 London Olympics will come too late for him. He needs something else, and he needs it now. Then fate presents him with his salvation - chickens!! He's fucked up everything else but chickens have so far avoided his blithering incompetence. With their imminent annihilation through pointless culls he will finally have achieved a legacy - the biggest, plastic-grinned, insincere, incompetent, self-obsessed, British political dickhead since King Canute!! Hurrah!!
To bring things to a conclusion, before my eyes start bleeding again, I shall hereby banish poultry panic to Grantham. The End.