As if I needed further evidence that the country I live in is collectively losing any semblence of sanity it one possessed, along comes the news that robotic falcons are to be deployed in Liverpool to scare away the flocks of obese junk-food-bloated pigeons that swarm in the city. Talk about curing the symptoms and not the disease – and besides, wouldn’t it have been cheaper to simply issue the adolescent males of the city with air-pistols for a day or two? [Chris Roberson]