The Health & Safety Culture Claims Another Victim

Anthony

"Changing that will be one of the next government's greatest challenges."

I'm not holding my breath.

Angry Curler

This really is the epitome of what this country has been reduced to: we are run by a bunch of lily-livered, joyless penpushing pygmies who only purpose in life is to interfere in other people's lives and suck the joy right out of them.

What a pathetic excuse for human beings these useless idiots are.

It is ironic to note that if - as is very likely - a bunch of curlers were to spontaneously decide to curl on the Lake of Menteith, their own Health and Safety rules would prevent the cowards in the "authorities" from venturing anywhere onto the ice to prevent them from doing so.

Let us remember that these muppets cannot even keep the roads properly gritted nor the bins uplifted, yet would tell us what is good for us all.

The revolution starts here.

ndm

I agree that it is unfortunate the event has been cancelled. However, I think this is a somewhat simplistic view of the situation:

-- The only thing that has changed is the culture and it is hard, in this instance, to see how it has changed for the better.

Communication is now vastly different than it was in 1979. The web has made it much easier to disseminate information about the event and how to get there. Furthermore, an increasing desire to participate in marquee "events" also increases the likelihood of many more people trying to attend than did in 1979.

So it could be that society is more risk averse than it was in 1979. But it is one thing for a bunch of avid curlers and their friends to go out on the Lake and quite another for the unwashed masses who are only interested in the event and not the game.

Rammers

It was envisaged that up to 20,000 people could have turned up to the event. Unfortunately, as we are in the 21st century with increasing legislation in place, people need to be aware that we live in a blame culture that the authorities have not manufactured. Stop living in the past and accpet the decision.

Nick Stonier

So, it must have been beyond the bounds of common sense for the Royal Caledonian Curling Club to ask all participants & spectators to sign a disclaimer before stepping onto the ice and thereby rendering "health & safety" concerns irrelevant?
There's more to this than meets the eye.

Peter From Maidstone

Rammers, why should any decision by public bodies be accepted? We are not slaves and these people are our servants. It is not for the police or local authority to decide what events they wish to facilitate and which ones they wish to obstruct.

Olaf Rye

So Rammers, the authorities know best ? Those that have sunk Britain into the morass of debt and cannot even accomplish the most rudimentary of tasks assigned to them on time and on budget ? Moreover, has 'Health and Safety' legislation and rulings made any of us healthier nor safer ? Something needs to be changed, but you are right about the blame culture. We are also to blame as a society for seeking damages whenever something goes awry. Instead of people exercising personal responsibility and some sense, they have asked the government and all these petty bureaucrats to this for us--you know the sort, those that could not get a job in the private sector and prefer to have stable jobs. Bear in mind the nature of our civil service: remember all the deaths in the hospital in Kent from viral infections arising from insanitary conditions ? Not one member of staff complained, even though people were dying. Later they claimed that they knew of the problems but were afraid of losing their jobs and followed the chain of command. Even when people are dying, the civil service serves itself.

Beefeater

ndm:

And I bet a lot of the unwashed masses smoke, too. The health and safety people haven't got around to regulating smoking in open-air events on frozen lakes.
As cold winters are coming back, I think the unwashed should receive protections in addition to no-smoking regulations: thick-ice certification, life-vests, rescue personnel, first aid stations, chillblain care, pre-positioned grief-counselors.
Your insight that hoi polloi cannot distinguish between event and game is a brilliant summing up of post-egalitarianism. (Is it original?) I have observed that the Guardian left regards the demos as too vulgar for democracy. Giving the people what they want would mean allowing cheap fast-food, mass-produced junk, package holidays, carbon footprints and events rather than games. That is why the post-elite needs to regulate what the masses may choose. Their health must be sound, not rude. Wherever the masses mass, they are on thin ice. An ever bigger safety net is needed - to stop any unwashed from falling through the cracks.
Mussy masses going missing would make a messy massing.

tommyt

This is a pretty tragic decision. Lets say 10K showed up to this - and fair play to them all if they can actually make it to the Lake of Monteith in this weather. It would be fair to assume that the requisite few dozen emrgency services staff could also have been in attendance but of course they would expect the RCCC to pay for the privilege. There appears to be a recently emrgent trend within the police forces to agitate for cancellation of sporting events on relatively minor grounds. I have never heard, until this year, of a football game being called off because police advise the areas around the stadium are unsafe. I fail to see why the 3000 folk who fancied watching St. Mirren the other day were at greater risk than the several thousand who wanted to go to the sales a few hundred yards away in the (still open) town centre shops. On a wider point police are bleeding sport dry. I happened along to a Motherwell - Llanelli UEFA cup tie last year - a category A game in police terms as it was a European tie. Its only just an exaggeration to say the police outnumbered the crowd, so thats 100K in the coffers of the polis at the expense of a small football team for conducting an almost exclusively pointless task. The level of policing isnt that high in Glasgow city centre on a Friday night, is it a coincidence that a) the polis have to fund this sort of policing out of their standard budget or b) its much more difficult policing work

Martyn Rowe

Completely off-topic Alex, I thought you may be interested in this cricket-link. McGrath's bowling figures are astonishing.

http://www.cricinfo.com/decadereview2009/content/story/440770.html

Mart.

