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WEEKENDER: Barking Mad, by Wiggia

There have been two serious cases of dog attacks on humans this week alone resulting in death.

• https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/17/man-arrested-after-three-year-old-boy-killed-by-dog-in-rochdale
• https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-man-62-killed-after-27043747

This is an escalating problem, brought about by several factors: the risible Dangerous Dogs Act that only appears to come into force after an attack by breeds that should not exist; and the ever growing belief in the modern world that one has to be noticed, not by actually achieving anything of value but by being seen, whether with a stupid haircut, assorted bad tattoos that require the owner to wear shorts in the winter so everyone can ‘marvel’ at the art work(!), deliberately loud vehicle exhausts so you know when x is passing or arriving, ditto the open window music aficionados who insist you share their taste in whatever is being played at full volume, plus various other disfiguring acts to face and body that only the demented could find attractive but make you fit to make a Tik Tok video where you can compare notes with others similarly afflicted.

 
Much of this can very loosely be described as fashion, as in 'what can we do this year to be seen with/at/doing/wearing with the least action on actually improving the human condition?'
 
Dogs sadly fall into this ‘I own a (fill in breed), what do you own?’ category. I am not saying that nobody should not have the choice of breed they desire, apart from the obvious ones that fall into the bloody dangerous category, as long as they know what they are taking on, have the lifestyle to entertain such a purchase and look after them and give them basic training.
 
Those that know me will also know I always had dogs up to some years ago when circumstances meant I was not in a position to give them the time and effort they require so have been without a dog; sadly, since I also trained dogs for competition for almost twenty years and chaired a committee on dog training at the Kennel Club - not that the latter is of any significance in any of this - and I did see some dogs that despite not falling into the dangerous breeds sector were as individuals dangerous by nature.
 
There were those then and there are today many who say there is no such thing as a dangerous dog, just poor owners. Only partly true: as with humans there is the odd dog who has a trait that makes him dangerous and in these cases no one should attempt, whoever the owner might be, to re-home such animals as certain virtue signalling organisations would have do.

This chap falls into that category and paid the ultimate price:
 

The article contains all those things I have spoken of above, including the re-homing of dogs that should be in most cases put down. It is a very misguided way of thinking when you find a home for a potential killer believing all will be well ‘because there is no such thing as a bad dog’.

I remember many years ago talking to a dog trainer in the army. At that time, I can’t say what the situation is now, they had dogs for specific purposes. One of those were the site protection dogs, those that would guard facilities and be based between two sets of fencing; their sole job was to protect the site and attack any intruder. These dogs, all German Shepherd Dogs if my memory still serves me, knew nothing else and unlike the other dogs could not be re-homed when they were retired for safety reasons and were put down.

This from 2012 tells the story of dogs that cannot be safely retrained. If the army can’t retrain them safely then the general public should never be allowed near such dogs, yet those hand-wringing appeasers would have you believe otherwise, always at someone else's expense.

There are even cases of kennels having to take back unsuitable dogs and then re-homing again. It takes a strange mind set to think this is safe practice.

EXCLUSIVE: 

Destroyed after doing their duty: Scandal of 807 guard dogs put down by Army after faithful service

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/800-guard-dogs-put-down-782782?oo=0

The headline is wrong as it calls it a scandal then goes on to explain why they are put down; nothing scandalous about it, simply safe if sad practice.

Keeping that in mind, why are the general public owning dogs bred to fight in a domestic situation and in most cases with owners who have not a clue what they are doing or taking on. We have all seen the young mum pushing a pram along with a pit bull on a lead alongside; stark staring mad, anything for a fashion statement.

I remember the first time I saw such a stupid scene. It was in Haverhill, Suffolk that was near to the village we lived in at the time. I was waiting outside of a bank for the wife to emerge and on the opposite corner was the stereotype hard case or thought he was, standing wearing boots, a vest, carrying a baseball bat and a pit bull on a lead with the other hand; he was talking to some other dim-looking youngsters who thought it was all terribly macho. That was thirty years ago, we have gone backwards as this is sort of behaviour is an almost commonplace sight in certain areas.

The Dangerous Dogs Act is like dangerous driving, only a good law if it is enforced. Lack of staff and will or both means that nothing will change and lessons will be learned after the event, except they won't.

The act (linked above) is full of will-be’s and cannots, but how do you enforce any of this. You can’t, and the cases of incidents just keep rising.

The issue of breeds that are cross bred deliberately and so are not covered by the legislation is an insurmountable problem that is exploited by those wanting to circumvent the law.

This article in the Mirror from 2020 shows the increase in attacks to that time over a period, and the attacks on children have escalated. This area we can put down to the feckless who believe one of these dogs or any dog can just become one of the family unsupervised; dumb and dumber.

Dog attacks on kids surge with 1,700 reported last year - with 37 babies mauled

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/dog-attacks-kids-surge-1700-23010893

The PDSA blames irresponsible owners; yes fine, but there is absolutely nothing there to stop anyone going out and buying any breed on a whim and putting that dog into a potentially life-threatening environment. We live in a time when many simply say 'I will do what I want' without ever considering the consequences. Saying that ‘Buster’ has never been a problem before when we left him alone with our one year old, after the event/death, is not the comment of a sane person but still it goes on.

