“Now we're talking my sort of talk. Blokes with guns going into that big ornate building on the High Street, and coming out wiv sacks of vermin.

Now back to these ruddy birds!”

“Well in that case Moe, we are all doomed!”

“Mike - if the pest controllers had to attend once a week they were not solving the problem, merely coping with it. And a weekly gull-hunt involving firearms is certainly not a viable solution for an entire town centre, on financial grounds alone.

Goejay - I agree wheely bins may not be practical everywhere, there are other options; maybe hessian sacks, plastic boxes, more regular waste collections ... not my speciality, but it's not a problem unique to Bath.

The solution has to address the root cause of the problem, not merely sweep up after it. It seems like one arm of the council is setting policy for waste collections, while another is dealing with the gull problem; one may be spending simply to overcome failings with the other. Like many such issues, what we really, really don't need is more councillors paying for more 'research' to tell them things they would already know if they bothered to talk to each other. We need some joined up thinking here.”

“I once worked in a warehouse that was plagued with pigeons and gulls. Every Saturday morning, the local pest controller would arrive with a couple of lads carrying air rifles. At lunchtime they would leave with a couple of sacks of dead vermin. Surely that's the answer here.”

“Brill Dave, well said . . .”

“What about opening a restaurant serving nothing but gull egg omelettes, gull wings and chips, shredded gull meat stir fry.

Might be a good idea if Don Foster held culinary training courses on his new three and half thousand pound kitchen we taxpayers have bought him, and using some of his four hundred quid a month we give him to buy food.

Why not do something really important with your parliamentary time Don, and get some facts for us on the transport fiasco in Bath or maybe why we are at war over Afghanistan.”

“This summer i visited Venice a place surronded by water and tourists,i counted two gulls the whole day there the city was very clean no overflowing binns put Bath to shame.”

“moe, I'm sure wheelie bins are a good solution for suburban areas but in the centre (where I think the problem is worst) these are not a viable solution. My flat is one of eight in a house just outside the city centre. We have no storage area for rubish / bins so any wheelie bins would have to stay on the street. As well as being very ugly, the pavement is narrow so these bins would almost block the pavement.

I suspect hessian sacks may be a solution but these still require everyone to use them, given that people are still putting their recycling out on the 'old' day despite all the publicity about the day change, I don't hold up much hope of them taking part in a 'complex' scheme involving double bagging with hessian sacks.”

“After 10 minutes "research" using Google here's a few idea's for free that claim to have been effective in other towns.

Hang wires across streets to prevent access to the streets.
Collect waste in the evening in city centre, reducing the availability of food source.
Alternatively encourage people to put their waste out in the morning and change earliest waste collection to start after 10am.
Empty city centre overflowing bins more frequently.
Replace eggs with plastic decoy eggs.
Fly hawks at breeding time.
Broadcast of distress calls during breeding season to discourage nesting on difficult to access locations.
Reduce resting and nesting locations by giving grants for installing of netting,bird spikes, wires etc.
Encourage the nesting of Raptor's.”

“Oh for Pete's sake. Why does everything in Bath need to be done in complete isolation? Are seagulls indigenous to Bath? Has no other city ever had, or successfully dealt with this problem? If any research needs to be done, I would suggest a few well-placed phone calls to councils where there is no gull problem. I suspect a simple inverse correlation between wheely-bin deployment and gull numbers would quickly become apparent, but about a day's work for an office junior should decide one way or the other.

Like many present day problems, the root cause of the problem is a entirely a human one but it always seems to be easier to 'make the right noises' by targetting the symptoms and not the cause. It won't work. So long as we keep putting out plentiful supplies of food, they'll keep coming back. Culling is like going after malaria with a very small air pistol.”