Nicholas

Good posts by Olaf Rye and Beefeater.

Rammers: "Stop living in the past and accept the decision".

Why? Why should people not choose how they live and to reject decisions which are petty and foolish? Always the accusation of dinosaurs living in the past when someone dares to dissent and to question just what benefits this much vaunted march of progress has brought.

Who are you to tell people to stop living in the past? My response is to tell people like you to stop changing things in ways we don't want and don't like. Which position is more valid and which to be scorned, eh?

When I first encountered the "management of change" in the 1980's it was clear that it was a con perpetrated by those who wanted to pursue chaotic and self-aggrandising agendas, to discredit and neutralise the experienced and the expert (and the older) who might scupper their "change" by exposing it for the bullshit it very often was. More often than not the "benefits" were non-existant or illusory, but such was the intimidation that most people conformed to the pretence in order to preserve their jobs. The architects of change usually moved on, having created chaos in one organisation, to create chaos in another, being replaced by new architects of new change replete with the same dogma that would overwhelm objectivity and reason.

Are you really so naive Rammers as to believe that all change in the last three decades has been good and beneficial? And that change is never to be challenged or resisted? Nowadays those resistant to change are even more demonised, marginalised and vituperated and change, "progress", seems to have become an end to itself. There is still a significant difference between genuine progress and folly, but the distinction is seldom recognised in the "society" that "progress" has created.

Chris Cook

@Nick Stonier

Spot on.

In the North Sea all the participants sign up to a mutual 'hold harmless' arrangement

http://www.imhh.com/

A nice simple disclaimer could work nicely at Menteith.

The effects of this health and safety culture are slow, but pernicious, and entire generations are growing up with a distorted world view because of it.

Fearless Frank

Why don't those who wish to take part in this event simply turn up and do it anyway, with or without the curling league's blessing?
I'm pleased to see that in my local park, several hundred miles further south, skaters and pedestrians have ignored the "Danger: thin ice" notices put up by the local council and stepped out across the frozen "lake" (a large pond, really).

Mike Evans

@ Chris Cook & Nick Stonier
All the curlers at the 1979 Grand Match signed simple disclaimers for the RCCC prior to participating on the ice, and it is very likely a simple disclaimer would have been required again this year had the match proceeded.

Alex Massie is spot on “This is a feeble, dispiriting decision that reflects poorly on both the police and our risk and common-sense averse culture.” This is the same Central Scotland Police force whose ineptitude and killjoy-spirit contributed to the loss in the UK of the sport of pistol shooting.
A golden opportunity to hold the Grand Match has been wasted by bungling bureaucrats, for which First Minister Alec Salmond should be calling for an official enquiry. It really is time in Britain to hail and promote Obama’s “Yes We Can” ethos.

Snowman

I for one support the decision. The more of decisions like this the better. It’s the only way to convince the still undecided that we are but an inch from full-scale pseudo-liberal despotism, well meant and heart warming, but totally inimical to human nature.

When the endurance of the great unwashed snaps it will be a joy to watch, but not be a part of, I reckon.

ndm

Choosing one example of the genre at random, and without seeking to single him out, Mike Evans writes:

-- All the curlers at the 1979 Grand Match signed simple disclaimers for the RCCC prior to participating on the ice, and it is very likely a simple disclaimer would have been required again this year had the match proceeded.

The photo accompanying the post shows a few curlers out on the lake this week. I don't know how many curlers and watchers went to the 1979 match but I suspect it to be a lot less than the number who would try this year given that it looks like a once-in-a-lifetime event for amy people. Walking on ice is inherently dangerous - but if the ice broke causing the deaths of 100 people it would be treated as a national disaster. Much as we would all like to see the Grand Match taking place most people don't want a disaster.

The irony of the criticism of the police decision appearing in a right-wing magazine is that police empowerment is traditionally a right-wing ideal. The Labour Party may have further empowered the police over the last 12 years but that has been to demonstrate they are no less tough on the "causes of crime" than a Conservative government would have been. If the right really wishes to reduce this empowerment than it should stop the arms race and instead focus on different and more effective ways of handling the problems police empowerment is supposed to solve. But I very much doubt that will happen.