It is difficult to find any videos other than a few police ones depicting the dim denial responses of owners to any criticism of owning these animals. I would not normally put up Judge Judy as her show is about entertainment value more than the outcome, still this compilation does show the sheer stubborn stupidity of owners of dangerous dogs when faced with the truth:

This one is interesting as it includes a police dog handler who quite frankly shouldn’t be allowed out, a complete idiot.

Is there a solution? The PDSA and the Kennel Club plus others call for education of owners; the naivety of that statement can’t be underestimated as there is no way the hundreds of thousands who buy dogs are obliged to listen to anyone and they don’t.

Yes, it would help if all potential dog owners were obliged to undergo some sort of awareness training regards dog ownership. That is not going to happen and the logistics prohibit it anyway; and will those wanting a banned breed for whatever purpose be listening? As they used to say in my old neck of the woods, 'You're having a giraffe.'

I well remember one case at our dog training club, of a family who brought in their Old English Sheepdog for basic training and bit by bit the sorry tale unfolded: the dog became possessive of the kitchen which he slept in and ended up attacking the family when they tried to enter. As they had young children they were at their wits' end as to what action to take and ended up at the club for help.

On this particular night the dog attacked the owner totally unprovoked, and somebody suggested as it was my breed? that I should take charge of the animal while they went for the first aid kit.

I made the dog sit by my side with no problem then out of the blue after a couple of minutes he went for me. I was prepared for to this and pulled up his lead to limit his movement and the lead broke, allowing the dog to bite me. He then sat back quietly as though nothing had happened. I held his collar while someone went and fetched a suitable lead and I handed the dog back; they had it put down the following week.

The reason I relate this tale is that a dog does not have to be one of the categorised dangerous breeds to be dangerous. Any breed can have the odd genetically flawed version in its ranks; that is nature, regardless of what those may say that never see any fault in any animal. 

Unfortunately you can breed for those characteristics in dogs as you can for any other. Nearly all breeds have come from stock that were bred for some specific task and that includes guard dogs.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Luke Kelly +/- The Dubliners, by JD

Luke Kelly (1940 - 1984) was a founder member and main singer of The Dubliners who were arguably the most popular Irish Folk Band in the world during their heyday of the 1960s. It all began in 1962 in O'Donoghue's Pub, Dublin.

"At the time, Donoghue’s Pub was a very, very quiet pub … civil servants used to be sneaking in from their offices to have small whiskeys and things. Luke Kelly had come home from England and he came into Donoghue's. Ciaron Bourke was studying in the University … he used to play the tin whistle and play the guitar and one night we asked Paddy Donoghue, round about Christmastime, could we play a few tunes. So we played a few tunes. That was it. The music has never stopped in Donoghue's since that day. That was more or less how the whole thing got going—or how the whole thing began."

                                                        — Ronnie Drew.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Kelly

Double crisis: Ukraine and US leadership

From my new Substack email newsletter, 'Now and Next':

_________________

60 years on from the Cuban missile crisis, a repeat - but without a strong President

It’s 1962 again: nuclear war is threatened, but this time the US President may not be capable of restraining his aggressive underlings.

Oval Office, October 19, 1962 10 a.m.: the Joint Chiefs of Staff

‘… unanimously agreed on a minimum of three steps: a surprise [bombing] attack against the known missile sites, continued surveillance, and a blockade to prevent reinforce­ments from entering Cuba. […] The chiefs’ objective was to be in the best position to fight a war, while the president’s aim was to select the strategy that was least likely to start a war. The chiefs assumed that a prompt military response (bombing and invasion) would coerce the Soviets, but the president believed it would provoke them to respond in kind.’

World War Three might well have erupted anyway, had it not been for another restraining hand on the Russian side. Eight days after the above Oval Office meeting, a Soviet submarine submerged near Cuba was being depth-charged by US forces with the intention of forcing it to surface; what the Americans did not know was that the sub had a nuclear torpedo and, thinking that the depth charges were lethally intended, the captain was all for going out in a blaze of glory: ‘We’re gonna blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all – we will not become the shame of the fleet.’ That decision required the agreement of three senior officers; two were for it, but the world is indebted to the third, Vasily Arkhipov, who refused.

Is President Biden up to handling military hotheads, as the confrontation in Europe intensifies? It is widely thought that his mental condition is deteriorating, to the point where he cannot even command attentive respect in a White House gathering (5 April 2022):

Like Nature, political power abhors a vacuum and we have to worry about who is taking control behind the scenes, and whether as sixty years ago their groupthink is leading us to potential disaster.

Worse still, should the President be officially deemed unfit for his office, is the seemingly weak or unstable people who are next in line to take over the role.

