The answer is blowing in the wind

DRIVING home from the latest visit to the Clinic for the Gradually Deteriorating, I spied a man in a hi-vis jacket by the roadside.

I was immediately transported back to ’70s Glasgow.

Back then, the council decided it had to solve the problem of starlings roosting and doing their business on our nice Victorian buildings.

To do this they hired a man who said he would shine lights and play loud noises at them during the night. The starlings, not the councillors!

Anyway, he did this. After a while it seemed to have done the trick and it was thought safe for the Lord Provost to stick his head out of his City Chambers window without risk of a starling shampoo.

Joy was unconfined and the man pocketed a tidy sum for his expertise.

The more intellectually curious among us did sometimes wonder where the starlings had gone and it wasn’t long before we found out. The entire flock had flown south.

Not to southern France or Africa. To Paisley.

No problem. Paisley simply paid the same man to bring the lights

They move it on and make it Someone Else’s Problem

and the noise to their town centre. Nice work if you can get it.

I can’t recall where the birds went after Paisley but there’s every chance the man made a lucrative career out of moving starlings round the country ad infinitum.

Anyway, that’s what I thought of when I saw the man in the yellow jacket, for he was wielding a leaf-blower to some effect, skilfully moving dead leaves from the pavement into the gutter.

Which is my problem with leaf-blowers. They don’t solve a problem, they simply move one on and make it Someone Else’s Problem.

A brush and bin would be cheaper and quieter, allowing the leaves to be removed completely before being turned into compost and, I dare say, end global warming.

As things stand, the council might eventually send a truck with swirling brushes – at further expense – to swoosh the leaves out of the gutter into a tank.

If not, they’ll be washed into the drain and block the pipes so the council will have to send a man...

I wonder. Should we let the starlings run the council?