Ha ha, my vote would be for the advertising campaign!

It is a typical knee jerk reaction. It makes it look like the government are listening to concerns over dangerous dogs but in fact is badly thought out, will have little or no effect and will only end up penalising responsible dog owners.

As Mrs_W2009 says, the chav owners of status dogs certainly won't bother with compulsory insurance but responsible owners will end up paying a premium just because they are law-abiding.

As mentioned above, it is typically knee jerk. Did banning guns in the wake of Dunblane take them out of the hands of the criminals? No. It penalised legitimate owners and the criminals still have as much, if not more access to firearms. Do knife amnesties work? From personal experience, no. Oh you end up with a nice big bin of knives for the Chief Constable to pose next to and say "Our streets are safer!" but the truth is 95% of the knives are handed in by responsible people who found them in their shed/toolbox or have no further use for them or by slightly dotty old ladies who believe they have to hand in their cutlery. A dangerous 'status' dog is just the same as a knife or gun, the criminals and scum are not going to give a damn about amnesties or insurance.

Our police service is overworked as it is without having to stop every 'hoodie' with a dog and the type of person who owns these kind of dogs knows that.

The only way you are going to stop the attacks is to either ban the dog breeds that have acquired the 'status' outright or as Mrs_W2009 says, have a proper licencing system for all dogs whereby potential owners have to prove their suitability. This would also mean that the number of dogs that get bought as Christmas presents only to end up at the dogs home by January because they have peed on the carpet, chewed someones shoes or Johnny and Jemima have got bored with it would fall as well.

Naturally, this is all too simple for politicians to grasp.

Of course, the other option would be a massive advertising campaign suggesting that the owners of dangerous 'status' dogs are in fact trying to compensate for having very small genitalia :)

It makes my blood boil, here I sit paying good money every month to insure my little cocker spaniel who will probably lick you to death, she also has a micro chip, local villians are not going to bother are they.  How is it going to be policed.  The other side is all the people who really love their pets take good care of them and really cannot afford insurance and micro chips are not free.  Is this a knee jerk reaction by the government, one thing you can  be sure of it its going to cost a fortune to set up and adminster, good ole tax payer pick up the tab again.  Being a cynic I  might think this is more jobs for for the boys, unfortunately not our boys.