82-year old Lib Dem Councillor confronts youths goading dog

The following story reaches us from the Islington Tribune about a Lib Dem councillor with a track record of tackling crime and anti-social behaviour head-on:

FACED with a group of youths goading a Staffordshire Bull Terrier to strip bark off trees to toughen its jaws, a lesser person would walk away. But 82-year-old deputy mayor and Lib Dem councillor Anna Berent is not a lesser person – she once bit a burglar – and the safety of the tree, in Petherton Road, in Highbury, was more important to her. …

Cllr Berent said: “I was going home and I saw these young men with a dog. It was attacking the tree. I wandered in that direction because I had to go past them anyway and said: ‘Nice dog but you really shouldn’t teach it to rip bark off the trees’.

“They said trees die anyway and I said give them a chance and they will live longer than you. “They ‘Humphed’ and walked away.”

But Cllr Berent was not shaken by the experience. She said: “I was marginally nervous but I always feel that I’m probably the least likely age and appearance to be thumped. I’m not a challenge to anyone’s masculinity. I’m much too old to be a sex object and I’m not so decrepit that I look like I will fall over if anybody blew.”