Lights Go Out on Brighton’s ‘Glow-In-The-Dark Seagull’ Plan

Green councillors in Brighton have met with strong opposition to their latest environment-friendly scheme.

They had proposed rounding up the City’s seagulls (using tranquiliser guns and giant nets), dipping them in special luminescent paint, and then re-releasing them.  At night, the glowing gulls would have rendered conventional street lighting unnecessary – saving the Council thousands of pounds a year on electricity bills, helping to combat climate change, and allaying emerging health fears about the intensity of new LED street lights.

To ensure the birds were located where most needed, lamp posts along major roads were to be converted into miniature habitats where the gulls could nest and sleep at night.

However, animal welfare groups reacted furiously – with one tweeting that it was the councillors who should be ‘strung up from the nearest lamp post’.

In response, green activists said their opponents ‘should have 50,000 volts run through them’.   A suggestion rejected as  ‘counter-productive’ in the City’s efforts to save electricity.

Streetlamps on Brighton’s main roads would have been enlarged to house the birds

A typical seagull