Notebook
Mrs Olive Brown of Erith in Kent was due to appear this week before magistrates in Bexley, facing a charge of Manslaughter. She was the owner of two Doberman Pinschers which, a year ago, went berserk in a housing estate and savaged 11 People. One of the victims, a 72-year-old widow, subsequently died of her injuries. The dogs were put down, and Mrs Brown's husband, a steel fixer, announced: 'After this never keep dogs again'. It was a Promise made in the heat of the moment, but Mr Brown need not have gone so far. He would have satisfied me, at any rate, by promising merely that he would never again keep Doberman Pinschers. For these are, without doubt, the most unpleasant domestic animals in existence. Most dogs are fundamentally amiable, but the Dober- man Pinscher is not. Its dominant emotion is aggression; its homicidal tendencies ap- pear to grow worse with age; it has no func- tion as a 'pet' other than that of terrifying human beings. The Doberman Pinscher has no more right to be at large than a Broad- Moor maniac. I should confess that I have a Personal grudge against the breed. Last 811.41111er I was attacked by a Doberman Pinscher which, although it was wearing a ,111,tizzle, and I was wearing a pair of jeans, nit me in the behind and managed to draw blood. It is not only painful to be bitten in the behind; it is humiliating. But the case of Mrs Brown's Doberman Pinschers merely highlights a growing menace. The Home Office does not have figures for injuries in- flicted by dogs; it can say only that 2,202 People were convicted in 1979 for 'dog- related offences', whatever they may be. llot the Post Office is more enlightening. It sa„Ys that last year it received 4,600 reports of attacks by dogs on postmen, and that this Year is expects the figure to rise to 5,500. As there are 60,000 postmen in the coun- try, nearly one in ten runs the risk of being bitten by a dog during the course of the Year The Post Office has its own sociological theories about this increase in the number of attacks. The recession, it saYs, means there are more stray dogs in the streets.. It also claims that, because councils ,,re getting tougher about forbidding tenants to keep dogs in blocks of flats, peo- ple often leave their dogs outside all day in order to avoid detection — yet another Powerful argument against tower blocks.
Iam told by the Master of Peterhouse that in Cambridge all the undergraduates are joining the Social Democratic Party, whereas in Oxford none are. This may ex- Plain why the Spectator sells many more e°Ples in Oxford than it does in Cambridge, a fact that has always puzzled me. Clearly something had to be done to improve the reading habits of Cambridge undergradu- ates, so last week we launched a modest promotion in the university, which included the sponsorship by the Spectator of a Union Society debate. This produced a thumping majority for the motion 'This House believes that Socialism offers no solution to the problems of Britain', and I do not recall any speaker showing the slightest en- thusiasm for the SDP, which perhaps in- dicates that Union attitudes are not typical of university feeling. With the exception of one or two emotional leftwingers, very few, indeed, of the speakers showed much en- thusiasm for anything, it being apparently considered a matter for mild curiosity, but no more, whether this country is governed by the principles of capitalism or socialism. The Union Society was, however, much more deeply concerned with the question of whether it should socially democratise itself. The main debate was preceded by a lively discussion of a proposed new con- stitution which would permit more 'par- ticipation' by ordinary union members. It appears that some members resent the suspected domination of the Society by a little group of politically ambitious officers. I suggested to members of this beleaguered oligarchy that they might be more popular if they did not flaunt their authority by wearing dinner jackets. But I was told that the abolition of dinner jackets was an ex- periment that had been tried and failed. Discipline had collapsed and guest speakers (last week's motion was proposed by Leon Britton) complained that they were treated disrespectfully. Extraordinary the power that a dinner jacket commands.
We have waited in vain for Sir James Goldsmith to announce details of his £50,000 annual prize for journalists who rat on each other — or rather, as he preferred to put it, of his prize ' for the best in- vestigative journalism into subversion in the media'. He had promised to let us know all about it before Christmas, but we have heard nothing. This is not surprising. Since he was rejected as a potential proprietor of The Times and since the failure of Now! magazine, he has been fed up with the ungrateful people of this country and has turned his attention elsewhere. But he is still obsessed with the press. He is now trying to buy the New York Daily News from the Chicago Tribune group. This is the newspaper which Mr Rupert Murdoch, pro- prietor of the New York Post, has been hoping to destroy. The Post has been losing 15 to 20 million dollars a year. The News lost 10 or 11 million dollars last year. Only if the News goes under does Mr Murdoch believe that the Post can become profitable. That, perhaps, is why Mr Murdoch has been in New York for the past week while the staff of Times Newspapers in Gray's Inn Road have been agonising helplessly about their future. But 1 don't know why I bother to speculate about such things. I just long for a time when our major newspapers will cease to make news themselves, when their continued publication becomes an assumption on which one can rely, and when the identities of both proprietors and editors are a secret.
''This is a sad, sad day, It is the end of an 1 era.' This was not a stewardess of Laker Airways talking, though it easily might have been, but a redundant Bunny girl from the Playboy Club. To me the emancipation of the Bunny girls was an event comparable to the abolition of slavery. I expected the poor creatures to dance in the streets with gratitude. But it is astonishing the effect that any uniform, however humiliating, seems to have on its wearers. 'The costume meant a lot to everyone,' said Playboy's night manager, '1 suppose the girls will get over it. They're young'. The Playboy Club is now trying to become respectable after losing its gaming licence last year. That is one of the reasons why, after it was taken over recently by Tri- dent Television, the Playboy organisation appointed a senior Scotland Yard officer, Peter Nievens, as its director. He succeeded a retired admiral, Sir John Treacher, a former NATO commander. And now, as confirmation of a disturbing trend, we learn that the Sixth Earl Grey has accepted the chairmanship of a chain of London sex shops. Like Deputy Assistant Commis- sioner Nievens, Lord Grey says that it was not the money that attracted him. 'I'm do- ing it. for the sake of public interest,' said Lord Grey, adding that he considered himself a 'highly moral person with a strong code of conduct'. Mr Nievens has also boasted about his moral principles and said he believed that the job of running Playboy was 'a worthwhile one to do'. People, of course, can convince themselves of anything. But I hope Mr Nievens, Lord Grey, and the no doubt limitless number of noblemen and distinguished public servants lining up for similar lucrative jobs do not seriously expect to convince anyone else.
Alexander Chancellor
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