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looks like all that red tape created under Labour will be slashed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/politics/10304770.stm
You mean freedom for companies to kill their employees and customers?
I bet nothing significant is repealed as a result of that anyway. A simple piece of populist daily wailism
A huge amount of what is blamed on H&S legislation is nothing of the sort and the majority is made up by the papers
it's not the law that is at fault, it's the idiot paranoid jobsworths who implement it and the idiot gluttons who pervert it.
the best way to end the compensation nation is to create a populace who don't believe that their misfortune and misadventure should somehow be turned into financial gain at the loss of others and that they are owed a living by others without effort on their own part.
simples?
i think not
Crikey. Sounds a bit wrong headed to me. H&S certainly isn't applied evenly across the board. A lot of private firms still skimp a bit, whilst a lot of public sector places go overboard. And of course, a lot more places use it it in the same way as the data protection act is used - a convenient way of saying "No, please get stuffed".
The man leading the study, Lord Young, has told the BBC he wants advertisements for personal injury claims firms to be banned.
This will reduce the number of stupid laws enormously, at a stroke. 🙄
If they were serious about this, they would start with a review of the law of negligence, not with a ban on advertising related to seeking redress under the law. Unimpressive.
Good idea, but it will be quite hard to get people to be responsible for their own actions / misfortunes.
H&S has almost nothing to do with children not being allowed to play conkers, or personal accident claims or anything else. Those are all about a near total inability to understand what risk is, and a desire to make as much money out of some sucker somewhere else as possible.
Oh, and insurance companies.
I don't see this as affecting the workplace per se - more general society, like the idea of banning school sports day under H&S rules (yes TJ before you get on your horse I know it should happen, but it does, so just leave it)
As a concrete example: I'm currently discussing with the local council why they flattened a local jump spot. "they were too tall so we had to flatten them under health and safety rules" is not a good enough answer sorry. That's NOT what H&S is about, and if this chappie can clear up that kind of misunderstanding then more power to him
AP / NBT - those two you mention are classics - the "conkers only with safety glasses" was a spoof done by a teacher to see if the papers would bite. They did.
No sports day has been banned for H&S reasons - a myth.
Many of these myths exist. They remain myths - made worse by jobsworths using H&S as an excuse as nbt states
It started to go wrong when that American woman spilt her hot cup of Maccy D coffee on her lap and was told she should sue.
As nbt points out, NOTHING to do with why H & S was created
f-ck me sideways! Who is advising Cameron? The examples he's given are bollocks and have nothing to do with h & s law or good practice.
Lord Young, whose review is expected to report back over the summer, told the BBC health and safety was very important but had been made a "joke" because it had been extended into areas that "frankly are not dangerous".
yet the layer pointed out that
"People can't claim compensation unless they have been injured because someone else is at fault.
I worry about that
Seems like the word review has changed since I was at school the as he seems to have reached a conclusion rather than be evaluating the evidence. Agree load of Dail Wail knee jerk nonsense that will lead to no new legislation whatsoever.
"they were too tall so we had to flatten them under health and safety rules"
ah this was probably done under [i]'the control of quite high ramps that look a bit dangerous regulations 1990'[/i]
Hmmmm I was hoping to get a new Zaskar.
One of my clients is amongst the most risk averse organisations in Europe. In order to satsify them on the work that we do, we quite often do calculations as to the likelihood of "something occuring", its likely outcome, the likely cost of that outcome and the cost of doing something beforehand to reduce that risk to ALARP. It can be quite interesting to see how people perceive risks...
Highclimber - can you point to any H&S red tape created by labour? Myself I can't think of any H&S legislation enacted in the last 13 years
Its not H and S, that screws companies its the compensation culture,and all the costs that are put onto the claim.
Sadly a lot of firms make up trumped up rules just so they may not be sued by victims, so they put up signs wet floor, wet paint etc, steep drop etc.
