Dangerous Dogs.

Dangerous Dogs.

Greenwich Dangerous Dog Incident

On 3rd October at about 10 am, in Catherine Grove, Greenwich just outside the Hilton Hotel, a 20-month-old toddler had just left the hotel with his mother when out of nowhere an XL bully came running up to the toddler and attacked him without provocation.

The toddler’s leg was mauled and he will probably be scarred for life if it wasn’t for brave members of the public and his mother coming to his aid the child could have been killed.

The parents an Indian couple from the Netherlands over here on business thought their child would lose his leg but luckily after a two-day stay in hospital, the child is going to be OK.

The XL bully’s owner was with the dog at the time of the attack, a 29 year-old man who like just about every other dangerous dog owner who sees their dog attack someone, he did the usual thing he pulled his dog off, picked up his shopping and nonchalantly walked off as if nothing had happened, leaving the poor child bleeding and helpless in the road.

My blood boils with anger against this heartless and uncaring piece of worthless shit. Unfortunately, it’s a scenario that is played out frequently all over the country.  In their mind, their obviously dangerous dog is more important than anyone else’s life. Anyone who can just walk off and leave a child bleeding and injured in the street when they are directly and personally responsible, I can only describe as a human turd.

Thanks to members of the public who followed the man and called the police he was arrested a few streets away and now hopefully he will get what he deserves, and the dog will be destroyed.

The Pitbull and XL bully breed have generations of inbreeding to make them deliberately aggressive and confrontational and they were bred exclusively for one purpose to fight and kill.

It only takes one irrelevant and elusive reason to trigger a Pitbull or XL bully into a wild rage and when that happens you, yourself or any of your family do not want to be anywhere near it.

There’s a certain type of person who thinks owning a pit bull or XL bully will enhance his or her status in society. ‘I need a macho dog because I am macho’. In reality, people will view you as arrogant and uneducated which is more likely the truth.

The Internet channel JOE which mainly deals with political issues interviewed XL bully owners who were protesting against Prime Minister Rishi Sunaks announcement that he intends to ban the breed after numerous attacks and deaths caused by this type of breed.

If those protesting thought, they were going to persuade the public to make them come around to their point of view they must have been delusional.

Some were in complete denial that any XL bully had attacked anyone and there was no evidence to prove any claim, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

One muscle-bound uneducated moron who struggled to complete a whole sentence without sounding like an uneducated chav showed off his dog’s collar and chain, and both were studded with big spikes. It was like looking at the complete stereotypical cliché of Mr macho and his macho dog scenario.

The XL bully and the Pitbull seem to go hand in hand with the anti-social and criminal community who use it to intimidate members of the public.

Look at your local drug dealer and by his side you will more likely find a Pitbull or XL bully dog, not a poodle or a chihuahua.

 

Look at the XL bully or Pitbull owner and you notice that when their dog fouls the pavement or grass, they never pick up their dog’s mess like responsible dog owners.

Any parent who brings any dangerous breed into the home thinking it will make a wonderful family pet for their young children needs to take a good hard look in the mirror and ask themselves “Am I a good responsible parent or is the safety of my child a risk I am willing to take in order to make a statement about myself to other people” because you will be judged by others over your choice of a dog in a family setting.

Here are the initial reports from the Daily Mail.  Many other media outlets reported the incident, but few showed or named the owner who was charged.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12597005/american-xl-bully-attack-toddler-dog-owner-charged.html

Use them or lose them

Use them or lose them

Use them or lose them.

Whilst trying to keep the list of restaurants within the borough up to date it struck me how much the restaurants of certain cuisines are suffering and struggling to stay afloat while in a cost-of-living crisis and the back end of the covid crisis.

I have already had a rant about the lack of British and French restaurants with the number of French restaurants now reduced to just one and even that one  I struggle to call a proper French restaurant. Another ethnic cuisine that has struggled are the Caribbean restaurants with now just two within the borough. They have either shut up shop or moved and set up as takeaways,

It’s very sad to see restaurants being replaced by takeaways who seem to be thriving. The borough has a fair size community of Caribbean decent who I am sure would love to experience Caribbean cuisine within a restaurant atmosphere.

You must ask yourself then, if this is the case why did a lot of them just disappear? The only cause I can think of is they weren’t being used. It seems a simple case of ‘use it or lose it’. I’m sure peoples lack of money during the current cost of living crisis and to a lesser extent now, the covid recovery have had a big effect on this situation.

