Almost nothing carries zero risk.

The mindset that any risk is too great has cost us dearly. Children may not climb trees. When younger (about 11 I guess) friends and I used to go unaccompanied to play in the local fields (among the cowshit) and amongst the dense trees of Stanmore common (hurtling along slippery muddy paths on our bikes) where who knows what lurked behing every other tree. We'd badger Steve Parks for a ride in the sidecar on his 500 AJS (not much bite to it but a lovely bark), and Pippy Stratton's older brother for a ride in his MG Magna. Steele's older brother drove us to school in his Alvis estate. I don't imagine any would have passed an MoT today.

However did the human race survive?

Let's take sensible precautions. There is no guarantee of zero risk until everything we do is sanitised and sterilised, no bacteria in cheese, all beer in sterile aluminium drums, no badger sets in the woods.

As for dogs - the dogs should probably not, for their own sakes, be at large electric festivals, but there should be no ban on them. At anything other than slightly enlarged parties for families and friends (with no PA) dogs should be on leads (but not muzzled, it makes it very hard for them to drink) and under close control.

Any person with a dog making a threat of itself should be asked to leave (with the dog).

I've never heard of a child being bitten at a Kennel Club authorised dog show or novelty dog show or exemption dog show. I've only ever seen a couple of people thrown out for having a dog out of control. We used to let our younger daughter, when nothing more than a toddler, roam at dog shows (not usually Maidstone, too close to the river) - we'd put the bench number round her neck on a bit of string so that she could be returned to our dogs on their bench if necessary.

On one occasion we found her curled up on someone else's dogs' bench sound sleep with their dogs. No harm done.