There is also the self proclaimed H and S proffesional jobsworth who puts the fear of god into mangement,and by thus doing so, promotes his/her worth to the company, theyre affraid to go against him/her and obey his every comand,like painting so called hazards yellow, white lines ,loads of signs ,etc etc
I never said created BY Labour, I said Created UNDER Labour.
they were too tall so we had to flatten them under health and safety rules
well thye have eliminated the risk to be fair
I sued to educational visits for council in the county where the treacher got prosecuted for manslaughter.
The length of these forms and the risks that had to be assessed was ridiculous but we did hav eparents try to sue.
Once for a child catching a cold as they went Gorge walking in winter - they offered to settle for 20 K out of court foir duress. I suggested they had been smoking too much of a certain product at a minuted meeting they did use a solicitor for a bit but di dgive up.
It is a bit of a chicken and and egg situation companies get sued so they bevome very adverse to even minimal risk and use H & S as an excuse to say we dont want to risk being sued.
Perhaps somebody can explain why railway and tube platforms dont need signs to say steep drop, of at least 3 foot plus,or that car drivers dont need to be trained and rtested by their companies to be proved competent at driving as do any other industrial machine driver, eg trains, forklifts, cranes, dumpers etc.
I remember when an accident was an accident and not an excuse for some scumbag to bleed the system dry, bring on the end of the compensation culture!!
ALARP is a waste of time as a concept unless you intend to have any residual risk stand - particularly if you are trying to quantitatively assess risk.
.
Reducing H&S legislation is not the answer - requiring the competent application of it is
TJ,
AP / NBT - those two you mention are classics - the "conkers only with safety glasses" was a spoof done by a teacher to see if the papers would bite. They did.
Are you sure?
Yo-yo's were banned at our school ('99 ish was it?)
Concers were banned, but that was becasue us enterprising country kids were making a killing (well enough to buy a mars bar and the bus fare home) selling concers to the city kids and may have been a case of H&S being used as an escuse).
[b]Highclimber [/b]- can you point to any H&S red tape created by labour? Myself I can't think of any H&S legislation enacted in the last 13 years
Ironically, the The Work at Height Regulations 2005:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2005/20050735.htm
😀
Problem isn't the legislation, its the over zealous application of the legislation by people who have no idea of how to perform a proper risk analysis so end up coming out with silly rules like "nobody is allowed to use a bicycle at work without first undergoing a training course"
Perhaps somebody can explain why .....or that car drivers dont need to be trained and rtested by their companies to be proved competent at driving as do any other industrial machine driver, eg trains, forklifts, cranes, dumpers etc.
Some firms do. We require a copy of drivers licence (as proof of competence at time of test), and then all staff required to drive on business have to complete an online risk assesment. All those scoring highly - young, inexperienced, high mileage, have to complete a RoSPA defensive driving course.
MAny of our clients require anyone visiting their sites to have taken defensive driver training
given your spelling you sure you went to school? 😉
Given my typo rate high irony content
Making companies pay for problems they create actually promotes economic efficiency. Goes for both environmental problems and personal injury.
nobody is allowed to use a bicycle at work without first undergoing a training course"
I did a mtb course with kids[yoof Work] as one activity [ round rivvy reservoir] and the company would not let me take my own bike for H & S reasons. The piece of cr@p they tried to give me was beyond a joke and I refused to ride it and signed a disclaimer as I had too for my won helmet, shoes and gloves. All the kids thought my bike was rubbish as it had no gears.
"You mean freedom for companies to kill their (employees and) customers?"
genius - what a business plan. bast*rd customers. must get my employees on the case immediately
😉
Highclimber - can you point to any H&S red tape created by labour? Myself I can't think of any H&S legislation enacted in the last 13 years
Primary legislation no (apart from H&S offences act 2008, but secondary legislation yes - lots
http://www.hse.gov.uk/legislation/statinstruments.htm - order by year.
All the kids thought my bike was rubbish as it had no gears.
They were right, mind 😉
All the kids thought my bike was rubbish as it had no gears
ah the insight of youth 🙂
I've recently experienced H&S at work in another country.
