Toad in the ‘ole.
Did you watch watch the BBCs Children in Need programme last year? Were you moved by the winsome graphics of hideously disabled small people bravely soldiering on without the necessary wheelchair or whatever? Did your wallet rise magically to the surface and your hand reach out for the telephone to pledge some money to help? Pudsey was grateful.
Old Pudsey has some strange ideas of ‘Children in Need’. I’m prepared to bet that you never imagined Pudsey would spend £34,198 of your money paying towards an army of old ladies to help 73,694 Toads cross roads…’Look left, look right, hold my hand and off we go Mr Toad. Remember the Green Frog Code, Mr Toad’.
Blimey, I’ve fallen down some weird rabbit holes in my ceaseless search for something new to write every day, but these ‘ere Frogs have definitely jumped the shark and spawned an entire industry of grant farmers.
Tomorrow there is an ‘international conference’ in glamorous Spalding. Representatives from France, Spain, Hungary, Portugal, Lithuania, Denmark, Netherlands, Romania, Germany, Poland, and Switzerland are at this moment claiming their expenses to travel into deepest Lincolnshire, not to discuss the fate of the European Union, but to fret over the fate of our warted friend.
Some pretty impressive expenses are involved too. Over half a million quid last year. £646,586 to be exact. Toad feed, some would say.
Naturally I was off to the Charity Commission as fast as my arthritic little fingers would take me, to find out where ‘Froglife’ and their ‘Tuppence a Toad’ campaign were getting the cash from for International conferences. Whew! At least I’m not actually paying for it – not that the good natured taxpayer isn’t shelling out, but it doesn’t come directly from the government…Peterborough Ratepayers coughed up an impressive £40 odd grand, last year Glasgow City Council doled out £30,000 to preserve Glasgow Toads for posterity.
I can understand why organisations like O and H Hampton dig into their profits and find a spare £22,500 – when you have a multi-million pound house building project right on the doorstep of ‘Froglife’, you wouldn’t want to be caught with a Great Crested Newt or two about your building site. What’s a few grand protection money (protecting the Toads, I mean, of course, what else?) compared to the potential financial penalties? Last year, a Chinese firm working in Poland were nearly finished off by the losses involved when a ‘sister organisation’ of ‘Froglife’ discovered a Toad in their hole.
Seven rare species of frogs posed additional budget challenges that COVEC officials had never expected.
Calling attention to the environmental issue was the Polish consulting company overseeing the design of one road segment, Dro-Konsult. The firm told COVEC to protect the frogs, which live along the highway route, citing European Union rules for environmental protection.
At first, COVEC ignored the issue. But soon Dro-Konsult was demanding that COVEC workers immediately move frogs before the start of winter hibernation. After that, road work had to be suspended for two weeks while the frogs were captured and moved to a safe location.
Dro-Konsult also ordered COVEC to build special, protective passageways for frogs and animals in the highway’s path, raising the project’s costs.
It is not just Charities earning a bob or two out of concern for the common Toad – there are academics in deepest Dorset gathered round a pond earnestly weighing every last Natterjack, and enquiring as to its sexual orientation (do any refuse to answer?), in Kent they are debating the possible consequences of a wart inducing virus (can a Toad have too many warts? Even for a Toad?) Whilst out on the Romney Marshes yet another academic put his lifetime of learning to the test and concluded (cautiously) that getting run over on the road ‘had possibly contributed’ to the declining Toad population…
What a strange country the UK has become. Policemen are prohibited from working overtime because of the ‘dire circumstances of the economy‘; children denied life saving treatment on the NHS; yet the charitable Toad industry thunders on to fresh success, croaking away in their annual accounts ‘Our team in Scotland has not been wasting any time in getting to grips with a large grant from WREN’ – and even apparently (the mind boggles) spending 2,415 hrs working with young offenders delivering community service orders – in return for another grant.
Sexing Toads as punishment for sexually assaulting women? Really?
How can one give up blogging faced with the daily fascinating insights into the reality of life in the UK?
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
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1
March 6, 2012 at 11:02 -
Toads? Adult toads? Not even tadpoles, FFS!?!
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2
March 6, 2012 at 11:47 -
Not only that, but they only want to get to the other side so they can get their leg over…
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6
March 6, 2012 at 11:09 -
“glamorous Spalding”? Prepare yourself for the spittle-flecked rants of the Lincolnshire Popular Liberation Front, or maybe not, as English people either have a sense of humour and retaliate with weapons-grade self-deprecation or ignore you.
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7
March 6, 2012 at 11:43 -
It is hard running a charity, these days. Well, for a start, you can’t get a competent Chief Executive for less than – oh – £60,000 per annum, and you can’t expect them to doss down in a B&B if they go on a jolly – oops, sorry – conference. Then if you’ve got a CE, they’ll need some minions to order around, so that’s anothe £40,000 per annum each. Then there’s the office. No good expecting them to get by in a portakabin. Oh, and the consultants’ fees for information campaigns to empower the local community, printing costs for the leaflets and posters, some calming artworks for the staff chill zone (well, we want them in the right frame of mind, don’t we?), the organic tofu and herbal teas for the canteen….
Toads? Oh, gosh – yes. Er – could we get a landscape contractor to dig a pond somewhere? Shouldn’t cost more than a couple of grand….have we enough in the budget for that? Oh, gosh – tight – could we do it for fifteeen hundred do you think?….
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9
March 6, 2012 at 11:43 -
We used to call it “Turd in the hole” when I was at school. Seems somehow appropriate in this context…..
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10
March 6, 2012 at 12:10
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11
March 6, 2012 at 12:17 -
I have rehabitated many a Frog and many Toad in my time, mainly because I couldn’t cope with them clogging up the bathroom sink and jumping around the bathroom floor, so back they had to go.
Well, I could hardly have flushed them down the lavatory, could I. My children weren’t daft, you know, so they had to come with me to make sure I put them back proper, like. No Frog or Toad murder in our house. -
12
March 6, 2012 at 12:20 -
PS. The dear little horrors insisted on showing me exactly where they got them from so as they could find their Mummies and Daddies and not be lonely. So I know quite a lot about their habitat too. Mostly very boggy.
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13
March 6, 2012 at 12:31 -
compare and contrast – here in Darwin, NT, they proudly announced that they successfully “fished” out 60,000 toadlets to stop them entering the local environment!!!
(ok – they were the particularly nasty Cane Toad)
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14
March 6, 2012 at 13:02 -
And just when you thought worrying about frogs and toads was enough the eco-loons proudly bring you seedgate http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/06/alien_plants_attack_antarctica/
The end of the world is…
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15
March 6, 2012 at 13:33 -
Isn’t it astonishing to discover the amazing number of ways rich countries find to waste their people’s time, money, and effort on?
And isn’t it tragic that when the money runs out, somehow we cut old folks’ carers, dinner ladies, childrens’ crossing patrols, village halls, evening classes, etc etc etc but miraculously the newt, toad, frog, and bat populations still get their cut?
Are we all mad or is it just some of us?
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16
March 6, 2012 at 13:34 -
Oops oops bad sub-editing there; the second “cut” should really have been “wad”, I guess.
I am sure you know what I meant.
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17
March 6, 2012 at 16:36 -
Where does it mention Spalding? It says Peterborough Town Hall and that’s not even in Lincolnshire. Tsk Tsk
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18
March 6, 2012 at 16:42
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19
March 6, 2012 at 20:51 -
Is that your recipe for Cassoulet? Sounds good!
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20
March 7, 2012 at 09:05 -
I like toads. That make me laugh
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