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. The president of the Cambridgeshire Rowing Association, a man called Bill Key, has asked the Queen for special dispensation to sort out the creature, possibly by strangling it, or putting it before a firing squad. And here’s the first reason I think that this story is interesting: health and safety.

Mr Key described the swan as ‘demented’ and said it represented a ‘serious’ health and safety threat to rowers, by pecking at them and flapping its wings. This is a swan we’re talking about, remember, not a gryphon or a basilisk or a tiger. There is not a single documented case of anyone ever having their leg or arm broken by a swan, despite popular mythology — and even if there were such a case, the lesson should be stay away from swans, not shoot them.