The UK government is one of those funny institutions. If you’ve ever seen Father Ted, you’ll know what I mean when I compare it to Father Jack – the old guy, covered in his own filth, who every so often pipes up to come out with some inflammatory comment before slipping back into his stupefied slumber.
Well, this time the mad priest has come out with something truly idiotic. As we all know, some little boys like to get big dogs to make themselves look tough. This big dog is trained (or not, as is often the case) to react to humans with an extremely violent temper. They walk these dogs around like they’re the kings of their little estate and treat them like weapons. A few of these animals have ended up killing or seriously injuring small kids when irresponsible owners leave the two together unattended. So the government’s answer? Tax everyone.
Yes, soon you will be forced to pay an insurance premium on your dog to cover yourself against ‘third party liability’. That means if your dog was to bite someone, the insurance policy would pay out to cover their costs and so on. Somewhere, somehow, this is meant to stop people getting banned breeds of dog and training them up into aggressive attack dogs.
Maybe the government missed a beat here. It isn’t that the victims of such attacks can’t get compensation. It isn’t that there should be more money pumped into the animal welfare system (well, it should, but that isn’t the point of this policy), it is that little chavs are getting BANNED BREEDS OF DOG. Maybe they should look at where these animals come from, and how to stop that trade. And do you really think for one second that the kind of idiot who partakes in this activity is going to suddenly decide to respect the law by taking out an insurance policy? That is, if they could even be covered on an illegal animal…
This time the government has fired so wide of the mark it is untrue. What they have come up with, again, is something to punish the innocent while the guilty get off scot free.
How long before they find a way to put a tax on hamsters…
Government drops controversial dog insurance plan | british-shorthair-breeders.com says:
March 17th, 2010 at 12:53 pm
[...] I mentioned in my most recent post, the UK Government wished to introduce a law making it mandatory for all dog owners to pay for third-party liability insurance for their pets. This was supposedly to help with the damage caused by illegal breeds of dog on other people and [...]