An apparent lull in Health and Safety Executive activity was obviously too good to be true and they seem to be back with a vengeance.
Mayoral cars are instantly recognisable by their coat of arms, generally a tiddly little flag on the roof or on the front wing. Apart from anything else, it prevents, for example, official cars being mistakenly directed to wrong areas at functions.
Enter Health and Safety. The mayor of Maidstone has been banned from having a tiddly flag – it only measures 8 inches by 5 inches – on the roof of her official car as it could constitute a health and safety risk!
The Democratic Services Manager said the flag might fall off if the car goes over a certain speed and could damage other cars or possibly inconvenience other road users.
If a car is capable of being damaged by an 8 x 4 piece of cloth then I’m afraid it shouldn’t be on the road. Maybe car manufacturers should be forced to introduce ‘impact with 8 x 4 cloth tests’ and issue a certificate with every new car.
At the same time as introducing this ban, it was also admitted that there has never actually been a case of a mayoral crest falling of a vehicle, let alone causing any damage or inconvenience.
Here’s a thought. Get rid of all these Diversity Officers, Democratic Services Managers and other wastes of space and let’s spend all those millions on something more trivial, like health care, Nurses, Security…the constituents!! Bit radical I suppose.
And in Suffolk, an annual Treasure Hunt involving 400 children has been cancelled on health and safety grounds. The children had all paid 1 pound and the object is, or was for the past seven years, to find 12 pieces of amber hidden on Southwold beach.
Enter Health and Safety. New rules mean that the organisers have to complete a risk assessment, have extra marshalls on the site and take out insurance. Once again, there has been no injury recorded during the seven year history of the event.
Far more sensible would be to concentrate efforts on something which really could pose a danger, like bluetack for example. Just imagine if a child genius, the likes of which has never been seen on this planet, got hold of some bluetack, completely changed its molecular structure by means not yet discovered and turned it into an explosive. Devastating. Ban it now, before it’s too late…