Like Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, the culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, apparently has restless thoughts and only finds ease in destroying. Doubtless, Dorries is aware on some level of the epic poem, in her capacity as guardian of the nation’s cultural treasures, and as an author herself, and yet she learns nothing from it. So how can it be true that the latest innocent public benefit to fall in her sights is a harmless wild bird that has delighted dog walkers and local schoolchildren for generations?
For nearly 20 years now, a mysterious, enormous and colourful parrot, nearly 3ft in height, has dwelt on the sylvan slopes of Robinswood Hill, a country park south of Gloucester, in a strip of land between the A38 and the M5. I glimpsed it once, as a younger man, flashing blue and red between the green woodland canopy and the orange evening sky and briefly I felt I saw the face of God. In Gloucester. The bird is even rumoured to have inspired local ski-jumper Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards to pursue his dreams of unassisted human flight, but his trainer, Bronson Peary, forbade him from using his preferred nickname of Eddie “That Enormous Colourful Parrot From Robinswood Hill” Edwards, saying it was “dumb-ass”.
No one knows where the enormous colourful parrot came from and its miraculous ongoing survival is said to be assisted by a discreet local support network of undercover amateur ornithologists, who derive enormous pleasure from spotting it in the wild and only want it to be free to view, asking nothing in return. Why then, has Dorries announced her intention to annihilate it? What has an enormous and colourful parrot ever done to her? Does she even need a motive, beyond a kind of jealous hatred of anything beautiful, which shames her spiritual ugliness by its mere existence?
Dorries’s hostility to magic and beauty in all its forms, and to the abstract notion of joy itself, became apparent when she spoke, in November last year, to the Select Committee Panel on Mysterious Wild Birds. Using a collection of words, some of which formed complete sentences, Dorries explained: “I think it’s right that an enormous colourful parrot, in the rapidly changing environment that we’re in at the moment. I think the future and the longevity of that enormous colourful parrot should be brought into question and should be. Particularly when it is in receipt of taxpayers’ money. It is our responsibility to evaluate whether taxpayers are receiving value for money and whether taxpayers. And whether that model is sustainable in the future. I think it’s absolutely right and proper that we should do so. And that is the process we are going through. So I would argue that to say that just because the enormous colourful parrot has been established, as a public service, and just because it’s in receipt of public money, we should never kind of audit the future of the enormous colourful parrot, and we should never evaluate how the enormous colourful parrot looks in the future, and whether or not it is a sustainable and viable enormous colourful parrot. It’s right that the government should do that.”
But do what? What was Dorries saying? The silence of a baffled and stunned Mysterious Wild Bird committee room, in the face of a statement both incoherent and nonsensical, was broken only by the plaintive factual knowledge of Damian Green. “But the enormous colourful parrot isn’t in receipt of public money. It is sustained by nuts, vegetables and fruits left out by local folk, and by foods it forages itself from the 62-mile radius of its territory stretching out, presumably, right over the Cotswolds and the Forest of Dean, providing huge value, at no cost, to a wide community.” Dorries replied, literally: “OK. And so… ay … although it’s… and yes but… that”, having learned nothing from her former use of random words as a smokescreen to hide a deeper incoherence.
Dorries has gone on to say that the enormous colourful parrot must be caught and sold to the highest bidder and that the profits will be “invested”, although the recent Conservative track record suggests the parrot will end up belonging to a party donor, or a friendly pub landlord, who will exploit it and bleed it dry, until it is no longer of any use to anyone and then dies. The enormous colourful parrot costs the taxpayer nothing. It is self-sufficient, and even profitable, drawing curious ornithologists to an economically depressed town, and providing daily meaning to the lives of those who seek it and sustain it, as well as inspiring generations of children to pursue lifelong careers in the study and support of wild birds. Why does Dorries want it destroyed?
Local park ranger Dursley Tyndale gave me his opinion, when I walked the hill with my children last week. “I didn’t know who she was. She parked here once and I said, ‘Don’t park there love. That’s round where that parrot nests and he will shat on your bonnet.’ She just flicked her Vs at me and went into the woods with some bottles of prosecco and a toilet roll. When she came back she had loo paper stuck on her shoe and there was all parrot’s shat all on the car and she started effing and blinding and saying she would get that f***ing parrot. I think it’s pride. She was made to look foolish and now she’s taking it out on that poor parrot. It’s evil, like something old Fred would have done back in the day. I’ll still probably vote for the Tories though. Well, I mean, that Jeremiah Crosby, he’s incompetent isn’t he, doolally?”
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