Lead me not into ...

One of the joyous consequences of balmy weather is the evening constitutional. Today it took me on a fine ramble for over an hour, including a trip around Newington Green. Newington Green is undergoing something of a revival involving the wholesale reconstruction of the green itself to include generous lawns for picnics, children's playground and an outdoor theatre area. One of the roads feeding onto the green has been closed to provide a large al fresco dining and drinking area for the bars abutting it and the more sensible restaurants and cafes have made outdoor spaces and offer snacks and ice creams to attract passing trade. There's something of a throb about the general atmosphere on nice summer evenings.

And then there are the dogs.

In the space of ten minutes in and around the green I witnessed at least half a dozen unleashed dogs, some on pavements following cycling or walking owners, others running around on the green itself. Perhaps I hold an extreme view because I was bitten by a dog when a small boy and still bear the long scar on my flabby right thigh; although I doubt I am the only one who finds the sight of a roaming hound with slobbering chops more than a little uncomfortable.

Dog owners just don't seem to get it. Of course some consider their creatures to be akin to a handgun and use them to intimidate the meek, most do not. It is the "most" that trouble me more. Let me take you back about two years to a bright summer morning when I was having a cup of tea with a neighbour while sitting on the front steps of FatBigot Towers. Someone who lives a few doors south came along with her dog and joined us for a chat. I didn't know her from a bowl of soup but my neighbour did. Her hound jumped up at me a number of times and I asked her to restrain it. It might or might not be relevant that we were all on my property and she entered uninvited, although it might say something about her general attitude. The exact words I used were "would you mind keeping your animal away from me please?" Said, I think, without malice and phrased very much as a request rather than a command. Her response was exactly what I had encountered from dog owners before: "He's only playing, he won't hurt you."

What she meant was: (i) if it did the same to her she would consider it playful and (ii) she would not expect her dog to do her harm. She had no idea that the very act of having an animal jumping at me was harmful to me, it scared me as dogs always scare me. That she felt I should not be scared made no difference. That the dog did not, on that occasion, sink its fangs into my fleshy body made no difference to the fear because the fear lay in the risk.

A few months later her dog did bite someone. I did not witness the event but heard about it from the very same neighbour I was chatting to when it attacked me. He was an eye witness and informed me that her reaction was to blame the victim, a child of ten, for scaring the dog and she used that well-worn half-truth so beloved of animal owners "he's never done that before", as though it excuses her irresponsibility in allowing an animal to run free in public.

All dogs have the innate capacity to bite strangers, some are more inclined to do so than others but they can all do it and an awful lot achieve the feat despite the feigned astonishment of their owners when it happens.

My return from tonight's constitutional required me to cross the road twice to avoid oncoming untethered dogs; one a scrofulous collie and the other a well presented but dribbling Staffordshire bull terrier. I shouldn't have had to cross the road because the owners should have had their pets on leads but they decided to promote their opinions of their dogs above the opinions others might have. One day the law will come to its senses and allow roaming dogs to be shot on sight.

Football can be very unappealing

I watched a ball kicking contest on the television yesterday between Manchester United and Arsenal. Having grown up in Sussex and being a long-standing resident of Highbury my support (such as it is) has always been directed at Manchester United. The game wasn't particularly entertaining because United were wholly dominant from first to last and Arsenal seemed to have neither the will nor the skill to fight back after conceding two early goals. Apparently another bunch of cheating thugs based in London was eliminated from the same tournament this evening and the final will pit United against Barcelona in three weeks' time. I'm not particularly interested in football, in fact I find it rather tiresome as a spectator sport and the behaviour of almost all the players is nothing less than organised cheating. To an extent it shouldn't really matter if the game is administered unfairly given that the players spend so much of their time trying to mislead the referee into awarding them free kicks and throw-ins, but something arising from yesterday's game really shocked me.

Towards the end of the match a Manchester United player was adjudged to have committed a foul and was sent off. He will not now be allowed to play in the final against Barcelona. Apparently there is no right of appeal no matter how incorrect the referee's decision might have been save in two very limited circumstances. The first is where there is a case of mistaken identity such that the referee has mistaken one coiffurred and tattooed millionaire ponce for another. The other is where the referee himself admits that he was in error. I find this a quite bizarre state of affairs.

For all its thuggishness, professional ball kicking is big business and the players have only a limited time playing at the very top level. The player who was sent off yesterday is Scottish so he will never play in any important international games, his chances to fulfill his potential are restricted to club football. Perhaps he will never again have the opportunity to play in the final of the European Cup. And so far as his team is concerned their chances of winning could be compromised by his absence, something not only of personal importance to the players and supporters but of huge financial significance to the business of the football club itself.

How can it possibly be right that there can be no appeal against a decision with far-reaching consequences? On looking into matters a little further I have discovered that in the English league system clubs can appeal against a player being sent-off but not against him being given a formal caution during a match (something I will always think of as a booking but which we must now call a yellow card). Yet an accumulation of yellow cards leads to suspension from future matches even if each referee issuing the caution was wrong to do so.

