I despise him due to him being an arrogant cheating cunt of a man, who has consistently fronted up the “not guilty” denial
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How the fuck does this still happen in 2024?
BBC News - Blind man ‘humiliated’ after hotel refuses entry
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Amazing story about a popular source of anti-chinese stories for the main stream media turning out to be a complete fraudster
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London, say no more.
Arse hole of the country
10 year ago the default response to seeing someone bring a dog into an establishment they aren’t normally/supposed to be was: “probably a blind person. I wonder how I can be helpful”
Today it is “Ah fuck. Here comes another pretend “support” animal. Let me get them out of here before that poorly trained animal pisses on the rug.”
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Thankfully it was expensive for the company in question, this time around.
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I think you raise an issue which does muddy the waters, somewhat. It probably also answers the question posed above as to how this can happen in 2024.
Guide dog for the blind, no problem at all. But the concept of support dogs has not been fully fleshed out, and it is not clear cut for vendors as to what they should be doing or allowing.
With all that said, in this instance it should have been obvious the man was blind and had a guide dog, so I’m glad the hotel had to pay out.
I think retailers have a massive part to play here.
1 search on google for guide dog harness and the first thing to pop up is an amazon ad for service dog harness costing £9.99.
Personally I think that should be illegal and you should only be allowed to get that sort of harness through a registered guide dog/service dog charity. Selling them should not be allowed.
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I agree with that.
Our dog is a trained therapy dog. She went through a formal program for obedience and also to test her reaction against various stimuli and surprises. At the end we were given a special coat for her to wear in order to identify her when in service.
The sort of thing she has done is to go to a residential home and a preschool. It was at the permission/invitation of someone in authority and her calm, and presence, added something to the environment. Older people who can no longer look after a pet of their own got to spend some time with a calm and friendly dog, and young kids learned about animals on a pet themed day.
This is several steps short of the level of training and responsibility that a guide dog would have, but I’m just adding my tuppence to say that even at her level, she was awarded the coat to wear after suitable training, and it wasn’t just something we picked up from Amazon for a few quid.
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As a pet owner, I am fully in agreement that our animals and pets can be a great source of emotional support for their humans. But what is the boundary before it becomes an inconvenience to others? Like the recent case where someone brings a Great Dane onto a plane as an ESA. I love dogs and I will have no issue but I can imagine some who can have a fear especially this beauty who can be taller than kids and that size, how do you get it to sit properly in the seat without infringing on the others around the seat?
As for guide dogs, it’s just education over and over again especially in countries in my region where dogs can be considered dirty by some religious practitioners and it’s not unheard of people getting rejected for such reasons amongst other reasons.
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Guide dogs should be sacrosanct. Necessary. Well trained. The blind person absolutely needs their companion animal. Full access required.
Emotional support animals? Much more thought needs to be given to how they feature in public spaces.
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I always remember seeing a guide dog in Woolworths in Glasgow helping itself to the pick and mix whilst the owner looked rather bewildered.
For the most part, it is incredible how the animals can be trained, but it is still objectively funny when the Labrador Retriever breaks through the training regime.
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There are also other forms of support dogs. Some support in epilepsy and other conditions.
Just adding to the discussion.
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The question I have with these scenarios is, is this an individual dog trait and they are reacting to their owner, or is it something breed related and can be trained to future dogs?
And if so, how would one go about training a dog to detect someone having an epileptic fit without repeatedly forcing a human to go through that in front of the dog?
I assume you have heard about the tragedy today regarding the plane from Azerbadjan to Russia, Grozny, crashing. Thankfully survivors.
However, as always, you cannot trust a word that comes out of the mouth of Russian officials. It is probable that someone mistook this plane (I don’t know how) for Ukrainian drones and shot it down. They will never ever admit this, but the evidence is rather clear. According to the official Russian story, it hit a flock of birds, damaging one of the engines and it then lost power.
See for yourself; but this is normally how shrapnel looks like:
https://x.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1871944982984335500
https://x.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1871945421167468854
https://x.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1871946052728934548
https://x.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1871948243040645479
https://x.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1871951859146948950
https://x.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1871953697628209474
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https://x.com/PStyle0ne1/status/1871926307207938219
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1871935554612297779
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1871935802051289552
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1871936705286344751
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1871937285404639463
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1871937879829586061
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1871938545172267039
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1871940082451591299
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1871941930369556959
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1871951897646793123
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1871963618444714119
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1871966548233269526
I don’t know why or how they bother with lying about this. It is so obvious that they lie. And then RT, Russia Today themselves, films the evidence. Beyond parody. They could have made this into a tragedy, said something nasty about Ukraine and scored a minor propaganda victory; but instead they just reflexively lie.
Anyway, rest in peace to those who died in this tragedy and sympathy for those who lost someone.
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This has been a Russian mindset for god knows how long. It was the same mindset the ultimately lead to the Chernobyl disaster and the attempted cover up afterwards.
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I know. But it’s stupid. Their control of social media, even of Russian tv (which is fast on the scene) is far less air tight than under the Soviet Union. So these totalitarian, or at least authoritarian, knee jerk automated lies are far less productive today, compared to in 1989.
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Putin has no clothes.
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To be fair, I doubt it’s from him personally. I think it is more systemic automated knee jerk from the Russian ministry of Defence or the ministry of interior. It’s so fast as well. Minutes after the tragedy, they have the “it hit a flock of birds and had engine failure” story.
It’s supress, supress, supress. But sure, Putin may have told them to supress, but I am not certain he has been personally involved. You know, from Ukraine we know that generals in the field lie to MoD. MoD then lies or at least obfuscates failure, to Putin. It’s a heirarchy of lies because failure is punished severely.
Then again, Putin is the head of this system and his world, that of the KGB; is one of lies and obfuscation. Who knows where the lie originated. I think MoD officials think they are supposed to lie, then tell Putin “X is what actually happened, but we gave the media story Y instead, like good boys and we are now working to make it less embarrasing for the Russian state”. Putin then usually probably says the equalent of “Very well and carry on” (if he doesn’t, someone gets sacked or worse, gets imprisoned on unrelated charges).
But of course, flashy stuff like this accident, Putin of course knows the exact facts (available to Russian investigators) of everything that happened. But those facts don’t get told to the people.