Aren't you glad you bothered to vote, when new legislation is coming so thick and fast and excitingly? I am talking about dogs; and I'm being sarcastic. At least one of those two statements would hold true almost every time I have my mouth open, but that's another story. These are the proposals: that dog owners, being in the possession of a nuisance barker, would face a 5,000 fine, possible imprisonment, eviction from council housing or an Asbo or both. Punishment that harsh always has the ring of the hypothetical to me - at the end of droll stories about people selling their votes on eBay, responsible newscasters generally pointed out that you could face a 5,000 fine or imprisonment or both for misusing a vote. Yeah, right, we thought. In the words of the great Sharon Stone in her fabled no-underwear film, "What are you gonna do, arrest me for smoking?" Still, whenever a new piece of legislation comes out, it's worth wondering why, unless we're to believe that lawmakers just like to keep busy. Apparently, noisy dogs are second only to loud music in the list of aural complaints people have. Even a dog-lover would admit that was bad, although it smacks faintly of the statistic that suicide is the second biggest killer of young men. There isn't that much to choose from, is there? Only singers and dogs feel the need to express themselves with long bursts of unarticulated noise. We all have something - a histrionic personality, an ear for rousing choral music, an urge to reproduce - that will at some point be a nuisance to our neighbours. Ergo, when they make a noise that irritates us, it's a boon, since it's money in the civic bank for when we want to make a noise that irritates them. I had this theory brutally tested when my downstairs neighbour held a sing-along-a-Sound-of-Music party in her garden, but it held. Clearly, though, the majority view is that one has a right to expect an environment no noisier than mild hubbub. To explain a new law, however, you need to ask not only how bad is the problem, but also whether it's got worse. Are there more domestically kept dogs than there have been in the past? No, the dog population is in steady decline. There are more cats, but they don't make much noise, although they do (in my view) look at you funny. There are more urban foxes, which make more noise copulating than a dog could if it were trying to bark a greeting to its cousin in Scotland, but that's by the by. There are no more dogs. Are dog owners less responsible than before? Hard to tell - if all society is going to antisocial hell in a handcart, dog owners would hardly be exempt. But having said that, the highest level of ownership is among 45-54-year-olds, so we're not dealing with the binge-drinking, street-brawling, Turkey-Twizzler-munching youths for whom the whole concept of Asbo was invented. Here's an idea - maybe dogs bark more than they used to; maybe they're going through some kind of moral disintegration of their own, mirroring the steady march of self-interest they see in the wider society with the only form of delinquency they know, unless you count biting and bolting and chasing livestock. Instinct tells me this isn't the case, but I can scarcely hear my instinct over all this canine yodelling. Maybe, as a nation, we're making less informed breed choices, taking fewer walks, failing to train the beasts properly. Maybe the government needs a few windfall 5,000 fines, to make up for the gossamer lightness of our tax burden. Maybe prisons aren't full enough, and they're looking for a new band of people to incarcerate; maybe council houses are too full, and they're looking for a new cause for eviction (although, in fact, 70% of dogs live in owned houses which makes them the ABC1s of the pet world). Maybe there's an anti-dog conspiracy fuelled by people like Alastair Campbell, who I can take one look at and know isn't a dog-person. Maybe it's a veiled threat to Roy Hattersley (toe the line, buster, or your noisy pal gets it). Or, just possibly, we're failing to adapt properly to our increasingly concentrated living arrangements. Downsizers make the news for their funny views, but the trend is still towards urban living. We talk a lot about what modifications this might demand in terms of public services, transport infrastructure, housing and such, but we could gainfully explore what changes are required on an individual level. Changes such as chill out, buy some earplugs, stop bellyaching. We'll be fining people for having noisy infants next, and then there really will be trouble.