After 13 years as the local MP, I still find that meetings in West Dorset can produce remarkable surprises. Last week’s surprise was to do with Chinese lanterns. If, dear reader, I were to ask you whether Chinese lanterns have any great ecological significance, I wonder what your response would be. Maybe you would feel as numb and vague as I felt when this question was posed to me by a group of farmers. But the truth is, as I now discover, that Chinese lanterns are ecologically significant. They kill cows. What, you may ask, have Chinese lanterns got to do with cows? The answer is that, when party-goers buy these bamboo and wire constructions, light a flame in them, and send them whizzing up into the sky, they float gently across the landscape, borne by shifting currents of air. At some point or other, they then descend – often enough, in a field. This is where the trouble begins. A harvester is all too likely to crunch up the wire bits at the base and to spew out tiny shards of wire onto the field – ready for a passing cow to ingest. The wire-shard then gets stuck on the way through the cow’s stomach, passes through to the cow’s heart, pierces the heart and you have a dead cow on your hands. So this is how a harmless party-pastime becomes a small-scale ecological disaster. There are other aspects of this situation which illustrate interesting features of modern society. In the first place, it seems that the rapid rise in popularity of these Chinese lanterns is due to the fact, at least in part, that they can be bought easily and cheaply online. The power of the net – which does so much good in many respects – can also multiply ecological dangers, just as it multiplies dangers for children. Another interesting feature of the scene is that there appears to be a solution. There are – I jest not – a bio-degradable Chinese lantern available online. And these, I am assured, do not threaten our bovine friends in the way that the wire-based items do. The bio-degradable variants will not of course solve every problem associated with Chinese lanterns in rural areas: the possibility of thatched roofs being set alight, for example, remains. But at least the problem for our cows would be resolved if the lanterns offered were the bio-degradable variety. What I find encouraging in all of this is the attitude of the National Farmers Union. Instead of calling immediately for new regulation, enforcement and bureaucracy, the NFU is very sensibly trying to negotiate with the manufacturers in order to promote the idea of the bio-degradable lanterns as a replacement for the wire-based, ecologically dangerous items. Although the bio-degradable variants cost a little more than their more dangerous counterparts, I suspect that, with a little persuasion from government, the manufacturers and distributors can be persuaded to switch from one to the other. If so, that would be a striking example of social responsibility in action.