The situation was this:
I was taking down a 10M aluminium scaffolding tower and a member of the hotel staff told me that if the H&S manager saw me i'd be stopped and banned from site unless i wore safety gear. Now, there is no point on a scaff tower rated for a fall arrest device to be attached too and if the tower falls over, the last thing i want to be attached to is the tower itself. A hard hat is to prevent injury from falling objects or striking your head on obstructions (which don't occur unless you are wearing a hard hat as they obscure your view!), neither of these things were realistically going to occur in the given situation.
I explained the above to the chap but he was insistent so down i came, donned safety gear and then continued with work wearing equipment that far from protecting me, hindered my movement and made me sweat even more!
At the end of the night a local labourer/rigger fell from the top of a set of ladders (probably 25ft from his head to the floor) striking his face on a case on the way down, he was knocked out and convulsing and there was a fair amount of claret about the place (luckily he was ok in the end).
If he'd been wearing a harness clipped on to the ladders (as required by the local H&S legislation) he'd have bought the ladders, 90ft of 6M high black cloth with associated scaff and rigging and 40ft of wooden set panels down with him and a helmet would have done nothing to prevent neck/back injury from the fall. The police attended and it all got a bit serious, the supervisor (and actually the only bloke in the room with a 'licence' to use ladders) was carted off to the police station.
He fell from the ladders because he was an idiot, he was stood on the top wrung of over extended ladders un-clipping a long and heavy cable run that when he released pulled him off to the side, it wouldn't have taken much common sense to see that was likely or indeed inevitable.
It left me pondering my own safety at height especially as i had to complete the rest of the local contractors work myself using borrowed safety gear whilst several policemen* watched.
There are places in this country where the (our) legislation is implemented with just as little consideration for the actual processes being undertaken but had the hotel/rigging supervisor/labourer stuck to the letter of the law or applied more common sense then he'd not have been up ladders in the first place.
So a double edged sword and not a problem easily solved, certainly not by banning adverts for 'no win no fee' set-ups.
probably a rambling post but it's something that's been nagging me all week and let's face it, how many of you have jobs which actually present dangerous and life threatening situations regularly, i'm talking working with electricity and at height here, not scalding yourself on a latte.
*proper scary policemen where you can have your hands chopped off for looking at a woman a bit 'funny'
Just remembered where i live, block of appartments,
we are not allowed to feed the birds,
not allowed to have door mats,incase somebody trips over them,
must park within all bays and no where else,
All health and Safety related.
If you were building a whole new railway now you'd use platform edge doors to reduce the hazard of both the 900mm drop to the rail and the big heavy train coming along that rail. However, they're inordinately expensive and by having a healthy understanding of risk and the likelihood of that hazard occuring you can put remediation in place without spending an enormous amount of money - to reduce the risk to [b]A[/b]s [b]L[/b]ow [b]A[/b]s [b]R[/b]easonably [b]P[/b]racticable.
i should have see that coming 😳
All health and Safety related.
Or more accurately implemented using H&S as an excuse...
aP - Member
If you were building a whole new railway now you'd use platform edge doors to reduce the hazard of both the 900mm drop to the rail and the big heavy train coming along that rail. However, they're inordinately expensive and by having a healthy understanding of risk and the likelihood of that hazard occuring you can put remediation in place without spending an enormous amount of money - to reduce the risk to As Low As Reasonably Practicable.
Posted 1 minute ago # Report-Post
Like on the Jubillee line to stop londoners jumping infront of the trains
I've recently experienced H&S at work in another country.
