Health And Safety Rules .... OK?

Health and safety rules used to be restricted to major engineering sites, car plants, steel mills and the like, but as the UK's industrial base collapsed in the 1980's, the jobsworths of the Health and Safety executive cast about for new worlds to conquer.

Two Brave Firemen Wade Into Waist
Deep Water Level 2 Certificates In Hand.

Finally, with the aid of their allies in the human resources departments in every town hall in the land, they conquered first the office,s and then in the ultimate in absurdity the police, firemen and finally the armed forces.

 

Now we regularly get stories like the one about post office workers being told to suspend postal deliveries because the roads are wet ..... WTF?

 

The decision was apparently taken after a postal worker slipped on a wet pavement. A letter to businesses in South Parade, Doncaster, stated: "Under the circumstances, mail deliveries to your address will be suspended in wet weather conditions such as persistent rain, snow or ice, for health and safety reasons."

A similar event was reported when a member of the public waded into a pond rescue a seagull after police and fireman refused to do anything on health and safety grounds ...... it was knee deep water only.

Or even more seriously and man was drowning (or was drowned - versions differ depending on who was retelling events), and again the firemen refused to wade out to help or collect the body because they had only been on the level 1 water wading course (ankle deep only), and the police constable and the ambulance worker who had done level two (waist to chest deep), and wanted to go in, didn't have the breathing mask that was required for that advanced skill. The water was just 3ft deep (1 meter).
 

Mr Nicholls, the fire officer who stopped all help being given to the man, told the inquest that he understood the body had been in the water for approximately five to ten minutes by the time he arrived. ‘There were no obvious signs of life so from that I made an assessment it was a body retrieval and not a rescue. The officers were trained to go into ankle deep water, which is level one, so we waited for level two officers, who can go into chest high. One of the police officers told me he would like to go in the water and I advised him in the strongest terms not to. A paramedic told me he was level two water trained, but when I asked him if he had protective equipment he said “No”, so that was the end of that'

Can you believe that there are actually two or three levels of water wading skills required by the police and fire services in the UK .... how much per course wasted on this and which idiot on the councils decided that this was necessary?

There are many more of these stories reported these days, the absurdity of which, never seems to result in anyone getting sacked for bringing these stupid rules into the workplace.  So you have to wonder how long before the firemen refuse to enter buildings to rescue people because of Health and Safety concerns, or police let criminals escape because riding a motor bike was too dangerous?

When Health and Safety concerns actually endanger lives ............  then the world really has gone PC mad. .....