A proposal to levy a tax on cats and dogs that stunned Italy on Friday turned out to be all bark and no bite after a wave of popular anger saw it withdrawn on the same day it was made public.

My comments:

Dogs bark and bite. However, some dogs that bark the loudest are observed to be less tenacious than they appear to be – they bark but daren’t actually attack (bite).

Hence, appropriately this idiom is used here on a piece of legislative proposal on cats and dogs. It stunned Italy but turned out to be all bark and no bite – withdrawn on the same day it was made public.

In other words, all talk and no walk (action).

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Making knee-jerk changes is not in our DNA

Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文僅代表作者本人觀點(diǎn)，與本網(wǎng)立場無關(guān)。歡迎大家討論學(xué)術(shù)問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發(fā)布一切違反國家現(xiàn)行法律法規(guī)的內(nèi)容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（張欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.