There is a v. good article in the D. Express today by Michael Nicholson, entitled "What a nanny state we are in". He discusses the many, seemingly small activities we take for granted which have been regulated now - or banned - by "Health & Safety". Conkers being one of them (I will not bring tedium to this forum with a long list - I'm sure we are all familiar with the genre, altho one or two examples are given below for flavour).
However, reading the article another thought - hardly new, but worth repeating perhaps, struck me forcibly. I have come to believe that these regulations are nothing to do with "Health and Safety"; what they are more to do with is what I would call a De-Construct.
That is - all the tiny things that go to make up our comfort zone as a nation, as individuals - our choices and personal freedoms - are eroded, banned, slapped with insurance premiums that people can't afford - and so in this way a national identity changes. Middle England for much of it also changes; the bonfire party on the local common; Christmas lights; being able to afford an allotment; a pint and pipe or fag in the local snug; changing a light-bulb on a communal stairway. These and a host of tiny things are not tiny in reality; I can only see them as part of a wider picture of control, erosion to our comfort zone and identity.
Where do they come from? Who is accountable? Are any MPs addressing who and what is behind 'Health & Safety'? Do they mind? Are they protecting our interests and national identity? If not, why not? And who is going to look into this major issue for us on our behalf?
If DC truly wants to honour our country and our heritage then I sincerely trust that he urgently and swiftly looks into this creeping paralysis which is being inflicted on us with hardly a squeak from our elected representatives.
Perhaps then we have a genuine hope of De-constructing the assumed power and control of whoever is behind it -
and re-claim the law of common sense and individual freedom in the process.
Welcome back Beverly - or have I just missed your posts.
There's a lot of truth in this post, which I think is an important observation.
When everything is regulated & controlled - where is the need for common sense, or initiative.
What happens when you come across a situation that isn't in the book - you don't deal with it cause you may get it wrong, and in today's compensation culture that would be expensive.
I think the NHS is a prime example of how over regulation is making patients life hell.
Thankyou Glynne; that's very kind of you. I was not away deliberately but just on holiday and then v. busy. I then had a rather silly muddle with my password onto the site; but now
sorted. Very interested to see how the topics are running here and, most of all, what "we" can do. Lots of good wishes.
I wish you would bring tedium with a long list, Beverly, as I don't feel I'm much affected by this. Rather, there are a number of things I might like to add, like banning fireworks except for organised displays.
Much of health & safety is to protect loonies from themselves, and protect the public from them.
The HSC actually sponsored the recent conker championship in a bid to assuage the public that they weren't all killjoys. Doesn't really wash, though, when fireworks can be sold to individuals but they ban public displays if they don't pass the H&S Public Safety laws.
I wonder if the recent deaths on the Algarve were as an indirect result of the British public being so indoctrinated by the laws and signs set out to protect individuals that they no longer can think for themselves. In other words, we now assume everything to be 'safe' unless there is s sign to the contrary.
What spooks me is the number of government information films we get handed down to on television. The whole public information film culture reminds me of something out of the eastern bloc. Top-down instructions telling us what to eat and generally interfering with our everyday lives.
If it was just 'interfering' it wouldn't be so bad; it is control, and that's how we must think of it. We can never forget that Hitler was a non-smoking, non-drinking vegetarian who loved his dog (apologies if you've heard that from me before! because you have, many times) - Churchill was not. But you are right, Toymakara, it is top-down.
As to the list, Yorker, do read the D.Express article today as it gives a very good list, over two pages. Better than I could do. Maybe we should build that list here? That might be worth doing and interesting. Useful facts. We need facts.
I've no problem with informed information, Tony, but it's how the information is then used to pass laws, tax the 'wrong-doers' restrict access to services, and generally impact on our lives, that bothers me.
Beverley I agree, Health and Safety do so love to Push us around. I have mentioned elswhere that the feeling I was getting living in England was that the "feel good" factors in daily life were being taken away...
I am not a smoker and I am not a huntsman.. but I decry the legislation that tries to control these and other activities ...
Jonjii, it's easy enough to point to examples of silliness, but the general thrust of health&safety is OK. Fireworks? As always the idiots spoil it for everyone else. Christmas sweets thrown from a motorised sledge? Well, as if the kids won't get enough rubbish to eat... Why doesn't Santa get off his sledge and hand 'em out?
Frankly I rejoice at the ban on foul smokers (sorry Donnie).
Frankly I rejoice at the ban on foul smokers (sorry Donnie).
Yorkie why do you like pushing others around. If you choose not to smoke then that is fine.. why must you deny others the pleasure or whatever it is they get from smoking if it does not affect you?
It is the same as a lot of these H&S kiljoy type regulations.
The dubious benefit over a known detraction of the citizens freedom.
It probably would affect me if there was no ban. What's with the "pushing around" jonjii? I just object to being assaulted by other people's poisonous smoke.
If they want to smoke in their own private fug-space, that's up to them. I just wish they'd quit belly-aching.
"Poisonous" - can you quote a reliable source for that adjective?
"Smoke in their own private fug .." exactly what we have been denied.
