AS the cost of gas and heating oil continues to rise like an F-15 Strike Eagle on combat power, many people have turned their radiators off and are using wood-burning stoves instead.
Every weekend, they go into the woods with their kids and spend an hour or two chopping logs, happy in the knowledge that they’re getting fit AND not lining the pockets of some disgusting oil baron or Mr Putin’s gas henchman.
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In fact, they’re not lining the pockets of anyone at all, because a fallen over tree is free. So that’s all very lovely.
Oh no it isn’t, insists an atmosphere enthusiast called Simon Birkett. It’s a “public health catastrophe” because wood smoke contains particulates that cause people to implode.
He says that the sale of wood-burning stoves should be banned and that the four I use on the farm should be ripped from their mountings immediately.
Right, so what are we supposed to do if we want to keep warm? Star jumps?
Some say that ground source heating is the answer but I’m not sure about that.
I’ve been to a few houses that are heated using this expensive and complicated technology and they all have one thing in common. You need a jumper.
This is the problem with environmentalism. It’s never rooted in reality.
They tell us to sell our cars and use a bicycle instead, which is fine if you’re going to the shops for a pint of milk but not if you’re going into town to buy a fridge freezer. Or if you’re going to Glasgow.
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Then you have Boris Johnson, who made an election pledge that he’d carpet-bomb 74,000 acres of the English countryside with trees.
And only now is he realising that he doesn’t have anything like enough trees to cover that amount of ground, and that even if he did, everyone who could plant them is now back in Eastern Europe.
Which is why the tree planting rate in England is actually falling.
Meanwhile, the WWF — not the World Wrestling Federation, the other one — wants to ban fishing in vast areas of the world’s oceans to save the bowhead whale.
Great if you’re a bowhead whale. Not so good if you’re coming home from the pub and fancy a haddock.
Ecomentalists therefore need to develop a bit of balance.
They need to recognise that a draconian ban on anything which hurts the air or the soil or the ocean is unworkable and that it’s best to simply ask us to do our best.
Upset teens, my ass
I WAS left slacked-jawed with despair this week when I read the statements made by the neighbours of an RAF officer who’d gone into his garden while not wearing any clothes.
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They said they were “shocked”, and their 18-year-old daughter was “upset”. I admit it’s a bit weird to go outside butt naked but it’s not like Air Marshal Andrew Turner was peering through their sitting room window, licking the glass and playing with himself. So I fail to see how anyone, even a child, would be shocked or upset.
I have a similar problem with the seemingly endless parade of teenage boys who stand up in court and say they were left “traumatised” after having sex with their attractive English teacher.
Yeah, right. I bet that’s exactly what they said to their mates the next day. “I ’ad Miss Higgins last night and I was really traumatised.”
Traumatised is what you feel when your leg’s been blown off on the battlefield. Not when you see a man in the middle distance doing nude gardening. Or when a good-looking girl takes you to bed.
Mind you, that being said, I definitely would have been traumatised and shocked and upset if my English teacher had taken me to bed. Mainly because her hair was made from what appeared to be lard, she had the same circumference as Jupiter and only one eye.
Come on, Chris
I AGREED with much of what Chris Packham had to say about nature in The Sun this week.
He says that much has to be done to save various finches, doves and snakes and he’s dead right. But then he went and let himself down by saying the hedgehog is under threat because of farmers.
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Come on, Chris, you’re a countryman. So I know you know the real reason the poor things are in decline.
A quarter of all the world’s badgers now live in the UK. There are so many that some are struggling to find a home, and therefore wander the streets at night in vests, drinking Stella.
These vile creatures give cattle TB, they knock down walls and live on a diet of vital earthworms, lapwing eggs . . . and hedgehogs.
Wagatha
BACK in October 2019, when it all began, I wasn’t very interested in the bust-up between Mrs Vardy and Mrs Rooney.
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And now I’m so not interested my teeth are starting to itch. It’s just two bored and silly women arguing about who said what to whom.
So that eventually, all of their husbands’ footballing money will end up in the hands of the lawyers.
Mr Windsor
LAST month, we were told that Prince Andrew – or to use his correct title, Mr Windsor – had sold his Swiss chalet for £17million.
And now everyone is asking where he will find the £12million he needs to pay off the girl he never met.
I was never very good at maths, but er…
Biden’s on way to war
TO try to deter Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine, Joe Biden warned him the consequences would be severe.
“Tsuerughing mazzerapple nit warror” he said, before being led from the room by a nurse.
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Later, after his latest trouser accident had been cleaned up and he was in a new nappy, he appeared once more in front of the cameras saying, just before falling asleep, that there would be “sanctions”.
Ooh I bet Vlad the Impaler was terrified. Because how would sanctions work exactly?
America would stop buying Russian goods so in future, Wilbur and Myrtle would no longer be able to drive to work in a Russian car. No, hang on. They don’t have a Russian car, or a Russian phone, and they don’t eat Russian food either, or use Russian gas.
In fact, trade between the two countries is about half the size of the trade between Britain and Ireland.
Many believe that Donald Trump was the worst President America’s ever had but Biden’s doing his best to prove them all wrong. Because even when he’s awake and coherent he’s just so pathetic and weak.
True, he’s not taking part in any wars but unless he grows a pair, he’ll be responsible for starting thousands.
Extric Shock
I WAS amused to read this week about a man who’s spent £10,000 on a giant Scalextric track.
And a bit surprised as well, because as a fan of the brand, he must know that 36 of his carefully crafted 37 bends will never be used.
The car will set off from the grid, fly off on the first corner and land under the sofa. The poor chap will then scrabble about on his hands and knees getting it back, before placing it carefully on the grid once more so that exactly the same thing can happen again. And again. For ever.
