Council to pass emergency motion this morning

The Edinburgh People’s Survey which is the biggest survey of its kind undertaken in the UK recently revealed that one of the top gripes among capital residents is dog poo on the pavements. It is one of the things that really makes people growl with dismay.

Now The City of Edinburgh Council has decided to agree a solution with real bite, and, after passing an emergency motion at a hastily convened session to take place later this morning, the council will introduce from noon today what it describes as ‘failsafe new measures’ designed to identify and catch the culprits.

Next year The Scottish Government has advised it will introduce licences for all Scottish dogs in a retro step going back to the days when Greyfriars Bobby trotted up and down George IV Bridge. At that time the Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh, John Gray, paid for the dog’s licence, so that he could continue to live at liberty. No-one appears to know where Bobby slept at nights, or where he ‘did his business’, but we can only assume he may have had the odd poop on the pavement in his time.

A council spokesman explained how science will now be used to foil the foulers: “It is evident that this is a problem which dogs many councils, but here in Edinburgh the Capital Coalition is determined to get to the bottom of it. We plan to employ two scientists who will patrol the city’s streets with a lab; that’s the scientific kind, not another dog. We really want to reduce the number of dogs on the pavements, and we certainly don’t need any more poop being produced there!

“The scientists will scoop the poop with a couple of pages from the previous day’s newspaper, and then use the mobile lab to analyse it for DNA, thus ensuring that any offender is absolutely traceable. DNA is just like a paw print, absolutely unique. We will know which dog did it. We will be using a brand new DNA analysis which works more quickly than ever before. We will have immediate results.

“Frankly the public have spoken. They are not happy with the way the council approaches this and we need to try and pick up some brownie points.”

Professor M. Adman at University of Edinburgh told us about the science behind all of this: “DNA sampling is a technique which has been well refined over the past decade and we are now all too familiar with the TV detective using DNA testing to identify the culprit responsible for the most heinous of crimes.

“With the advance of low cost DNA test kits – the technique can now be applied to the pooper criminal. As part of the licensing process every canine will offer up a DNA sample – this will be kept on file in a central doggy-data-base. In the event of a pooper crime – the DNA recovered from the sample will be compared with the one in the doggy-data-base – identifying the owner and the doggy culprit.” 

When The Edinburgh Reporter enquired of the council whether the move would mean that the budget produced by the coalition in February would now need urgent revision, the council official was unmoved. He said: “No, we have provision for sh*t as important as this in our emergency fund. This will not mean any more messing about with figures. We have had enough of that already.  Our budget will not become a stool pigeon for any opposition councillors trying to get us off the scent of the dirty dogs in Edinburgh. We will ensure that the animals guilty of this offence are traced and then caught.”

And when we asked the council officer what he thought should be done with the owners, he said:”I feel they should be put in pens in the quad at the City Chambers for a day. It will sort them out when they are shamed in front of Edinburgh’s citizens and many tourists who will see them there. They’ll be red-faced!”