Huggers

I think also cats should be given greater legal protection. Maybe that would close this loophole. If you run over a dog in your car you are obliged by law to report it, but not a cat. As Ive said before on the other dog thread, dogs off leads on the street are a menace, not just to traffic and people, but to dogs on leads who feel very vulnerable when rushed by them. Last night I saw dog (bull terrier) off lead in street, it went into road, owner just started hitting it. Not a very good way to train a dog to walk next to you.

well done Don Quixote. Now will you sort out the middle east.

On EDF recommendation Saw true blood for first time last night and loved it and am loving Criminal Justic too .Isnt life great when the telly is good?

..or the tractor that is definitely over park speed limit and zooms about practically doing handbrake turns.

ditto

Steve Ive no idea what I would do. Did this happen to you in Peckham Rye? That is terrifying. Are there attacks like this going on in Peckham Rye that would warrant these muzzles and enclosures on normal dog walking people? are dogs attacking human beings on a regular basis? Its a pretty regular dog walking crowd in PRP and we tend to keep an eye out for eachother and keep an ear to the grapevine. I thought original posters were complaining about being rushed by disobedient dogs rather than attacked by vicious ones .Hence my advice to ignore if you are phobic, so as not to increase interest and interaction . No collar no owner? that is illegal straight away, so would such a dog ever be muzzled or 'walked in an enclosure'? Dogs this dangerous have no business being in a park at all, and no muzzle or enclosure is going to make them safe. Dogs scare me when they are off the lead in the residential streets- off lead dogs in the streets are illegal and yet I see guys cycling along with dogs running on the pavement. Not only intimidating and illegal, but dangerous re possible RTA. I expect to be able to walk my dog on a lead down the street without being harrassed by an off lead dog- the most likely scenario for a fight or for me to get bitten edited to add: the law already requires the muzzling and neutering of all pit bull type or dangerous breed dogs-and of course for all dogs to wear a collar.

well Sean, I don't think she was making a judgement,-and I certainly I understand your point about people not being able to do that when they are in a state of terror. she was acting on her phobia but then her noise and flapping actions in reaction to her hysteria to a dog were the equivalent of calling it to her. To be fair, I think she was probably mentally ill. I had to reassure her and call the dog (who was mesmerised), both of which were very difficult under the unslaught of her shopping and shouting. I suppose the equivalent would be if I saw a group of youths in the distance and started to scream and They came over to see what was going on. Which made me scream more. I am making an assumption about a group of youths and my reaction - which brings them over- then reinforces my assumption. Unfair assumption, but genuine terror .(this is hypothetical, I dont actually do this) The best thing to do if you are scared of dogs is to ignore them, which of course is the hardest thing to do if you are feeling scared. I realized that my dog could get freaked out by freaked out people and needed to get used to the strangeness of others and ignore other people, whatever they were doing...and most importantly to come back to me on command. Edited to add- I'm not the only one to have had school children coming up to my dog when I am walking him on the lead in the street and screaming in his face 'aaagh a dog'. Dog phobia being passed from parent to child. And if it was a dodgy dog- would that be the most sensible thing to do? Eventually it must become a self fulfilling prophecy if you scream in the face of enough dogs ...

Dogs have been domesticated for millenia because of their affinity with human beings and are not instinctively hostile like say lions, nor regard us as prey, roaming round parks looking for victims. We do not have wild packs like you would find in India- which are of course very scarey and unpredictable. Not for nothing is the dog known as Man's Best Friend. Even the demonised staffie is sometimes called the 'nanny dog ' because of its protectiveness towards children. Cliche I know, but bad dogs are the result of bad- or stupid negligent people The likeliest victims of such dogs are their own owners and owners children or neighbours, and the likeliest venues are their own homes as we so often read about in the paper, or ....those protecting their own dogs. in the park are pointers to good dog husbandry . Has the dog got a Collar, is it with someone, is the owner paying attention. The very fact the dog is being taken for a walk is a sign that it is cared for and has a structured life. I once threw a ball for my dog that landed at least twenty feet from a woman who then, as the dog collected his ball, began to scream and shout at him, catching his attention so that he went over to have a look. She then threw all her shopping at him and so he barked at her and he was very scared. Nowadays he would be too laid back to take notice, but here was someone who's very fear of dogs actually made them a focus of attention to a dog who might even see her actions as an attack.

I like to go into London bridge more than anywhere else. It's fantastic. I can be in convent garden or on my way to Bedford in no time via the charing cross connection, actually quicker than when I lived in Pimlico or south ken. Don't diss the Eileen mister.

