Asbos for Dogs….

Yep, that was the news this week in the UK. Unbelievable isn’t it?
The British media, long heralded among their peers as being the standard bearers for impartial, in-depth quality reporting, ran with a story about Asbos for dogs on Wednesday.

An Asbo, for those who don’t know (and after reading this don’t care) is the short form of Anti Social Behaviour Order. For the last few years Asbos have been issued to the kind of people who drink cider on street corners, terrorise old dears in shopping centres, tuck their tracksuit bottoms into their socks and wear hooded jumpers 24/7. The kind of people, in short, that most of us would avoid given half a chance. In essence an Asbo is a banning order, issued by the police, to stop people doing whatever it was that got them the Asbo. There was also an Asbo issued to a woman who screamed too loud during sex much to the amusement of most.

Anyway, back to the point. This week, apparently due to a lack of anything better to do, certain people who make these decisions (I’m thinking former Oxbridge graduates who made it to Westminster on Daddy’s coattails…) floated the idea of unruly dogs being issued with an Anti Social Behaviour Order. Clearly, the number of dogs harassing pensioners in public while wearing a hoodie and swigging strongbow must be on the rise….or else the world really has gone mad.

I could go on about the ridiculous nature of this particular initiative – the paperwork alone must be a giggle, “ Name and address?” “Woof, Woof!” – but the thing that really gets me about this is what it implies about my country. Do the French waste time and money working out how to create the necessary bureaucratic process to deal with unruly canines? Do the Germans, in their own efficacious manner, spend their days issuing admonishing letters to man’s best friend? I think not. They have better things to do.

And so, dear reader, do I.

TTFN