Good point. Whenever I see any programme from the US with people doing manual work, I'm agog. The entire country seems to work with a level of safety that only mad old farmers seem to think is OK here.
i've also nearly knocked myself out slipping on a wet floor on a hotel in a foreign country, the bloke was mopping the floor right in front of me.
my first thought on sitting up was 'where was the sign'
my second thought was 'you're a ****'
I work for a US company - they take EHS very seriously tron so it's not all Americans clearly...
we are not allowed to feed the birds,
Because someone doesn't want to clean up bird poo, or thinks it is a bit unclassy to have loads of birds around, so they use health and safety as an excuse.
not allowed to have door mats,incase somebody trips over them,
Because someone is on a campaign against comedy doormats, because they think it makes the place look less classy, so they use health and safety as an excuse.
must park within all bays and no where else,
Because someone doesn't want the hassle of sorting out a parking free for all, so they use health and safety as an excuse.
Perhaps somebody can explain why ... drivers dont need to be trained and rtested by their companies to be proved competent at driving
Seeing as ~3000 people a year die on the roads maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea. I think a few cycling organisations have suggested H&S law for commercial vehicles should be extended beyond a workplace- so if someone gets killed by a skip lorry it'd be treated as a workplace incident and not just a road "accident".
TINAS - I am absolutly certain on the conkers and safety glasses one - I read an article by the person who started the spoof
Most of the supposed H&S red tape on here is nothing to do with H&S. Just people using it as an excuse.
I was prevented from using my bike on work business last year due to H&S, employers reasoning was that because I'd been diagnosed with epilepsey secondary to a brain tumour. Obviously cannot stop me cycling to work, but it is only a 15 minute walk, so unless I am planning to be off site again in the day, it is hardly worth the effort & hassle to ride down to the hospital.
They looked a bit shocked when i said I'd overcome their concerns by writing a letter accepting responsibility in case I did have a seizure whilst cycling on work business.
The assessment took place in an office, there was no real consideration towards the cycling issue, it was simply the Trust covering themselves. When can i cycle on work business? 12 months after last seizure, which is exactly the same as DVLA guidlines for returning to driving.... 😈
I had to fill out a form and then have a 30minute assessment to be allowed a new mouse mat the other day....
1 - I do not believe you
2 - True rebels simply buy them from WH Smith. Stick it to the man!
🙂
Didn't Labour change the law to allow no-win-no-fee? That seems to have been the source of a lot of the problems. They are massively hyped up in the media though.
TINAS - I am absolutly certain on the conkers and safety glasses one - I read an article by the person who started the spoof
Link?
TandemJeremy - MemberYou mean freedom for companies to kill their employees and customers?
I bet nothing significant is repealed as a result of that anyway. A simple piece of populist daily wailism
A huge amount of what is blamed on H&S legislation is nothing of the sort and the majority is made up by the papers
Bollocks.
No not Tj talking bollocks, it's me saying bollocks because I have to agree with him and that just goes against the grain, so far he hasn't said a word I can disagree with how ruddy disappointing.
As the Tandem dude says H&S is cited as the reason for lots of things but really it's just an excuse for something else or daily mail horsetwaddle, read the HSE myths site its really really good.
Damn.
I was being talked at by some woman in the pub one night, she was complaining her feet were killing her but she couldnt take her shoes off,
Why not? I ask her.
Coz Im the health and safety officer at work, she says, what if I cut them on some glass, what would I tell people?
Hmm.
Catfood maybe she should get some shoes that fit.
Restaurants had banned toothpicks on safety grounds and contestants in a pancake race had been told "to walk, not run, because of rain, he added."
TBH as soon as he said that, you knew all you needed to know. Perhaps we could have a new law against obvious bullshit? That'd help no end
They should just ban the Daily Mail and the Sun - all the H&S scare stories would disappear overnight!
This article is utter gash. Negligence in personal injury (or strict liability for employers) has got very little to do with health and safety laws, and none of the substance of what he seems to be talking about deals with negligence.
I suspect "compensation culture" was just a phrase that jumped out at the BBC news bod typing this up because s/he thought s/he could just "recycle" lots of "quotes" about "conkers and toothpicks" despite it all being obvious "bollocks".
where i live, block of appartments, we are not allowed to feed the birds, not allowed to have door mats, incase somebody trips over them, must park within all bays and no where else, All health and Safety related.
