Dog Eat Dog Eat Child.

I missed the Panorama edition on dog fighting last week and saw it for the first time last night on the BBC's sign language zone late at night. Watching the sign language for phrases like 'vicious dog' was somewhat disconcerting at first, as it seems to involve snarling like a dog.

I made my own thoughts about Pit Bulls clear a few months ago, in short not only are they intrinsically dangerous and unpredictable animals but the people who own them are the more likely to be the sort who would bring out the worst in any dog. The latter point was amply demonstrated by the Panorama documentary. It represents a considerable improvement on the last Panorama I watched, on the Scientologists where John Sweeney managed to make them look sane. If Sweeney had done this one then I wouldn't have been surprised if a video had been released of him running around a ring biting people and licking his testicles.

The one recurrent aspect that the programme exposed but didn't dwell upon was the sheer incompetence of the authorities, from police in Merseyside who informed the mother of an attack victim that there couldn't be dozens of pit bulls on her estate because they're illegal, to the routine ease with which they persuaded the authorities that the dogs they were importing were part Boxer and part Labrador.