Tough on dangerous dogs, blind to the causes of dangerous dogs

The Laughing Cavalier

The upshot of all this is at, as usual, the police will go for the easy targets. Poor old Mrs Snooks will be fined £500 when she forgets to insure her elderly poodle (which will be taken away and put down) while Wayne Yobbo and his pit bull are left to terrorise the neighbours unmolested.

TrevorsDen

"We have incubated dreadful, brutish hellholes in this rich country of ours - and tend not recognise, far less care about, them, because the dispossessed people live there."

AKA 'broken britain'

Lord Monkington-Smythe

People that use dogs as weapons don't care about the law, and won't be troubled, whilst some old dear will have her arthritic cocker-spaniel machine gunned by the Police. This is generally what happens when the tabloids have an outbreak of "Devil dog" fever.

You can buy a Pit-bull cross from the internet as easily as you can order your shopping, those that by some miracle are confiscated and put down will be replaced in a couple of days.

Banning them in council dwellings would be the most effective solution, but would be political kryptonite.

Tim Carpenter LPUK

What Laughing Cavalier says.

This appears to be a convenient gateway to enforce what is probably underneath some EU directive. If we imposed existing laws properly this would not be a problem. If people knew that if they misbehaved they would lose their council house pronto, with no "duty of care" to rehouse, this would not happen.

p.s. we are not a "rich country" and have not been for some time. Gordon has been buying bling on plastic for over a decade.

andrew

typical government: a few hundred dogs cause a problem, so a couple of MILLION dogs need insurance and a new layer of government beurocracy is created, whilst causing a windfall for big insurance. Next will come a 'dog tax' probably...

why don't you talk about these more pressing issues in your article, instead of focusing on the plight of the yobo.

Jon

It’s already the law for certain breeds, like pit bulls, to be insured, chipped, licenced etc but that law is rarely enforced.

These latest proposals from Labour are simply to attack, tax, and penalise law abiding and responsible dog owners while continuing to let the chavs and the dog-fighting gangs to do what they like.

At least the Tory’s Nick Herbert has come out against it.

Beer Moth

To register my discontent with this government, and to flout this publicly, I am teaching my pitbull/akita cross, Trixie, how to smoke in public places.

Bunnykins

"because the dispossessed people live there. The people who don't vote or buy newspapers." Ha! What a revealing comment. Couldn't possibly be a smidgen of self interest here, could it Fraser?

strapworld

The same people that do not insure their vehicles will certainly not insure their dogs.

Surely the old fashioned dog licence is the best way forward. £25 and paid to the Local Authority Dog Wardens who must see the dog and certify the breed.

That money would go towards the employment of more dog wardens and they should be given the authority to confiscate dangerous dogs and those who do not have a licence.

The chipping of dogs is a good thing and vets can carry this out and should record the licence number the chip refers to.

But dog insurance! they are having a laugh.

teledu

How long before cat owners have to submit to some form of registration/insurance or the like? Then budgies...

paul holdstock

by upsetting the 'dog lobby',
yet again zanu-liebor have bitten off more than they can chew.
how typical of them to hound the long suffering public.
no doubt blunkett would claim the cost on his expenses.
what next, a ban on dogging?

Call me Infidel

I looked up socialist in my dictionary and it said "see under control freak"
Is there no aspect of our lives that is too insignificant for these half-wits to meddle in?

Flatdog

This is just one of the final twitches of a brain-dead government. Bereft of ideas and with little more authority than a parish council, they turn their malice upon another soft target, the dog owner.

We have an ancient boxer from a rescue center. Dennis only has three teeth left none of which oppose another tooth. He's great with our young children. Why would we need 3rd Party insurance? He could still give someone a savage suck, I suppose!

TGF UKIP

This has the familiar nasty smell of "anything to protect just one child" is a social obligation and anyone (like the Tories) who might oppose it couldn't care less about child safety.

I'll declare an interest. I have kept alsatians for very close to thirty years and originally alsatians were the quintessential council estate yobbos dog to be followed by dobermans, rottweilers and then pit bulls. Not coincidentally, if you consult the RSPCA and Dogs Trust you will find that over the years these breeds also top the leagues for those most cruelly treated.

Unfortunately, some of these breeds are also extremely territorial and jealous animals and regard their owners as their most precious possessions and it is this jealousy which can cause the most horrific incidents like those quoted by Brendan O'Neill in his piece in the mag.

In both cases four and five year olds were killed in Merseyside by pit bulls and in both cases, if my memory serves me, the child was at the home of a grandparent which was also the dog's home. The dog no doubt saw all the affection and attention usually given to him being directed towards the granchild and took a jealous and terrible revenge on the innocent child.

Such incidents fortunately are and always have been extremely rare but they have occurred for as long as I can remember and the delinquent breeds have most often been one of those above.

The difference is though that we now have an hysterically mischievous tabloid press who will always use such incidents for their own ends and of course we have a malevolent government who will not hesitate to use the hysteria as an excuse for a further incursion into the private lives of the nation.

