Another day, another Daily Mail attack on Health and Safety:
Gardener banned from tending grass verge outside home after 43 years... as health and safety police strike again. Naturally the headline is misleading and the credit once again goes to the 'Daily Mail Reporter'. Firstly, there seems to be a variety of reasons why the gardener has been asked to stop 'tending' the grass verge: one, the council owns the verge and he has been accused by the council of 'encroaching' upon it; two, by mowing the verge he is endangering public health and should he injure someone - from flying debris for example - then he would be facing a costly compensation claim; thirdly, the council appear to be taking action as a result of a complaint from a new neighbour that had actually 'taken control' of the lawn- it does actually merge with his own so not a crazy accusation - and finally, the guy has laid paving stones down across the verge without the agreement of the council.
Now, if anyone tripped because of the paving stones - which is quite feasible - they would be looking to sue the council, but would actually have to sue the gardener who had spent time putting the paving stones on land that does not belong to him. Likewise, if anyone was injured whilst he was cutting the grass he would be facing the compensation claim for that as well. The councils employ relevant contractors with adequate insurance in place should such events occur and regardless of whether the gardener is happy with the standard achieved by the council he is placing himself at risk each time he mows the lawn or starts putting paving slabs down. Furthermore, if the council have tacitly agreed to the gardener doing this (or are being seen as not taking action against him for doing it) then they can be accused of negligence and also face being sued should anything go wrong.
What we have here is not another stick to beat health and safety with but a story that reflects a growing culture of looking for someone to blame and sue should an accident arise. If an accident had happened and the council was found to be partly responsible for allowing the gardener to be working on the ground without adequate insurance / permission / qualifications and they were fined then I'm sure the Daily Mail and its readers would be the first to complain about the waste of council tax wasted and asking for public sector heads to roll. Conversely, when the council do sensibly take action to avoid this - and to avoid the gardener becoming a victim of the same culture - the Daily Mail finds another bogeyman to blame; this time the 'health and safety police'.
Which rather sums up the utter pointlessness of the whole article: there is no such thing as the 'health and safety police' therefore how can this person possibly have fallen victim to an organisation that does not actually exist? Answer is, of course, he didn't.
It is rather ironic that this story happens to be run not long after Richard 'elf 'n' safety gone mad' Littlejohn
fought back against a Guardian feature pointing out the mythical nature of his health and safety stories.
As No Sleep 'Til Brooklands points out, Littlejohn's defence of 'I don't peddle myths, look here's another factual 'elf 'n' safety'' story is not terribly convincing:
There are times when I'm actually embarrassed for Littlejohn. Here he is, trying to prove his worth as a purveyor of hard-nosed journalistic facts, and yet he crams so much fail into a brief sentence segment you wonder if he's doing it deliberately to generate more criticism he can self-righteously moan about. Sorry to labour the point, but in that brief section of one sentence, which is supposed to prove how good he is with facts he manages to get the following things wrong:
1) it hasn't 'been closed to the public', it was never open to them,
2) it will at some point be open to them, and
3) it has nothing to do with health and safety legislation.
Yet you only have to look at the comments that accompany today's health and safety story to see that a lot of readers are being sucked into believing that health and safety is not an attempt to make the world a slightly safer place but is actually some kind of rampaging beast destroying everything good about the world. For many readers health and safety is just another weapon designed by Europeans to destroy 'Britishness':
As with most of our public laws, Health & Safety is being dragged into Loony Land by EU directives. For pity's sake, let's reclaim our country by jumping off the European Crazy Bus and starting to act 'British' again.
- M Davies, Cardiff, 11/5/2009 12:30
Thankfully the Friday mods let some sense through, but don't hold your breath about Littlejohn actually engaging in any
meaningful debate with any of his readers anytime soon:
I wonder if Littlejohn will mention cover the plight of this poor gardener in his column tomorrow...
I'll have a Google see what it turns up... let me know if you find anything.
I'll have to do a bigger search to find out.