A New God has Arrived - Health and Safety

Well, actually, the arrival happened a few years ago, but it still makes the mouth drop at some of the decisions.

We all know of some incident that shouts idiocy: the villager who has tended the flowers in a bed in the middle of the road for 60 years is told that she must either stop or have a lookout, warning signs and HV wear; the childens organisation that had to obtain an event permit, conduct a risk assessment, obtain police clearance and liability insurance before they could continue their annual pensioners Christmas lunch. The list could go on.

When some bod issues an edict, like the examples above, they normally quote ‘health and safety’. Trouble is, there is no room left for any discussion. The very mention of health and safety normally requires all who hear it to nod appreciatively, to give a deep sucking-in of breath and a resigned look of “well, that’s that then.”.

Who is the giver of all these edicts? Where can we go to obtain a more commonsense approach? Is this nation so litigious that unless we adhere to the minutei of each dot and tick of multitudinous forms we are likely to suffer hell and damnation?

Take this case in Preston, Lancashire. Police Community Support Officers are being supplied with mountain bikes to assist in increasing their mobility, yet staying visible in the community.  For the first two bikes some publicity was thought to be useful so a photocall was arranged, and all was well until PC Tony Cobban was asked to sit on a stationary bike. He declined, insisting that doing something as risky as sitting on a bicycle was not to be undertaken without proper training - and he has the support of senior officers. Most reasonable people will make him an object of ridicule.

At least in the above case, unlike this one involving PCSO’s,  a human life was not involved - or even worse the life of a child even if ‘probably dead’ when they arrived. Rather than ‘possibly dead’, I would have read the scene as possibly alive and acted accordingly. And as David Blunkett, former Home Secretary said in the Today programme when hearing that the water visibility was poor, “I would like to think that you or I, when we arrived on the bank as just normal human beings . . . we would have a go.”

Health and Safety does have a place, but not above - and really well below - that of common sense.

May Jordon Lyon, aged 10 when he drowned, rest in peace.

This entry was posted on 05/05/2009 at 06:13 pm and is filed under Politics, Legal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.