Man fined for flicking ash out of car window 537

Jeff York

That version has already been demolished. There was a right of appeal, just as with parking tickets. It just didn't help an offender who had done what the law said he shouldn't so (as, indeed, it shouldn't).

Parking tickets and radar-laser-camera-issued speeding tickets as well?

No, it is "frankly nonsense" TM to buttume that *no* lorry-drivers are clever enough, resourceful enough, cunning enough or wicked enough to be engaged in such conspiracies. Remember the driver who had 50-odd (dead) Chinese illegal immigrants in the back of his lorry?* "Innocent unless proven innocent" is just as bad a public policy as "guilty until proven guilty", for the obvious reason (among others) that it puts the illegitimate interests of the few in front of the legitimate interests of the many.

* Yes, Conor, we *do* remember that he was Dutch and therefore a lesser breed without the law, not to be spoken of in the same breath as one of Yorkshire or Staffordshire's finest who would never dream of doing such a thing.

It did its job. How many American PB Terriers do you see on the streets these days?

Yes, that was a flaw. The law should have been more tightly drafted and specified, so as to operate on a "destroy first, ask questions later" basis (after which most appeals and quibbles probably would have been dropped). But it still did its job, even if not as quickly as circumstances (and justice) really demanded.

No law should ever be judged negatively in terms of the low number of breaches of it and I'm surprised you seem to be saying that it should. The main objective of the DDA was to make the APBT breed extinct in the UK. That could have been achieved by a "King Herod" option (and there would have been a lot to commend that), but right or wrong, the government decided on a more compbuttionate approach, albeit one which put public safety second rather than first. Nevertheless, the "mercy" shown by the legislation called for the exercising of a reciprocal responsibility on the part of the owners of so-called dangerous dogs, which, by and large, those owners seem to have accepted. Fair enough.

In theory, yes, it did, but there were big specific inclusions and exceptions. It didn't call for the destruction of toy poodles led unmuzzled in Knightsbridge, for instance.

But you're right: there were media reports at the time of attacks by other, more traditional large and sometimes aggressive breeds, (Alsatians, Rottweilers, etc). There would have been an outcry had a large, aggressive dog not specifically covered by the legislation then end a child. Hence the inclusion of more than just the APTBs. They call it arse-covering. Or sometimes just "opportunity".

Nothing is ever perfect and it would be wrong to condemn a reasonable Act merely because it could have been better. The APBT is now effectively gone from the UK (which has to be seen as a blessing). That was what was intended and it was achieved. All's well that ends well (pace the people end and injured by those dogs before the Act was pbutted or before it started to take proper effect).