Ilkley has been blessed with some seasonal warm breezes, yet far from having a calming effect, it seems that protests are very much in the air.

Complaints that rabbits have been eating flowers on the graves at Ilkley Cemetery have been followed by complaints that someone has been shooting them, leading to further complaints this week that more of them should have been shot for causing untold damage to nearby allotments.

Then we have had an unusual protest in Ilkley against the giant KFC company which, according to the demonstrators, rears chickens in cruel and unnatural circumstances before killing them inhumanely.

Over at Burley Woodhead, motorists are still complaining about road calming measures introduced on the moor road, while other safety conscious people in Ilkley are protesting that they haven't been allowed them on their streets.

People living in Menston next to the rail line are unhappy that the bridge has been redesignated a tunnel by the rail authorities and that train drivers are sounding their horns all day, while back in Ilkley, the Peace Group has just ended its series of weekly vigils against the war in Iraq.

A diverse group of protests indeed. Theoretically, the Peace Group members could also agree with the protests against chicken cruelty and shooting of rabbits. However, anyone who supported the war in which bombings caused loss of life, human and animal, is unlikely to bother about the fate of rabbits or chickens.

The drivers contending with road humps on the moors will not concern themselves with noisy trains at Menston, whilst the residents of Burley Woodhead could be wondering what all the fuss is about in Ilkley Cemetery.

All in all it looks as if, along with the seasonal plants, different protest groups are springing up all over the place. Is this going to be a summer of discontent?