We surely have to accommodate one another in an adult way?
By finding solutions, compromise and moderate answers.
I may find it revolting to sit next to someone on a bus who is eating a cheeseburger. So I can move away. Similarly, with someone half-drunk and pouring 'poisonous fumes' in my direction; I move away. I don't have the right to stop them. That's the difference with the higher moral ground of anti-smokers; they have been given a right to persecute, name and shame by the very nature of the propaganda.
Oh tut - where does that end? How easy it is to lose all perspective, and set up a nice plump scapegoat for one's own enjoyment. Do be careful because if it's happening to us, you can be absolutely sure that on some issue or another, it will happen to you.
"Smoke in their own private fug .." exactly what we have been denied.
No, you've been denied smoking in publicly-shared space.
Quote:
"Poisonous" - can you quote a reliable source for that adjective?
We've had plenty of expert eveidence of the harmful effects of breathing secondhand smoke. That's one of the reasons for the ban. Do you have a reliable source refuting it? Plus the awful smell that penetrates and clings to your clothes...
If you choose not to smoke then that is fine.. why must you deny others the pleasure or whatever it is they get from smoking if it does not affect you?
I would agree if it did not affect me. I have never been into a so called non smoking area which did not smell strongly of cigarette smoke. If there had been a serious attempt to prevent the smell in the non smoking areas by proper ventilation I would not have been so pleased when the ban was introduced.
Quote:
"Poisonous" - can you quote a reliable source for that adjective?
Then again, much of this is subjective. Try sniffing a piece of stale meat - quite different from the organic sirloin from Waitrose that I cooked tonight with mustard, wine and mushrooms. The aroma of good tobacco - to those of us who appreciate it - is quite wonderful and life-enhancing. If people I know don't like steak, or don't like tobacco, then they have the choice to be somewhere else. Similarly, if smokers want to be comfortable then I'm sure most of us would be more than happy with the segregated areas that worked well enough in the past. It is the blatant interference and this love of dubious 'statistics' that really pains me. Elf & Safety have found a blunt instrument which any idiot can use to bash their favourite scapegoat. That ain't healthy.
Odd isn't it how those who claim to be "liberal" in their views are often the most illiberal ones. But that's what happens when the political class exploits a lackey media (and in particular the BBC) to justify increasingly freakish policy excesses.
This country is in meltdown and whilst the colour of the rosette may change periodically, the same old things just grind on: erosion of democracy, eradication of free speech and ultimately, the abolition of nation states. In our alternately timid and slavish approach to the EU, one could barely get an un-PC fag paper between the parties. Oh sure, they blurt on about red lines and being in it but not run by it, but look at what is actually happening.
And before someone accuses me of "being in UKIP" let me say that this is a pattern that is gradually being replicated all over the world. We have an African Union, an Arab League and soon there'll be an American Union. The current leaders of the US, Canada and Mexico are currently doing exactly what our leaders have done here: putting together a political union with no real reference to the public.
You might think it a bit of a stretch right at the moment, but to me this creeping erasure of our pursuits, pastimes and hobbies is just the thin end of the totalitarian wedge.
Odd isn't it how those who claim to be "liberal" in their views are often the most illiberal ones.
Very true but there is HUGE hypocrisy on BOTH sides of the debate surrounding freedom of choice issues.
When was the last time the Daily Express stood up for the rights of those who want to sit and smoke a spliff whilst playing Manhunt and listening to gangster rap music???
When was the last time the Daily Express stood up for the rights of those who want to sit and smoke a spliff whilst playing Manhunt and listening to gangster rap music???
LOL :-D
I'm sure they could cater for that specific group.
I'm sure they could cater for that specific group.
Yes but they don't!!! In fact they are more likely to feed you with hysterical stories that would suggest the spliff will give you schizophrenia and the game / music cause you to want to go and kill somebody and use this as a justification for banning / cracking down on these things left right and centre, even though for many people they are harmless life choices or indeed life choices that involve a degree of risk that some people decide is worth it for the perceived benefit!!!
I just think that, one of the dangers here, is that we have become so used to 'advertising' which is propaganda based (and that applies to a whole range of products and services in my view which are presented as desirable and harmless) - that we have forgotten what the politics behind the message may be about. ANY product, service or activity can be presented on film in a positive, desirable or negative and disgusting light. It doesn't take much; Saatchis and others have been doing it for years. They are very good at it. We absorb these images and messages and have done for so long that we are like blotting paper. Exactly that process has been used in the tobacco ban; it goes beyond thought to blatant and manipulated propaganda. Underneath is the erosion of personal choice and freedom; negotiaton and adult common sense (when did you last see someone light up in a chemist shop, church, synogogue or library? Exactly.) No, this is something else, which takes away our 'givens' - those very English past-times which make up our basic identity, tolerance and everyday life. How will it look when the bad weather comes and office workers are standing in the driving sleet to have a cigarette? Is that progress? I am utterly sick of being told what to do by petty beaurocrats and sadly that includes many of our MPs who should know better - some of whom have utterly betrayed their constituents who asked for a partial ban. I hope they pay dearly at the next elections.
