The Asbo swan of Cambridge: a fable for our time

A swan won’t take your eye out, says Rod Liddle. So why the health and safety paranoia?

Never mind hung parliaments and the ending of the two-party dominance of British politics (a notion I seem to remember being mooted in about 1982) — here’s the important question of the week: was the BBC right to provoke that swan?

It’s a story you may have missed while worrying yourself stupid over who to vote for, or the fact that the Greeks are skint again, or Icelandic ash sending planes spiralling to earth like sycamore keys in an autumn gale. On a programme called The One Show, which neither you nor I have ever seen, or will ever see, because it is for people with the IQs of the invasive and dangerous American signal crayfish, a reporter went in pursuit of a swan on the River Cam which had, apparently, been terrorising rowers. On one occasion its violent behaviour led to a skuller becoming capsized.