In my opinion: Beach ban plans show the anti-dig brigade are at work
Good Luck to Barbara Nolan and the Dog Owners Group of St Ives for challenging the total ban on dogs during the summer.
Don't give up. Get yourself a website so people can contact you and make their view known. Prove need to the council.
Having already been compromised with ridiculous times (from 5am to 8am) that they are allowed to exercise their dogs on the beach, it was only to be expected that that would be the thin end of the wedge. Will the council be reducing the council tax on dog owners for removing a local facility? I don't think so.
The anti-dog brigade have clearly been at work here. Obviously the council are ignorant of the already large and growing economy of "doggie tourism". This is reflected in the many agencies advertising dog friendly accommodation, many pubs now have "dogs welcome" even providing water bowls, etc. We have had "doggie holidays" in Cornwall for the past 16 years and as a child I enjoyed family holidays on the beach accompanied, of course, by the family dog.
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It is lovely to see dogs, especially in hot weather, having a dip in the sea. Their sheer joy and exuberance is wonderful to watch, they don't need drink or drugs to get high.
Why is it that the most regular users, dog walkers who go out in all weathers, should be treated like this and banned from the beach just in case it happens to be a nice day (a very limited expectation in this country) and someone wants to sunbathe or swim. The beach could be totally empty, but still the dogs will be banned. Why should one user group have precedence over another?
I really don't know how we survived in the past before dog bans, dogs on leads or poop and scoop were even heard of. In my youth dogs would roam freely among housing estates, I never heard of anyone catching anything nasty from them nor were dog attacks ever heard of.
Of course the ridiculous amount of traffic today makes it far too dangerous for that. However, people were not afraid of dogs then because they constantly encountered them, trouble now is that if someone is not familiar with dogs, then they tend to be scared and think a dog being friendly is going to attack them. All being whipped up by media hype and I am afraid the WMN are not without blame here. Recently an article appeared headed Dog Attacks Deer. When I went on to read the article, the dog had not attacked a deer, merely spooked one.
Getting back to the matter in hand. I would question the legality of banning dogs from the beaches. To my knowledge below the tide line is Crown property, so if someone carries their dog over the beach above the tide line and then walks it on that section of beach below, surely the council has no jurisdiction there?
I shall certainly be giving St Ives a wide berth, and indeed anywhere that bans dogs from beaches, on principle.
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