Pub Bar
Where are all the French and British restaurants?

Where are all the French and British restaurants?

Where are all the French and British restaurants?

What the Royal Borough of Greenwich is in desperate need of are good French and British restaurants. Other surrounding boroughs have a few but we have hardly any considering we are a Royal borough that extols the virtue of British tourism.
We currently have one Café Rouge . which as very soon to be closed down and converted to a Banna Leaf restaurant which is a pan Asian restaurant, after the parent company of Café Rouge got into financial difficulties.

That will leave just the Champagne and Fromage Bistro which although technically a restaurant only really specialises in, you guest it Champagne and Cheese with maybe a few cold meats on the side. Hardly what you would call a proper French restaurant.
Then we have our British restaurants. I have had to delete so many British restaurants this year that I am reduced to scouring the locations of Fish and chip restaurants and Pie and Mash restaurants. These are no doubt worthy of being classed as British restaurants as many of us Brits regularly frequent these establishments, but what we really need are independent steakhouses or proper British restaurants.

Where is all the British grub you may well ask, and I will tell you. It’s in the Pubs of Greenwich.
We have great British food being served in style at places such as The Greenwich Tavern and the Cutty Sark and Enderby House in Greenwich and the Dial Arch and Guard House in Woolwich. In fact almost every pub in the Borough will serve British food of some sort you just have to do trial and error to find the good ones.

The Duke of Greenwich opening day.

The Duke of Greenwich opening day.

Duke of Greenwich opening day.

On a lovely sunny evening on Wednesday 12th July we went t the opening of the new pub called The Duke of Greenwich (formerly The Vanbrugh).

I was mistaken in my last blog when I said that I thought the pub had been gutted and was completely different inside. Inside the layout is still the same.

The selection of craft and real ale beers on sale is most impressive although the barman did seem to go into a state of mind confusion when the wife asked for a glass of Pinot Grigio. She settled for a Sauvignon Blanc, which he could handle. I being a CAMRA member wanted to try out the real ales on offer.

Most of the real ales on offer were from the Brew By Numbers brewery which brews excellent beers just down the road by the river.

My wife also tried a Portuguese wine called ‘Chin Chin’ which she said was very nice.

The main food on offer that day was supplied by the large BBQ stage set up in the gardens although I am sure other food was being prepared in the restaurant part but was largely being ignored in favour of the BBQ.

I will eventually get around to writing a review about this place, but it will not be based on the opening day as that would be unfair. Most pubs are different in vibe and ambience once the celebrations are over and a more normal way of life sets in.

Going forward even if they kept the pub as it was on the opening day, I would be OK with that as we enjoyed ourselves. I will also try out their food to see what sort of selection they have but I strongly suspect that they will keep it as a basic pub grub establishment, which is fine as long as the food quality remains good.

The only reason the Vanbrugh closed was the licensee retired and there was no one available to take up the reigns. Let’s hope the Duke of Greenwich is a success. I for one will be popping in occasionally.

The Vanbrugh reopens

The Vanbrugh reopens

The Vanbrugh reopens soon

Pub BarThe much missed pub, The Vanbrugh which closed on the 11th March 2022 is set to finally reopen within a matter of weeks according to the local blog www.fromthemurkydepths.co.uk and I for one will love to try it out under new management.

From a notice attached to the pub door the new owners are an independent company made up of 5 friends who work in the hospitality sector and already run a pub called The Jolly Gardeners in Vauxhall.

I used to love sitting out in the garden area in this pub in the summertime, so reopening in July hopefully we will get to enjoy the garden area again.

At one time The Vanbrugh was noted locally for its excellent cuisine and restaurant area, but by the time the pub closed the food standard seemed to go from high end cuisine to fairly bog-standard pub grub, but the quality of the food remained excellent, if not a bit wanting in selection on the high-end side.

Let’s hope the new owners re-establish a newly invigorated standard and get the restaurant back to how it once was.

I for one am glad some of our local pubs like The Vanbrugh and the Star and Garter, now called the Star of Greenwich Community Pub which we thought were gone for good are making a comeback.

Update:

When the old Vanbrugh pub reopens on Wednesday, July 12th it will not be called the Vanbrugh, but will now be called the Duke of Greenwich and gathering by the amount of building material and waste stored outside the place has been gutted and will have a completely new look.