Ducking and diving!

Sir Peter Viggers, Tory MP for Gosport, is to retire after admitting he claimed a £1,645 "duck island" on expenses. Seems an awful lot of money for ducks to be kept in the lap of luxury. If you want one (not on expenses of course), here are a whole load of them. They are called "bird pavilions" and ducks look like real drakes in them!

But Viggers isn't the only one who just thought the system was as safe as ducks' houses. The government has authorised the spending of £300,000 (in a roundabout way) to find out if ducks like water. All this taxpayers' money has been used by two eggheads from Oxford University to find out what type of water ducks like best.

You don't need to be a scientist to know that there is not one single animal on the planet that would choose filthy water to drink or to swim in. So the fact that clean water is preferred just shows that the animals sometimes have more intelligence than humans!

Which gets me thinking. Maybe the Animals Count party could put up real candidates at the next election. A couple of elephants (they never forget), a lot of meerkats (they're always on the lookout), and plenty of proper pigs. The real porcine creature cannot stand mess, is clean and tidy and roots out rubbish vigorously! It's the human pigs that are greedy, graceless and generally in it to win it!