Henny Pulse, Deputy Squawker for the Associated Cluckfusters
Collective, is all a’flutter about the proposed re-densification changes to the
One Plan to Rule Them All (Optrta)
Your humble scribe interviewed her on the background. Henny,
resplendent in polished wattles and her customary bright pink legband, was positively
crowing about the proposals.
‘As you know’, she intoned, ‘we already have an Optrta. It’s taken years and years and a whole lotta
pellets kindly supplied by our ever-giving funders, to get this to the starting
point. We have a whole team devoted to
it, the grey-leg-banded ones. We call them the ClusterFlock.’
Your scribe reminded Henny that the previous Cluckfusters
had turned down a very similar proposal just two years ago, right on the eve of
the Perch Priority Contest to establish the new pecking order. Worried about the possibility of Falling off
the Perch altogether, the assorted CluckFusters had caved to the NIMBY and
BANANA types who infest the Greater Collective Catchment.
‘Why’, she warbled, ‘there just hasn’t been enough thought
given to the working poor and those who need to get their tiny claws on the
first rung of the Ladder to Permanent Perchdom, not to mention laying the odd
Egg or three in a Suitable Nesting-Box.’
‘So, with Greater Density, there will be the opportunity for
More Perches, Collective Warmth, and the growth of Nested-together Community. Win-win-win, I say, what, What, what, what?’
Assuming the royal ‘we’, we then asked Henny why this
apparently simple approach had not been adopted years, nay, Decades ago.
‘Oh, that’, she waved an arm dismissively. ‘Well, as you
will be aware, we now have a Team of Henconomists who have clucked around with this
notion, subjected it to Henpirical Tests (I think that’s the phrase), and have advised
us of their findings.’
‘It seems that restricting the supply of Nesting Boxes, and
making onerous conditions about their Appearance, Size, Cladding and Colour,
has caused a rare phenomehen they are terming Henflation, and has thereby
condemned a whole generation of hatchings to nesting under bridges and at the
top of power poles – all Elfin Safety Hazards in the Extreme.’
‘Therefore we are determined, after more, careful Henconomic
Research, to put a stop to this in the Interests of the Wider Flock’.
Your scribe then reminded Henny that the rare phenomehen had
already caused Nesting-Box prices, ezxpressed in terms of years of pellets per
annum, to rise way above 8 years’ supply:
in the Severely UnHenFordable range.
And what did she propose to do about That, having virtually admitted
that there was, whodathunk, a link between Planning and price?
‘Well, nothing immediate’, Henny replied. ‘We might have Caused this, well, Partly, but
we will have to rely on the Sage Advice of our Henconomists and Planners to get
ourselves out of this’.
‘Now, sorry, must fly, there’s Perch Contest soon and I
wanna be Head Hen for once’, and so she departed, leaving your faithful scribe
to ponder why it was that the very same flock who had propelled us Into all
this schemozzle, were gonna be relied upon to get us Out…..