Seems reasonable to me.
Sorry Toys - nice of you to admit it tho.
I work in risk management, technical risk management.
The simple fact is people can't cope with 'really really small risks', its like they rebound in their brain to 50/50. Honestly, we've been writing a paper on risk perceptions in IT (still awake?) and some of our findings are quite comical really. Stuff we find would make you scratch your head. Risk is a very over abused word which is manipulated to mean what you need it to mean.
TJ - thanks for the link to the HSE mythbusters site, however it contradicts you on the conkers. Go to September 2007:
"This is one of the oldest chestnuts around, a truly classic myth. [b]A well-meaning head teacher decided children should wear safety goggles[/b] to play conkers. Subsequently some schools appear to have banned conkers on ‘health & safety’ grounds or made children wear goggles, or even padded gloves!"
So, no not a myth, in at least one school, children did have to wear goggles to play conkers.
I think you enboldened the wrong bit there
This is one of the oldest chestnuts around, [b]a truly classic myth[/b]. A well-meaning head teacher decided children should wear safety goggles to play conkers. Subsequently some schools appear to have banned conkers on ‘health & safety’ grounds or made children wear goggles, or even padded gloves!"[b]So, no not a myth,[/b] in at least one school, children did have to wear goggles to play conkers
It clearly states in your quote that it is a myth ...epic fail
where i live, block of appartments, we are not allowed to feed the birds, not allowed to have door mats, incase somebody trips over them, must park within all bays and no where else, All health and Safety related.
Health and safety?
More like stopping the place being over-run with pigeons and being a good neighbour in general.
I think we've all agreed that actually a lot of the H & S law is actually quite sensible. We all have an issue with the compensation culture. I have a sneaky suspicion that actually very few of these idiot cases come to court, fewer still win and those that do often don't get a lot of compenstion. If you look at a lot of the Daily Wail stories it's all about someone trying to sue for £ 100,000, doesn't mean they have a case. What people need to risk assess is the likelyhood of being sued etc. put that into context and then stop being idiots.
Rant 2 - I've seen enough idiot H & S implementation over the years, every time something is done poorly it dilutes the message on the important stuff. Where I work it's become mandatory to wear protextion footwear. I've asked several times tosee the risk assessment that came to that conclusion. I don't think it exists, we don't have lots of foot crush risks around the place, FLT's maybe but then saftey footwear isn't going to help much. It was just an easy one to implement to look like we were doing something. On the flip side of that we're no where near as good as we should be on general housekeeping, blocked access routes, trip hazards etc. But then that's more difficult to properly implement isn't it.
3rd rant, I do think there are circumstances where someone should be completely absolved from responsibility, particularly when some one enters their land and does something stupid. As long as reasonable steps have been taken, examples of this would include kids getting badly hurt in sub stations and the like where they've scaled a 6 or 10ft metal fence. As long as any part of your property where someone could reasonably be expected to be (i.e. front path where a postman might walk) is safe you shouldn't have to treat the rest of your garden like a roadworks.
Which brings me nicely onto rant 4, RASWA, completely over the top legislation / guidelines for setting out roadworks. So complicated that they often get ignored or worse still badly done making it even more confusing and dangerous. Personally I'd like to see more emphasis on not letting the temporary traffic lights run out of fuel than miles of fencing diverting a footpath when there is another on the other side of the street.
Hey ho off to Greece tomorrow so no doubt I'll get some exposure to the other end of the EU H & S spectrum 😆
There was a local authority that stopped just automatically paying out on claims they had assumed they would lose and employed a good lawyer to contest stuff they were spending less then 10% including legal bills of their previous annual compensation bill. I will find the link. I heard it on radio 4 anyway so it must be true.
Junkyard - perhaps you should have read the other link - from the headteacher that started the myth.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/09/conkers-goggles-myth-health-safety
Even the HSE mythbusters got it wrong by stating one school had done this - they didn't know when they wrote it it was deliberate spoof by that headteacher.