Health & Safety Tossers

I am indebted to a work colleague for bringing my attention to this lamentable tail, in which Health & Safety fascism and fear of litigation has brought an end a harmless tradition in North Yorkshire.

It's the (almost) age-old story bringing to an end to a (genuinely) age-old tradition; Health and Bloody Safety. The cost of insurance and the endless risk assessments.

Obviously the dangers of children and choristers taking part in Pancake Races are there for everyone to see. If it's a race, it might involve people running, and that would never do. And someone might even fall over whilst holding a frying pan, and then where would we be ? And I don't know if you''ve ever been hit in the face by a flying pancake, but, let me tell you, if it happens, Casualty 's your next stop, if not the local crematorium.

What really gets me about the raft of stories where risk aversion comes ahead of everything else is that it would be so easy to fix. All it takes is someone in government to stand up and say "You know all this Health and Safety stuff ? It's all bollocks. From now on we're going to tell our courts to apply some commons sense. And any law that prevents common sense from being applied, we'll repeal". In other words, all it needs is some will, some momentum, some spirit.

Why, oh why, is that so hard to come up with ?