As God Is My Witness, I Thought Roasted Chickens Could Fly

Ordinary people need to enjoy a little taste of rebellion against their oppressors now and then, particularly when it comes in the form of a delicious roasted chicken. But there's something I need to get off my chest before we get to Britain's tawdry tale of chicken registrations and crashed government websites.

Watching the once-Great Britain slowly slide into soft totalitarianism has been a great disappointment. It's virtually impossible to do anything in the UK any longer without being surveilled on video, audited, indexed, reported to the authorities, or jailed for silently praying. You can't own a pistol, and they've considered banning knives. You'll be hounded or stabbed by Islamic colonizers or beaten with reeds for using the incorrect imaginary personal pronouns.

I made up the part about the reeds. But Britain's Labour government has considered making it a hate crime punishable by up to two years in jail for purposely using the "wrong" pronouns. 

All this is from the people who invented the English liberty that evolved here into American exceptionalism. 

True, it's sad, but glimmers of Ye Olde English Liberty remain. 

Following a 2021 outbreak of avian flu that resulted in millions of culled birds, the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was placed in charge of new registration requirements for chickens.

The government is reminding all bird keepers – regardless of the size of their flock – of the new measures that are being introduced to combat the spread of AI (avian influenza) in the UK.

Legally, keepers must register themselves with the APHA (Animal Plant Health Agency) before 1 October 2024.

This will allow APHA to communicate with keepers about biosecurity measures, improving the UK’s resilience to AI.

Previously, only flocks of 50 or more had to be registered. "Owners who fail to do so by Tuesday risk being fined or even imprisoned," the BBC reported, "though officials have stressed any punishment would be 'proportionate.'"

"Proportionate" in a country that jails people for praying might not mean what people hope it means. 

I'm not sure exactly how all those registrations are supposed to help, either, but they will "allow the government to identify all bird keepers within control zones and improve surveillance activities." So Britons have that going for them, which is nice. 

The point is that if you have just one chicken, even for a pet — and I won't judge you, I swear — as of Oct. 1, you have to register your bird with DEFRA. (I swear I keep reading that as "DERPA.")

This is when Britons have finally said, "Enough!" because pranksters hit the registration page so hard last week that they crashed it.

The prank registrations aren't limited to Tesco roasted chickens. Some people have reportedly registered rubber chickens and even chicken nuggets. 

As of this writing, one week later, the website is still "unavailable due to technical issues."

I'm no sysop or network administrator but I believe I've located the issue. It isn't in DERPA's servers — it's in Parliament. 

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