Watch the skies.

4 February 2017, 21:08 | Updated: 4 February 2017, 21:15

gull

An Honourable Member of Parliament has called for a government crackdown on a terror of the skies.

Oliver Colvile, the Conservative MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport, has been granted a debate in Parliament next week on the subject of seagulls.

He said it was a 'big issue' in seaside towns as seagulls 'can be quite invasive'.

This is true. They can also be loud, which is great for a townie on a break, as their song speaks of the sea-side holiday. Their emotive call brings to mind childhood adventures and underlines the fact that you are not in the city any more.

This noise becomes somewhat less delightful when you actually live in on the coast and have to put up with their incessant, piercing squawk every day.

Mr Colvile said: ' I was out campaigning with a mate of mine when suddenly this seagull decided it was going to take his fish and chips from him.

He said, 'I am aware that they are a protected species, but we need to do more.'

Why are they protected? We need protecting from THEM not the other way round.

It is not the first time this has happened. Tourists have reported seeing their ice-creams disappearing in a co-ordinated attack of fast moving clouds of feathers and beaks. Some birds have become so bold as to march into shops and take packets of crisps directly from the shelves.

Mr Colvile said many of his constituents have written to him asking for a solution to the problem.

I’ve got a solution. It is long, comes with two barrels and is deadly even in the hands of amateurs. You just point and shoot.

More considered responses have included replacing eggs in their nests with fakes. This does not appear to have had the result of lessening their numbers, but it has made them angry.

It is not the only wild-life related issue that Mr Colvile is concerned about. He is also planning to present a petition about hedgehogs to Parliament next week.

More than 50,000 people have signed a petition calling on the Government to 'give the hedgehog better legal protection in order to reverse its decline'.

No less a body than the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said last year: 'We support measures to help hedgehogs.

However, they added that, 'We do not believe it is appropriate to list hedgehogs as a protected species, which is best reserved for species deliberately killed or injured by humans.'

Do they mean cows for instance, because we kill millions of them?

It’s their own fault for being so delicious. If God did not want us to massacre cows, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat.