Alfred Hitchcock and the Literate Magpies

I just finished having a very pleasant conversation with the chief idiot at the Department of the Environment, and now I need to break something.  The local primary school (where I dice with death every weekday afternoon on the school crossing) has a magpie problem.  A big one.  They're literally forcing kids off the footpath into the traffic, which I would personally think is a pretty good reason for them to be summarily executed rehomed to a lovely place with no houses/kids/bikes.  So I rang the city council.  Who put me through to the department of the environment (who gave these feathered Hitchcocks their protected status in the first place) and they very kindly offered to put us on a "swooping register" and send us some signage that announces that we have swooping magpies.  Brilliant...all we have to do is teach the magpies to read, and they'll realise the error of their ways, and all will be sweet.  Time to don my "fuck beaurocracy" shirt and buy that gun I'm always dreaming about.  Today, the magpies, tomorrow, the bus zone.  Be afraid....be very afraid......