Not having a right of appeal against an incorrect decision strikes me as fundamentally wrong. Having said that, restricting rights of appeal has been a feature of the development of English civil litigation over the last twenty or so years. When I started in the law a disgruntled litigant had an automatic right to appeal against almost any decision. None but the most foolhardy would just appeal willy-nilly because an unsuccessful appeal could be very expensive, nevertheless the system acknowledged that decisions at the lowest rung of the judicial ladder are made by just one person who can get it wrong so there was an opportunity to, in effect, seek a second opinion. Rules set various tests that had to be met to overturn rulings in different types of case and from different ranks of judge resulting in some decisions being easier to change than others. The technical details don't matter, what was important was that the system recognised the fallibility of human judgment and that it can have a profound effect on real people.

There was then a major change about twenty years ago. A general requirement was introduced for obtaining permission from the court before you could appeal (there were some exceptional instances in which permission was not required but they were rare). And, somewhat strangely, you had to seek permission to appeal from the very judge who had ruled against you. This might sound like a recipe for embarrassment and in front of some judges it was because they took it as a personal insult. Fortunately they were few in number, but it was still a slightly uncomfortable thing to seek to persuade a judge he was wrong when the ink of his signature at the bottom of the judgment was not yet dry. Even if he or she refused permission to appeal you always had the right to ask the appellate court for permission. You might or might not have been correct in thinking that the first judge got something wrong but at least you had the chance to put your objection and if there appeared to be something substantial in your point you would be given the chance to make a formal appeal. This filtering system actually worked very well and I presume it still does.

The idea that you should have no way of challenging a plainly erroneous decision strikes me as absurd unless there are special reasons justifying that position. I can see, for example, that a right to appeal every decision for a free kick or throw-in by reference to television pictures might cause any sport to be delayed and stultified. Decisions about whether to award a penalty and whether the ball has crossed the line for a goal are in a different category because they can have a significant impact on the outcome of the game. Decisions leading to players being suspended from participation in future matches are even more serious. Maybe yesterday's referee was correct, maybe he was not. I don't know. But I can understand the argument voiced by the commentators at the time, and by many observers since, that he was completely wrong. For there be no way of raising that argument would be said by some to be a breach of the player's (and possibly the club's) human rights. I prefer to look at it as being unfair and, therefore, unacceptable without the political dimension of "human rights" being dragged into the matter.

This seems to be yet another example of a self-important transnational body (in this case UEFA) setting itself above the standards of decency and fair play by which we little people try to live. The UN does it and the EU does it so it is perhaps no surprise that other unaccountable bodies with access to virtually unlimited amounts of other people's money should do it as well.

A thought on football yobbery

So, the football season is with us again. Today we had the grand unwrapping of the new "Respect" programme which pretends to promote good behaviour of players towards referees. It will, I confidently predict, result in no change whatsoever.

Players do not intimidate referees for the fun of it, they do it because their managers tell them to do it. The managers do not give those instructions for the fun of it, they do so because they know a cowed official is more likely to favour their side. The only thing that will eliminate this dreadful spectacle is the imposition of stiff penalties, as there are in rugby and cricket. A single word of dissent in rugby leads to play moving 10 metres closer to your line which gives a significant advantage to your opponents; not surprisingly, arguing with match officials in rugby is rare. A single word or gesture of dissent in cricket leads to warnings, financial penalties or even suspension; a bowler who dissents can be prevented from bowling further in the innings. Not surprisingly, dissent in cricket is rare. If you go back thirty years you would find occasional instances of this sort of behaviour in the more excitable countries of Europe and South America, now it is universal.

Misbehaviour on the football pitch goes much further than dissent against official decisions, sadly. These days it seems to be compulsory for players to let out a string of abusive language if they make a mistake, but you would not have seen Bobby Charlton, Pele or Franz Beckenbauer doing so; they would shake their head, sigh and get on with their work. What I find most disappointing is that the culture of vulgarity in football is not limited to badly brought up thugs like Wayne Rooney and Joey Barton. Even intelligent men who were raised to be polite and respectful, such as the Neville Brothers, have been caught by it and do things they would never dream of doing off a football pitch.

The causes of this problem are so complex and long-standing that it is impossible to change the whole atmosphere quickly. One problem, in my opinion, is that football is treated in the press and on television and radio as though it really matters. It does not really matter, it is a sport, an entertainment, a side-show. That does not mean that entertainments cannot be an important part of people's lives, but when they become an obsession they can be damaging. If you doubt that many take support of their team too seriously, listen to a radio phone-in on football, you will witness the most extraordinary lack of perspective from many of the callers. Not once will you hear the host of the show saying "it's only a game", instead they stir-up and encourage obsession, thereby giving a form of "official" approval. This is carried onto the terraces, leading to an atmosphere that many, myself included, find intimidating.

A good start would be immediate yellow cards for any dissent and for excessive swearing (it would be unreasonable to punish the occasional exasperated outburst). The referees will need to be strong and to be given unqualified support by the organising bodies and, if that happens, strong penalties for dissent will result in a cultural change for the better.

The "respect" programme will not result in any improvement because it fails to provide effective sanctions. Another season of organised yobbery will follow and this time next year another weak proposal will be made. Eventually they might get the message.