Ministers insist the plans, which were formally announced yesterday, will make it easier for the police to trace the owners of violent dogs and ensure they can be prosecuted for failing to keep them under control.
But animal campaigners warned that the plans would be impossible to enforce and would do nothing to tackle the problem of irresponsible owners of vicious dogs who will ignore the law.
They say owners of gentle breeds such as poodles and golden retrievers will dutifully pay up to have the chips installed under the skin, while breeders of rottweilers and pit bull terriers will continue to evade the law.
Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has told a foreign ministers’ summit the alliance needs “a few more” aircraft for its mission in Libya.
Mr Rasmussen said he had received no “specific pledges or promises from this meeting” in Berlin, but he remained hopeful.
He said Nato would continue “day by day, strike by strike” to target forces loyal to Col Muammar Gaddafi.
Britain and France have been trying to persuade other Nato members to do more.
Mr Rasmussen told the meeting that Nato supreme commander Adm James Stavridis was “generally content” with his forces.
[…]
“To avoid civilian casualties we need very sophisticated equipment so we need a few more precision fighter ground attack aircraft for air-to-ground missions.”
He added: “I am confident that nations will step up to the plate.”
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Some assessments suggest that Nato only needs about a dozen or so extra strike aircraft to maintain the tempo of operations.
It’s about maintaining the tempo of operations. No one even mentions any kind of concept vaguely related to victory. War, for this crop of leaders, has truly been reduced to a game, albeit one in which they want their fellow contestants to participate more than they do. Insert quantity of planes in slot A, to get desired result from vending slot B. Except that no one can even say what the desired result is! And of-course, you don’t actually call it a war. It’s nothing so dramatic and violent as all that. It’s merely a perfectly reasonable activity where everything is under control and proceeding in an orderly fashion.
To say that hubris is running amok here would be a significant understatement.
Many children in England have been found to be suffering from rickets due, apparently, to a lack of exposure to sunlight. Kids are spending more time indoors playing with electronic contraptions, and, when they do go out, their parents have made sure that all of their exposed skin is covered in sunscreen. Hence, a vitamin D deficiency (yes, this has long been a bugaboo of mine, for which I make no apologies.) From the UK Telegraph:
Middle class children in the south of England are suffering from the ’17th century disease’ rickets as parents cover them in sunscreen and limit time outside in the sunshine, a leading doctor has warned.
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Professor Clarke says he and colleague Dr Justin Davies, a consultant pediatric endocrinologist, have checked over 200 children for bone problems and more than 20 per cent of them have significant deficiencies.
“A lot of the children we’ve seen have got low vitamin D and require treatment,” he said.
“This is almost certainly a combination of the modern lifestyle, which involves a lack of exposure to sunlight, but also covering up in sunshine, and we’re seeing cases that are very reminiscent of 17th century England.”
Low levels of vitamin D have been increasingly linked by studies in recent years not only to rickets (which has long been known) but to a greatly enhanced risk of developing a range of lethal cancers. There have also been correlations found with Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease and other ailments. So eat some nice oily fish, and get what sun exposure you can get — without burning, of-course.
(As always The Cinch Review is meant for entertainment purposes only. Consult your local veterinarian before adopting any new health regimen.)
As much as I might look askance on the styles and practices of other dog owners at the local park, the very idea of the government testing and regulating and taxing dog ownership to this extent is utterly horrifying. Yet it is at least under consideration in Britain, according to Continue reading “Competence tests for dog owners”