The Laughing Cavalier encapsulates how any legislation will be misused by the stasi which is why this along with all the other Brown/Harman raids should be resisted, but has there been any response so far from the party notionally identified with personal freedom?

seb

Kirkcaldy's Leading Autist is not entirely wrong to think that many voters want micro-management on this scale. That needs to be qualified, of course, to refer to micro-management of other people's lives. Personally, I would not mind if a similarly neo-stalinist approach to cat-owning was legislated. Cats destroy much of the natural fauna of the UK. Here, they poo and pee on our garden and are owned by drooling morons who think that this is amusing. I'd not be fazed by the news that the Plods had machine-gunned the more disgusting of the local cats or if the courts handed down indeterminate sentences to the cats' owners for not insuring the things.

AAE

Fraser, isn't it time that The Spectator recognised that we live not in a "Broken Society", but in a Socialist State. I don't think you should need me to articulate how that is being made manifest even in the dog days of this evil government, but whether one lives in the micro-managed socialist ghettos, or are struggling against tax enslavement and the criminalisation of the general population, the prospects are as miserable as they are frightening. In this, the apposite words of Martin Luther King come to mind, and I can't remember exactly how he put it, but it was something like, It wasn't the words of our enemies which hurt the most, but the silence of our friends.

AG

Dog insurance, chipped dogs, dog tax, weapon dogs of mass destruction. Welcome to Labour's Britain where we are borrowing a quarter of all spending and Pravda BBC starts every interview with 'what about Lord Ashcroft'. What planet am I on? Does Lord Ashcroft have a dog?

John Richardson

"...£25..paid to the Local Authority Dog Wardens.....That money would go towards the employment of more dog wardens [with] authority to confiscate....dogs..."

This is madness !!!

Think it through 'strapworld'.

The £25 bounty would only encourage your Army of dog inspectors to breed more dog inspectors.
Thus necessitating even MORE dogs for them to inspect. Forced breeding.
Leading to a further surge in the numbers of wild and sometimes dangerous dog inspectors. Roaming the streets, 'inspecting' hither a thiver.

Is this what you want 'strapworld' ?
Cos this is what you'll get !

This makes even 'green jobs' look sensible and real.

'strapworld' I expected more.

Jim

I'll buy insurance for my dog, when the pikeys buy insurance for theirs.

Any guesses which of us PC Plod is more likely to demand 'papieren bitte' from?

Zoo keeper (Elephant House)

"..., it's deplorable that people are using dogs to protect themselves".

Oh! How true.
In my manor, there's a nice old gentleman by the name of Mrs Rochester, and he's got two rabid beasts he struggles to keep on the leash. Poor dear.
Slobberin' and a salivatin', make no mistake.
"Charlie" and "Damian", he call's 'em.
The runt of the litter... Derek... had ta be put down.
Poor bleeder.

Marcher Baron

Another stealth tax. Every insurance premium has a tax paid to the government incorporated in it. Only the law abiding who love their dogs will obey; they don't want to see their pet killed by the authorities. These are not the people who cause the problem. Those who see a dog as a weapon, on the other hand, won't care about the threat of losing it because they can replace it easily.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

This bloody stupid government can't get anything right. They can't manage to have dog licences, control dangerous dogs, or stop dog fighting, which has been illegal for a long, long time. How can they check that dog owners have insurance? They can't even keep data safey which involves confidential and security matters. They try to be a combination of the Stasi and the Gestapo, yet whilst being a damn nuisance they are (especially Jack Straw and Harriet Hardman) reminiscent of the Nazi officials in "'Allo, 'Allo".

Beer Moth

Fraser, despite my rather flippant comment earlier, I would like to say that this is actually a serious issue. You are right in that dogs are being used as weapons systems.

Where I live, people are increasingly scared and yes, large dogs are now much more common. It seems that a big dog is some kind of vicarious knife or gun. If it is used, the blame is not directly put on the dog owner/defendant.

Woodbine Willy

Yes, weapon dogs should be licensed, just as guns are - and you don't hear of gun crime, do you!?

egh

Beer Moth--- I hope your Trixie is half as wonderful as mine was!!

My little lamb was a Corgi-Chow mix: and the most intellegent and communicative, the dearest, prettiest, and gentlest of creatures!! The only time she ever growled at anyone was if they threatened me - or our home. Oh - and I had to coax her out from under my mother's bed: where she protected her after she died.

I gather there's supposed to be something wrong with people who value animals. But my experience of the animal world suggests that, on the macro-scale, the idea of 4-legs good/2-legs bad is well justified!

Ken

What Seb said. Cats are the REAL problem. Carriers, they often are, of virulent bartonella, a serious danger.
Have you tried the electrified sardine solution?

Liz Brown

No mention of the rise in violent crime on Jon Snow's news last night
As usual with this shitty Govt there is no understanding of the real world. The people who have these dogs (trained to be violent) are the same people who won't buy car insurance. Why would they go to the troubel of having their dogs insured.

Alexander Pelling

Seems to me that this is a classic case of addressing the symptom, not the cause.

