Dogging

I've just discovered a new tv programme - probably everyone else has known about it for ages but I'm actually quite astonished. Dog the Bounty Hunter is an American (see left) - married five times, an ex-offender himself but now a Born Again Christian, this guy is apparently legally allowed to go after people who have skipped bail and rearrest them. He and his tattoed family attire themselves in body armour - including a massive badge type thing in the shape of a star - clamber into their enormous pickups and hunt the offenders down.

Now then. When you watch this programme it makes you realise how incredibly shallow people can be. He waffles on about the dignity of the captured person after he's woken them up by pointing a pistol at their mouth, cuffing them and together with his lads, marched them into the wagon - their dignity is somehow restored by him giving them a fag and telling them about how he was naughty once and then following on by quoting the Bible at them.

The captured person then cries a bit (Dog has been crying like a baby for ages by this time) and agrees it's a fair cop and they then chuck him in at the nearest cop shop and pocket the money. Dog's missus meanwhile is hugging the woman-left-behind and telling her how her man done wrong but all he gotta do is serve a 5,000 year sentence and then he'll be all straightened out and sorted and back agin.

And this is legal in America - between 30,000 and 40,000 people every year are caught by bounty hunters. Except it's not legal in Mexico and good ol' Dog has now been arrested in Mexico for bounty hunting and bunged in the slammer himself and there's a petition going to get him let out.

Words fail me - the country that allows this pantomime is the one that we take our lead from. Soon we'll see Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne trawling sink estates and rounding up chavs with breached ASBOs.

Good grief. Oh and by the way - he's called Dog cos it's God spelled backwards. Yes really.