First T_W, now me. We are becoming Simon Jenkins groupies. Oh blast. But he had a pretty good rant about the pervasiveness of surveillance and the growing spread of government intrusion into private life, in the Times Online today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The really odd, semi-coherent nutters were out in force though. One comment that is daft enough to repeat said.<\/p>\n

We seem to be ruled by the health and safety commission and supernanny combined<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can see that creeping centralisation of data combined with more surveillance and laws to stop us drinking and smoking and so on get tangled together in people’s minds. But the “health and safety” stuff that people tend to tie into this is a different matter altogether.<\/p>\n

As far as I know, the Health and Safety Commission has no responsibilities beyond trying to cut down the numbers of people killed or seriously injured at work, and even these responsibilities only apply to specific kinds of work. If you get electrocuted in your office or you are sold bread with glass in it – it has nothing to do with them. They have nothing whatsoever to do with advising the population of Harrogate how much they should drink.<\/p>\n

(Apparently, in Harrogate, “26.4% of you had between 12 and 17 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153large\u00e2\u20ac\u009d glasses of wine” last week, according to Simon Jenkins)<\/p>\n

The current hysteria about health and safety has nothing to do with new laws or more intensive health and safety law enforcement – which is becoming close to non-existent. It is the result of the current response to any injury, which is to bang in a “No-win, no-fee” compensation claim.<\/p>\n

(I speak as someone who heard the name of the Health and Safety Commission taken in vain yet again by my gym, when the staff threw me out – again – for not bringing an approved form of training shoes, last week This was despite – OK, then, maybe because of – my sarcastically pointing out that I didn’t know that it was possible to get steel-toe-capped trainers …. Oh alright then, maybe it was the (I thought mild, almost sub-vocal) cussing that got to them….<\/p>\n

But it’s so much easier to blame imaginary health and safety inspectors, who might take it into their heads to visit my gym, bizarrely exceeding their legal remit, and then decide to enforce the wearing of cloth training shoes over open-toed hiking sandals.<\/p>\n

No really, this is going somewhere, I think…. Our “safety” has indeed become an excuse for any number of ludicrous minor annoyances, like getting Marmite<\/a> confiscated on a plane, as well as major intrusions on civil liberty<\/a>. Actually examining the detail of whether any of these things really make us “safer” is, to put it mildly, long overdue.<\/p>\n

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    First T_W, now me. We are becoming Simon Jenkins groupies. Oh blast. But he had a pretty good rant about the pervasiveness of surveillance and the growing spread of government intrusion into private life, in the Times Online today. The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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