Nobody’s fault my arse

And so another small child has been killed by the family rottweiler. How many does that make this year exactly?

Of course we are told the family pet had never shown the slightest degree of aggression before. "This wasn't expected, it's nobody's fault," said the detective superintendent in charge of the case.

Well, I give him credit for not wanting to stick the boot in to a family already suffering deeply from the consequences of a catastrophic misjudgement, but hang on a minute. The dog was a rottweiler, for heaven’s sake. I know very little about dogs, but I do know - and so does everybody else - that rottweilers are prone to turn extremely dangerous at the slightest provocation, such as an ignorant and uncoordinated baby sticking its fingers everywhere. “Wasn’t expected”? Senior police officers should be sensitive, but shouldn’t be allowed to talk complete bollocks.

Yes, you get experts on the TV saying that the breed is not intrinsically dangerous – it’s not banned by the Dangerous Dogs Act – and is perfectly harmless if handled properly. Banning more breeds would be wrong because it would apply to everybody, even the sensible dog-handlers. But not banning breeds applies to everybody too, including the sort of family which sprouts fatherless babies like this one, whose mother was 17. And the police and press aren’t allowed to ask questions like “Whose idea was it to introduce a rottweiler into this family, and why?” We all know it’s likely to have been some spotty herbert with a suet dumpling for a brain who thought it might boost his credibility as a bit of a hard man. Well, it wasn’t nobody’s fault, it was his. What we need is not so much a Dangerous Dogs Act – it’s no good blaming them – but a Dangerous Chavs Act.