Hugo van Randwyck

The policy is addressing the symptoms. How about looking at some unconventional areas?

If you google: flourescent light missing spectrum schoolchildren, you will see articles showing that light is a sort of food, and that flourescent light is missing in certain frequencies and is affecting children. The socialist approach to banning normal light bulbs has had the law of unintended consequences.

Here is a quote from an artcile:
'Research has been done on school children in classrooms with cool white lights and classrooms with full spectrum lights the teachers were aware of the study which took time lapse photos of the children at random intervals. The children in the cool white class demonstrated hyperactivity, fatigue, irritability and attention deficits. The children in the full spectrum classroom within 1 month, behavior and classroom performance as well as overall academic achievement improved markedly. Furthermore several learning disabled children with extreme hyperactivity problems, miraculously calmed down and seemed to overcome some of their learning and reading problems while in the classroom.'

Alfred T Mahan

And exactly where is Her Majesty's exceptionally Loyal Opposition's response to this half-baked idea?

Sir Graphus

The self-defence angle is interesting; if someone breaks into your house, and you chase him with a knife, you risk being arrested and jailed. However, if someone breaks into your house and disturbs your dog, then you won’t be arrested.

Nicholas

Alfred:-

"The opposition Conservatives, who are battling to oust Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour party in elections expected in May, poured scorn on the new proposals.

"All we've really had for the past decade under this government is a series of speeches and headline-grabbing announcements about the things they were going to do to tackle problems like dangerous dog offences," said Chris Grayling, the party's home affairs spokesman.

"But in the end nothing has ever happened. If Labour are re-elected in May all we'll get is the same tired-out old approach and none of the changes the country really needs."

Which sounds worryingly as though their issue is the barmy legislation not being pursued rather than the barmy legislation itself.

Although I believe another Conservative shadow spokesman has said they would not support this?

Ian Walker

This will work about as well as the compulsory insurance for cars does. In other words, the habitual offenders will end up costing the law-abiding owners even more in higher premiums.

My not just bring in a ownership and breeding license scheme? You need a license to own a dog, you need a license to breed dogs, if you transgress, you take the license away, if you sell a dog to someone without a license, you fine the seller.

Eddie

Here's an idea - let's have dog licences and a central database! Yes, and that system was scrapped in favour of no regulation of dogs at all. Crazy!

Of course, the people who get insurance will be lawabiding and many criminals will not bother - but that's the same fo any law, surely? Some people disobey it. That is not justification for not having it.

The expense argument is also false because feeding and looking after dogs costs money anyway.

But if we had a government database of dog licences then that would be better than a scheme designed to make profits for the insurance industry, non?

Mr. Green

I have an African Grey which can, on odd occasions, be a little sulky, it's even been known to bite people!

Should I be worried?

stephen maybery

Once more, the gormeless who rule over us with such staggering ineptitude, seek to address the efect of a problem rather than it's cause. Crime and the need of the citizen to defend himself, will only decrease when the police cease creating paper trails of political correctness and get back to honest old fashioned coppering

RocketDog

My master comes over all previous whenever those politicians ever start on dogs. The tail docking thing really got him going, I'm a jack you see and whenever we go out hunting (he thinks that it is walking!)he gets worried that I'll get stuck down a hole and not be able to turn around. Anyway, he got a shotgun licence and that has been sorted. Now he is out in the shed (he spends a lot of time in the shed nowadays) working on a 'biological enlarger,' whatever that is. Apparently, once it is finished, we are going ratting somewhere called Westminster

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

I love both CATS and dogs. I do hope all those horrible slurs on our feline friends were made in jest. Cats were very badly treated in the Middle Ages and their numbers greatly reduced. Result: vermin, including rats increased and the Black Plague was rampant. All those wicked bloggers who wish ill to our feline friends should be haunted by mice and rats and made to receive a series of lectures, on citizenship, under the auspices of Harriet Harman. That will learn them!!!!

Rob

About time dog licensing was re-introduced. Low cost for small dogs, high cost for large and border dangerous dogs. Electronic wirless licence with readable photo to be fitted that it could be read by warden from distance. If dog food can be afforded, so can a licence. Use funds for database/dog wardens cleaning up the mess. Minimum cost for a dog £25 per year.

M17

The problem is that as it stands the Dangerous Dog act is adequate but when confronted with a problem situation the Dog Wardens fail to enforce it. The act after all applies to ALL dogs. The Dog Wardens are only interested in an easy cop, and will if they can get any owner who does not clean up after their dogs. There is an elderly gent who lives near me and owns one Alasatian but during the week when his daughter is at work he takes her dog out as well. The daughters dog has attacked and hurt other dogs and these incidents have been reported to the local Dog Warden. The elderly gent still takes both dogs out together struggling to keep control of them on the pavement and I have met him in the park near me (when I have been walking my dogs)with both off lead and the daughters without a muzzle which I believe he has been told is something the dog should be wearing. I have never seen the dog warden in the area let alone enforcing any part of the Dangerous Dogs Act.