Following the closure of the Queensferry Crossing due to the formation of ice on the overhead cables it has just been announced that the bridge will have state of the art ice sensors installed.
The Scottish Government was criticised by the media earlier this month when it failed to control the severe winter weather, something the Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrats have pledged to do when and if they ever get into office in Scotland. The BBC ran the ‘story’ for several days claiming government negligence in not preventing ice building up on the bridge structure during weather reminscent of the disaster movie ‘The Day After Tomorrow’
In a move designed to prevent further such criticism Scottish scientists at the Roslin Institute have come up with a novel solution.
Using similar biotech approaches to those that saw the first successful cloned sheep, Dolly a new system to detect ice has been created.
The technique involves a sophisticated network of cloned human nipples each connected to the other using a neural network linked to a control room computer.
The network will be ‘supersensitive’ to the slightest frost which will cause the nipples to stiffen and set off an alarm well before any ice can be formed.
Anticipating further press criticism Scientists are also emphasising that no one has been harmed in the cloning process. All that was required was a few cells scraped onto a Petri dish by some willing donors. Importantly due to the cloning process used the nipples are also genderless and are neither male nor female. This deals with issues of gender bias of any kind.
Critics of the bridge closure such as Alex Cole Hamilton may now be silenced as it may now be possible to detect ice build up long before it happens.
Scientists at Roslin suggest that they may need more volunteers to donate ‘scraped nipple’ cells to regenerate the ice detection network over time.
Perhaps local politicians such as Mr Cole Hamilton will volunteer for such civic duty as he is no stranger to making a tit of himself.