Hi Ryegirl, I sympathise with you heartily as mine is kept on lead around younger dogs as they make him anxious as they do not understand/listen to his 'I'm not into you' signals and can be very harrassing. To stop him feeling more wary about it I make sure I am 'the protector' who tells these dogs to go away so it's not his problem, while walking calmly away from them. But to the owners I am a woman telling their darlings to b****er off and they can't understand why. But I am taking the responsibility that they are not. One day their 'darling' could run uninvited into the jaws of something a bit more hostile and then it will be too late.

I spent about fifteen minutes construcing my contribution to a couple of other points in this thread which- if you remember- I started. Fifteen minutes to carefully articulate, but four seconds for the chair to read, judge and decide to delete. I can only assume the chair did not understand my references,or understand the nature of an expansive discussion on a single theme- because all my references were completely relevent. Nor were they libellous. Natassia Kinski's relationship at the age of 15 with Polanski isin the public domain and in her autobiography and was in response to 'was it a one off offence for Polanski?'question that was asked.. My reference to the film Tess likewise refers to Polanski's take on the whole thing. My reference to Brook Shields refers to an event comtemporative to the original offence and was in answer to 'werent the seventies Hollywood like that?' To sum up, yes the atmosphere of seventies Hollywood was morally ambivolent (c. brook shields) but that does not excuse Polanski who acted in that instance as a predatory paedophile even if he doesnt think he did. Like TImster I am saying a big no to the drawing room if it is unable to sustain a proper discussion. This Polanski discussion touches on ideas of the law and the passage of time, changing mores, personal culpability, whether we forgive artists more readily than citizens....interesting quesions? apparently not.

oh I repeated my post because I thought that I'd previewed it but not posted it at all.! I thought the drawing room was meant to be intelligent debate, so if I draw on a parallel current topical situation very relevant to our discussion when other posters have quoted 'sevenites hollywood morality' I think it's a valid post. The drawing room is for dialectical debate, serious discussion and may draw on related things. If it's going to be censored into superficiality, I'm not going to bother with it any more.

Timster, interesting points about the morality/amorality of Hollywood specially as we've just had the removal from Tate Modern of the highly sexualised photographic image of Brook Shields as a child, taken at about the same time as the Polanski 'event' and with the approval and collusion of her mother and which was printed in Playboy. We would never accept that today, and indeed we couldn't accept it's display even as a critique of those times, hence its removal. By the way, didnt Polanski 'date' the underage Natassia Kinski while directing her in 'Tess', itself a kind of cinemagraphic apology for the exploitation of the vulnerable by the powerful.

Hi Don, you are probably being approached by young inquisitive dogs rather than aggressive ones . When my dog was young he sometimes ran up to joggers or other people and if they shouted or flapped he thought it was a game and would bark, which made it seem worse though he 'meant no harm!. I felt very ashamed and would often bluster on about 'playing' to mask my absolute lack of control over my furry friend. I think maybe this is why the owners try and reassure you- which immediately feels quite sinister I know. Its just that an excitable reaction just overexcites these dogs more. It took a lot of training to teach my dog to find me more interesting than a running person but it was important to do so because harm is in the eye of the beholder and its intimidating if you don't know the dog. We all want to use the park in peace with eachother. So it's important for people to train their dogs to come back to them or have them on a long line until they do. If its any consolation it's also very annoying to some of us dog owners when our dogs are torpedoed by an unsupervised young dog with an owner miles away chatting on their mobile phone, especially owners of elderly or rescue dogs.

Sean are you tuned into Spiral 2?

Relevent to this- how about the withdrawal of the photo of a made-up naked Brooke Shields as a child from the Tate Modern today? It's picture we today find hard to stomach even as a statement about the times it was taken in. It was taken in the early seventies, with the approval nay encouragement of her mother and was apparently in Playboy. Maybe it does say something about the times- something horrible- and about Hollywood morals. Whoever said this was a 'one off' for Polanski, remember he had a long relationship with a very young Natassia Kinski. 'Tess' is all about expoitation of innocence,Maybe it was meant as expiation.

unless they nick the tree.

thanks guys, contacted server (which.net)and they are indeed down.

Is anyone else in the area suffering from internet probs today re emails?

My view is that he should have faced up to it at the time and saved himself a lot of trouble.

He did the crime, should he do the time? Discuss.

I think it's the opening lines from Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

licence all dogs and link their poo to a dna database. A job for the ambitious traffic warden who wishes to transfer to the police- poo detective. And in the lab, poo analylsts (sic)could provide jobs for those bio chemistry graduates hit by current unemployment situation. Sorted.

Just want to say how clean the station is looking this afternoon- the forecourt all swept and the flower baskets making it all look rather smart.

Italian restaurant in Blenheim grove next to church.? Bar Story in Blenheim Grove.?