A Gentleman's Domain

JAWS

They say the hasty law is bad law.  This may not always be true but in the case of the Dangerous Dogs Act, 1991, the British government moved too fast, in the face of pressure from the media, especially the tabloid press, to control what were considered dangerous dogs, after the latest in a series of dog attacks on people, including  several children.  The press were up in arms, demanding that the government Do Something About It!  So the law was hastily drawn up and passed, complete with enough loopholes to keep lawyers and expert witnesses gainfully arguing for years.  The main fault of the law was that while it named three dangerous breeds, it failed to set down an exact definition for each breed.  A full breed, no problem, but half and quarter breeds were left in a sort of legal limbo and there were endless arguments as to whether mongrels and crossbreeds came under the general headings set down in the Act.

What the Act did do, though, was to proscribe several breeds and above all, Pitbull Terriers.  These breeds were designated dangerous and were to be strictly controlled.  No dangerous dog was to be allowed out of doors without a muzzle. All dangerous dogs had to be registered and could not be bred, imported  or given away.  Unregistered dogs were to be seized and destroyed.  The long term plan was to make these dogs virtually extinct in the UK.  And that could only be a good thing because they are, Pitbulls especially, unstable, dangerous creatures.  Yes, they are dogs, but they are also wild animals.  There is something about their genetic make-up that makes them not only very strong but also very aggressive and very unstable.  Pitbulls were bred, after all, as fighting dogs, not lapdogs.  The sort of inadequate person who owns one of these dogs – who decides that he wants a Pitbull out of all the dozens of breeds available – claims that his  dog is different, that he wouldn’t hurt a fly, that he is wonderful with children.  Yeah, yeah, yeah – we’ve heard it all before. It  may even be true…. until the red mist comes down.  That is the problem. The red mist does come down, and when that happens a Pitbull becomes little more than a pair of jaws on legs.  No matter how much sentimental drivel is talked by their owners, these are wild animals  that are simply giving the appearance of being tame until further notice.

When I was in the Metropolitan Police, I attended more than one lecture by members of the dog handling department about the Dangerous Dogs Act and the animals it covers.  I can vividly remember one set of photos from a dog attack – a Pitbull suddenly turned on its owner when his wife switched on the vacuum cleaner one day – and I wondered why anyone would decorate their kitchen with bright red wallpaper like that until I realised that it wasn’t wallpaper, it was blood.  That was just one incident among many concerning these awful creatures. 

Now that I am on this side of the pond, I am often, even after five years,  taken aback by the cavalier attitude with which people allow these dogs into their homes and lives.  I see them all the time on TV court shows.  As in Britain, the sort of people who choose to own Pitbulls when they have so many other breeds to choose from, to say nothing of mongrels, are for the most part ill-educated misfits who seem completely taken by surprise that their cute doggie has suddenly tried to rip somebody’s throat out. 

Now, ownership of these dogs is not one of your basic human rights.  The progress of human civilisation will not be retarded if ownership of these creatures is regulated and then prohibited.  Set the law out carefully, avoiding the ambiguities of the British Dangerous Dogs Act and then, on a federal or state by state basis set the groundwork for the disappearance of these killers in waiting – an extinction devoutly to be wished.

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REALITY CHECK NEEDED PLEASE!

Heartiest congratulations to MI5 and the Metropolitan Police for foiling that plot to blow up a dozen jet airliners in July, and maybe all those extra precautions regarding carry on baggage are necessary. Better safe than sorry, and all that, but I must say I’m glad I’m not doing a transatlantic flight, or even longer, without anything to read except the airline’s in-flight magazine. And if you can make a bomb out of hair gel and toothpaste, by all mean keep them out of the cabin, as far as I’m concerned. Let people buy fresh supplies when they reach their destination.

But do we have to be so silly about profiling? The people who set off a bomb in the World Trace Centre in 1993 were young Moslem males. The people responsible for 911 were young Moslem males. So were the people who committed the atrocities in Bali, Madrid and London. Surely we can see the common factor here. Yes, it is very unfortunate for all the innocent, non-terrorist Moslems (which is to say almost all of them), but where have intensive security screening, it makes perfect sense to concentrate on those who most resemble those whom we know to have been guilty of past bombings. Maybe not exclusively, but heavily. Of course everyone else needs screening too but is there really any sense at all in treating the eighty-five year old grandmother as though she is just as much the potential terrorist as the young man from Saudi? Knee-jerk correctness may say yes, but logic and common sense say no.

This desperation to treat everyone with uniform suspicion, in order not to offend the easily offended reached new heights very recently. There was the world’s most successful living author, J.K. Rowling, preparing to fly back to England from the USA after some meeting or other. She wanted to take with her on the plane her notebook which apparently contained, among other things, her hand-written notes for the final Harry Potter book. Nope! Not allowed! The over-zealous security screeners at JFK or wherever it was wouldn’t allowed her to taker it on the plane. Never mind her protests that it was irreplaceable, they told her she had to put it in her unlocked checked bags. She was on the point of abandoning her flight and returning to England by sea when they finally relented, on the condition that she bound her notebook securely with several rubber bands. What was all that about? Does anyone in the entire solar system really think that this phenomenally successful author had somehow morphed into an Islamic terrorist? Of course not. So why were they making such a fuss? Was it some misguided belief that if one person is inconvenienced, then everyone must be? Does that really make anyone feel better? In J.K. Rowling the security people had one person whom they could guarantee 100% was not a terrorist. It would have made more sense for them to wave her through unscreened. At least that would have made the queue move just that bit faster, to make the stress of getting onto the plane just that little less for everyone else. The people charged with screening airline passengers have a heavy responsibility. It would be nice if they could discharge it in a sensible, mature fashion. They are people possessed of a certain skill, we hope, not robots.

And Another Thing...

It’s not earth-shattering or anything, but it’s one of those niggling little things that bothers me. Whenever they announce be episode of a TV series, why (if it isn’t a re-run) do they describe it as “all new”? Of course it’s all new! Either it’s a re-run, or it’s something we haven’t seen before. It’s the use of the word “all” which is redundant that I object to. No one ever heard of a show that is new up till the second commercial break, and then a re-run from then on. In the sense of TV shows that have never been broadcast before, the adjective “new” is a singular quality. It’s new or it isn’t. The word “all” serves no purpose, insults the viewer’s intelligence and I’m sorry but I want something done about it!