The problem was first noticed in the Health and Safety Executive when a sudden, and rather virulent strain of lunacy, began to spread like wildfire throughout the organisation.
Edicts such as ‘ballroom dancers must practice on carpets’, ‘goalposts should be removed from football fields’, the banning of pancake races and the introduction of obligatory body armour for games of conkers came spewing forth on a daily basis as the disease took hold and it soon became apparent that this was not just a regional or isolated outbreak but a full-blown epidemic.
However, the realisation came too late and all attempts to stem the outbreak proved futile. The only hope was to somehow try and contain it.
Research into the outbreak has so far failed to yield any positive results as to the root cause of the disease, and it is not even clear at this stage whether the virus is airborne, transmitted via human contact, naturally embedded in the fabric of uniforms or is ‘something in the water’. This means, of course, that any potential vaccine is still a long way off.
There is speculation in some quarters that the virus could even be man-made, possibly a dastardly plot hatched by the evil Wheelie Bin Madness and his Al Fayeeda organisation in revenge for not being fast-tracked (or even set on any sort of rails) for a British passport, but this theory has generally been discounted.
Although somewhat contained, new outbreaks are still being reported. In Birmingham, a children’s slide at the Botanical Gardens, in use for the past fifty years with no problem, has suddenly been declared a safety hazard. There are also unconfirmed rumours of a move to make it obligatory for children to be wrapped in cotton wool before being allowed to get up out of bed.
So, is the virus now under control?
Unfortunately, the nature of viruses is such that they mutate, each new strain or mutation becoming more virulent and more difficult to combat. You see this every year with the flu viruses, each new strain becoming more powerful than its predecessor. Just as you think you’ve got it beat, up pops the next generation.
The same appears to be happening with the lunacy virus. Following a short respite after the HSE outbreak, a new strain, Lunacy B, began spreading at an even faster rate than its predecessor and within no time at all, Council Departments all over the country were infected.
Children began to be arrested for letting go of helium balloons at charity fetes, mothers prosecuted when their toddlers dropped a few crumbs, 96 year olds in trouble for putting a ketchup bottle in the wrong bin and a host of other litter related incidents. Councils even set up their own military wing, the now much-feared ‘Bin Police’. Leave the lid of your wheelie bin four inches ajar and, well……just don’t do it.
These para-jobsworth units are thought to have received their basic training with units of the E-Ba-Gum Educational Militia at special camps somewhere on the African continent, although no-one is certain.
The latest news is that yet another strain of the Lunacy virus appears to have surfaced amongst members of the CPS, all the symptoms are there. A one-legged war veteran with a rusty truncheon (it can happen to anybody) was detained for twelve hours for assisting a damsel in distress, a boy appearing in court charged with possessing a deadly weapon, a knife, was duly dealt with by the judge and then given his knife back!!, a 60 year old teacher now has a criminal record and faces the sack after he forgot to renew his fishing licence, the list is becoming endless.
The only good news is that the Lunacy virus does only seem to infect people in authority or wearing uniforms, so it can be avoided by taking suitable precautions.
History, of course, is full of incidents of lunacy – the crusades, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Vietnam War and, more recently, the proposal to have a united Europe governed by non-elected bureaucrats, although in the latter case a homeopathic antidote, Irishus Referendimus, was found in the nick of time to prevent any real harm being done – but never on the scale we are seeing today. Where will it all end?