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The fear of God, health and safety

By Elsabe Smit

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Published: 17Dec2008
Word count: 1310
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Do you know how easy it is to create a society and an environment that is fear-based? And do you know how easily people buy into this fear?

In the UK, health and safety regulations are a favourite tool for raising fear. The intention behind these regulations is supposedly to create a safer and healthier environment for people to work and live in.

This kind of legislation works very well in areas where employers still exploit employees and it has been used to create smoke-free buildings. We are still not protected from the odour of heavy smokers that commute, but at least their habits have been regulated and we can have "clean" meals and workplaces.

But there have been instances where these regulations were used to create situations that are beyond belief. And the scary part is that those people on the receiving end expressed their dissatisfaction about the applications of the regulations, but they did nothing to take the perpetrators of the decisions to task.

The underlying belief is that when anyone in a position of perceived authority tells you to do or not do something, you are powerless and you have to do it, whether it is complete nonsense or not. That amounts to giving away your personal power to another person and buying into the illusion of fear that is created.

For example, there was the pensioner who travelled to town by bus to buy a tin of paint so that he could decorate a wall at his house. When he returned, the bus driver would not let him onto the bus. Why? Because this brand new, tightly sealed tin of paint just might, as if by magic, fly open the moment the pensioner sets foot on the bus, and the paint may be splattered all over the slow-moving bus, and that might pose a threat to other passengers in terms of health and safety regulations. This was reported in a newspaper, but was the bus driver told that he misjudged the situation completely and made a travesty of the regulations? Did the pensioner get an apology?

I once attended a birthday party where the boisterous six-year-old birthday boy jumped onto a table and down to the floor again, and his mother warned him not to do it, "because of health and safety" - she actually said that.

There is an English hospital where a box with wool and knitting needles was made available to both patients and visitors to while the time away. They would knit small squares and hand them to the nurses. The squares were sewn together by charity workers, and turned into blankets that were distributed by local charities.

Wonderful idea. Until the health and safety person came to hear about it and banned the knitting needles on the basis that the needles are too sharp to use safely. I have been using knitting needles since I can remember, and so have my ancestors. I have not been able to find a single instance of where a knitter was injured by a sharp knitting needle, or, heaven help us, death by knitting.

Has this official even seen a knitting needle before banning them? And what did the hospital staff, visitors and patients do? They expressed their dismay with the situation and accepted it - because of the belief that you do not challenge authority, even when the figure of authority has clearly lost their marbles. The same people that criticised and then accepted this decision are probably surprised that good people in Zimbabwe have been accepting a malicious dictatorship for a whole generation. Guess where such a dictatorship starts?

Then there were the dustmen who wanted to liven up a not so pleasant job by putting cuddly toys in their vehicles. We have all seen these toys hanging from the rear-view mirrors of vehicles or seated on the dashboard. The managers of one waste management company did not like the cuddly toys. They wanted a more "professional" image for their company and banned the cuddly toys on the grounds of health and safety.

Why? You will love this.

Because young children may be out and about, and notice these small toys high up in a big vehicle, and be tempted to run out into the street and confront the vehicle until the vehicle hands over the toys to them. This is of course assuming that your children are unable to understand that it would not be safe to run into the road in front of a big vehicle. That is how cuddly toys became a serious health and safety risk.

Can you imagine how this kind of publicity improved the public image of the company involved?

By the way, if you think I am making these examples up as I go along, search the web and you will find them yourself.

There was the case where the Metropolitan police was charged with breaching safety laws. The reason for this was that in two separate incidents officers fell through roofs while chasing criminals. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

And then there was the council that banned backstroke during busy times in the local swimming pool to avoid collisions.

Visitors to Britain in the summer are always impressed by the beautiful hanging baskets that brighten up lampposts in city centres with lovely flowers. This is no longer the case in Suffolk, where these baskets were banned on the grounds that they may fall on pedestrians. There has not been one such accident in the more than two thousand years of history of Britain, and the first one will not be in Suffolk, that's for sure.

And a final example:

A County Council wanted to install thirty electronic speed indicators. These are electronic signboards that show the speed of oncoming drivers. The intention is for drivers to realise that they are exceeding the speed limit, so that they can slow down. The tricky bit is that the electronic speed indicators can only be installed by somebody going up a ladder. Now, before you can go up a ladder, you must comply with the Health and Safety Executive's Working at Height Regulations 2005 (amended 2007) which are based on the EU's Working at height Directive (2001).

Huh?

Council workers are not allowed to put up the electronic speed indicators because none of the council staff have received ladder training. Allowing a person without ladder training to use a ladder will result in a £5000 fine (and 14 people had died after falling off ladders over a period of a year). This is far more important than the £60 fine for speeding (which resulted in 350 road deaths over the same period).

So, what is plan B? Get the local police to put the signs up - they have had ladder training. The police put op three of the cameras, and then went on to find the roofs that crooks normally run on to escape, so that the roofs can be fixed.

On to plan C - the fire brigade. However, the fire fighters are either playing hard to get, or they are too busy saving cats from trees. As a result the remaining 27 electronic speed indicators have not been installed yet. I wonder where one gets ladder training. I don't think that a lamppost is too high for me?

Do you see how we allow people to shape our view of the world? And we simply buy into it rather than question their judgement and motives. And who should we blame - the people that create our realities? No. We need to take responsibility for our own actions and views, and we should have the courage to question other people's actions rather than just shake our heads and accept whatever they say because we think that is the only option available to us.

Elsabe Smit is the author of the soul-touching collection of short stories, A Tapestry of Life and of the blog http://www.mypurpleblog.com , Spiritual interpretations of everyday life.

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