Zero tolerance on dog fouling

I have been following the comments made by various contributors to this story featured in the Echo, BBC and other journals and it has made me realise that we are missing something fundamental about litter, tidiness and the links to community pride. The general thrust from the comments is that communities expect these problems to be dealt with by Council or whoever and treats their ability to do this with a great deal of cynicism. What is missing is a clear understanding that penalties are not the long term answer to this nasty habit, they are only applied to expose the perpetrators who persistently and deliberately allow their pets to litter the pavements and bye ways with health threatening fecal matter. The Council can only apply the bye laws in a matter such as this in as an efficient way as resources allow. The opinions expressed would indicate that the Council is in someway at fault or at least is impotent in dealing with this problem. That is really not the point! What is needed is a core shift of public opinion which generates the attitude that this activity is contrary to community values and that the community itself is strong enough to approach irresponsible dog owners and insist that they comply with standards set commensurate with pride of place and an understanding of how offensive this type of littering is to the majority of residents. You may be interested to know that the 75 year old who was threatened by one of these dog owners for remonstrating over the use of his driveway as a dogs toilet (see earlier blog)has not received any support from his local neighbourhood team and his quite reasonable action is seen by him now as pointless.What a sad state of affairs.