I've been by the Lake of Menteith quite a few times and been to the island in the summertime - and it was all very nice. But I've also been out in the mountains of Scotland in winter and it can be brutal. A Highland's winter is not something I would underestimate. OK, it's only the Trossachs - but even so.

Fearless Frank

NDM: Walking on ice is inherently dangerous -

Depends on how thin the ice is

Peter From Maidstone

ndm, why is police empowerment a right wing ideal? The police are there to upload the Queen's Law, not to determine themselves how people should enjoy themselves. I don't think (m)any people believe the police should have any power at all. Such authority as they should rightly exercise is that of the Law not that of the police - Stop! in the name of the Law! - not in the name of the police, nor in the name of Gordon Brown, nor in the name of health and safety.

Snowman

Peter fM @ 9.03: absolutely spot on.

But then, in areas other than policing we have discarded the original nature of the service assigning to it totally different content: the Army no longer fights but maintains peace, the prisons are no longer places of punishment but facilities for re –doing this or the other, the Government gave up governing but messes our private lives either directly or through its numerous unaccountable agencies, the schools gave up on teaching the basics of the three R’s and focus on telling the young how to slot a condom on a banana etc. etc.

All we can do is rant, there seems to be nobody anywhere who would have the courage to mobilize the masses.

ally

So, I don't get this. H&S culture etc yes, but why not just go and do it? It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission and all that; I fail to see why the club don't just announce that the police have advised against it so anyone who wants to should venture at their own risk. The police can't possibly put themselves in a position where some cretin who made a decision which went wrong takes them for massive damages via an all-too-keen ambulance chasing lawyer (and remember it's your money they'd be paying out) so surely the decision rests with the curlers?

Since everyone who's involved in a minor shunt these days seems to think they're entitled to four grand in whiplash damages, the police are doing nothing more than protecting the public purse from the inevitable. In a more reasonable world, they wouldn't have to, but that's not where we are.

As for Tommy's comment, I'd have thought the risk of 10,000 people simultaneously falling victim to narcolepsy would be real enough to warrant loads of coppers at a Motherwell game...

ndm

-- Such authority as they should rightly exercise is that of the Law not that of the police

Well that is all fine and dandy. But when some policeman says you can't take a photograph of the Palace of Westminster because of anti-terrorist legislation do you just keep clicking away? Or do you risk getting your arse hauled off to the local nick by telling him he doesn't know what he's talking about and continue clicking away. There is law - and there is how law is interpreted at all levels of interaction with the criminal justice system.

Pricky Gayes

On message as ever Rammers. ;-)

Peter From Maidstone

ndm, you arrange for 10,000 free Englishmen to walk past the Houses of Parliament and take photographs of the place where our servants are paid to conduct Her Majesties business. If we submit to those who wish to make us slaves then we become slaves. We are not slaves, yet, we are Englishmen.

Robin Edwards

It's a pain this event was cancelled, but the bottom line is that if something had happened the headlines would have been screaming for police heads to roll. The culrers would have simply melted away!

On Friday we have the tragedy of 3 adults walking out onto a frozen lake, falling through and sadly drowning. Yet I have alread heard one report say "that an investigation was underway to dicover how this tragedy was allowed to happen". The blame culture cuts in!

In the public sector you have to cover your back to make sure you are not the next scapegoat. As a public servant I find some of the comments on here bloody irritating I (and colleagues)have not taken any time off, and as I drive a 4 x 4 have offered to work unpaid to assist social services in getting to vulnerable people. So Mr Angry Curler, in between your mindless rants, how many people have you offered to help?

Nicholas

" . . . police empowerment is traditionally a right-wing ideal."

Eh? Is it? Evidence please. I'm traditionally right wing and I'd like to see less rather than more police empowerment. Crime prevention and detection? Different things. During the last 13 years a left wing government has become synonimous with empowering the police in ways that are inconsistent with the ideals that created it and largely irksome to the law abiding population whilst making very little difference to crime. And I think you are conflating police empowerment, crime and the justice system. Peter from Maidstone's challenge to you was valid and you did not answer it convincingly at all.

" . . . If the right really wishes to reduce this empowerment than it should stop the arms race and instead focus on different and more effective ways of handling the problems police empowerment is supposed to solve."

Eh? How can the "right" do that when they are not even in government? Oh, I get it, the right are responsible for all the evils in the world and the left for all the good things.

And what exactly is the "genre" ndm?