Kamala Harris, the Vice-President, has been called lazy, incompetent and ‘unable to think on her feet’ by Democrat-supporting US author Lionel Shriver. Could Harris rein in the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

Third on the succession list is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. Aged 82, Pelosi is three years older than the President and although her position requires her to be ‘impartial’ she seems incapable of controlling her overt bias towards her political party, ostentatiously ripping up a copy of President Trump’s State of the Union address live on TV behind him (February 2020); and as President Biden gave his own two years later, making a very odd display of grinning and knuckle-rubbing that makes us wonder whether she too, like Biden, may be developing some mental affliction:



At this perilous time the world needs America’s leadership to have strength in depth; it seems we have the exact opposite.

Azov - it's just the start

From my new Substack email newsletter, 'Now and Next':

The Sea of Azov is north of the Black Sea, into which it flows. It is vitally important to Russia for trade and her ambition to build a Eurasian Union. 

The river Don, running into the Azov, is linked by canal to the river Volga, which empties into the Caspian Sea. The Caspian is bordered by Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Iran - the last also leading to the Red and Arabian Seas. Fifteen years ago the President of Kazakhstan proposed another, bigger canal directly linking the Caspian and Azov Seas and was excited about the growth prospects for central Asia.

The Azov is also important for Russia’s defence, increasingly so since the collapse of the Soviet Union. As one former Soviet bloc country after another joined the European Union and NATO, Ukraine became a ‘red line’ as the last bastion against encroachment by the Western powers. Its eastern region borders the Azov Sea; whoever has mastery of Ukraine has the power to disrupt Russia’s waterborne trade and threaten her sovereign territory. 

Quite possibly, from a Russian perspective the hot war that erupted in Ukraine in February is merely the culmination of a progressive thirty-year cold war plan by Western powers to restrict Russia’s regrowth. For all the talk in the mass media about war crimes and wars of aggression, it should be noted that neither Russia nor the US have signed up to jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court. This filthy business has deep roots and assigning blame would open a can of worms, as the American expression goes; not to mention other adventures in North Africa and the Middle East.

Strategically, Russia has always wanted an all-year-round ice-free port to communicate with the rest of the world. It got one in 1945 with the acquisition of Königsberg (now known as Kaliningrad) in what was then East Prussia. It houses Russia’s Baltic Fleet at the port of Baltiysk; but this Russian Federation territory is separated from the motherland by Lithuania and either Latvia or Belarus, depending on the route chosen.

If the Ukraine shooting war manages to avoid turning nuclear, then perhaps time will reconfigure the cat’s-cradle of this modern Great Game. The gradual shrinking of the Arctic ice will open new maritime opportunities for Russia. Further ahead, if global warming continues, it is possible that both Canada and Siberia will become greener as countries to the south begin to parch and populations suffer and migrate en masse. A century from now, the current military confrontation will seem a mere spat by comparison with the northern hemispheric disruption to come.

The Beach Master

From my new Substack email newsletter, 'Now and Next':

Lizard Point in Cornwall is mainland UK’s most southerly edge. Here, a few years ago, a fat rogue of a seal called Woody used the back of a boat as his sunbathing platform and capsized it. There are postcards in the gift shop showing him at it again, with what looks like a cheeky laugh.

We asked about him on this visit; he still comes but isn’t here at the moment. He goes up north each year to fight the local seals there in pursuit of a harem and comes back with more scars.

The shop owner says the dominant seal will chase off the other males to enjoy his brides in peace. The ‘beach master’ here is Tom, though the owner’s favourite is Yogi.

Maybe Woody’s time will come in another season.

Chinese real estate and superstition

From my new Substack email newsletter, 'Now and Next':

YouTube vlogger and old China hand ‘Serpentza’ tells us something new about China’s ‘ghost cities.’ But first a brief overview:

Ordinary Chinese people are now able to save money - something undreamed of a couple of generations ago. 70% of it is in real estate, because other investment vehicles are illegal (e.g Bitcoin) or risky (e.g. the frequently crashing stock market.) Investors look to buy and sell apartments, not live in them. There are some 65 million units standing empty.

The Chinese government supports the property market as a form of savings. Serpentza says it’s worth an estimated $60 trillion, or c. 30% of China’s GDP. So it is a very important element for the government also. To keep the people happy the CCP tinkers with the market, dropping interest rates (even to zero) and adding other incentives, to keep it buoyant.

On the other hand, the government is concerned about the expansion of debt. The property developers buy land and materials and pay their employees and contractors on credit; when the State tightened that borrowing it made the developers insolvent, hence e.g. the crisis at Evergrande, which owes $300 billion.

Oddly to us, the apartments are unfinished. This is not because of a residential property collapse as in the Great Financial Crisis in 2010. Paradoxically, if the owner were to complete his investment apartment its value would actually decrease.

The reason, explains Serpentza, is superstition. If someone buys one of these apartments fully equipped and furnished he will inherit the previous owner’s (or tenant’s) bad karma. For the Chinese this magical taint financially marks down a completed property.

A mild version of this instinct may exist in us, too - how many housebuyers can’t wait to modify their new purchase, however nicely presented, to put their own mark / imprint their personality on it? But in our world, nice houses are worth more than semi-wrecks.

As the trend for mass population movement from Africa and the Middle East towards the UK and Europe gathers pace, perhaps there is something to discuss between us and the Chinese…