What goes round...

When I was a lad, if you kept a dog, you had to have a licence to do so. I seem to remember the cost was fairly minimal, but it did put you on the official record as the dog's owner, and perhaps made you think about your responsibilities as such. The idea is being resurrected it seems, mainly due to the modern trend of people keeping "attack dogs" as a status symbol or a means of defence. The suggestion is that you will not only need a licence, but also insurance against your dog causing any damage to anyone else, and you will need to convince the authorities that you can keep your dog under control. Not sure whether this will really solve he problem it seeks to address - unless it is rigorously policed, the danger is that the dog owners who are really causing the problem will just ignore it.