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Posted: 15-05-2013 22:07 Post subject:

My only thought was 'what kind of name is Chenlair?'

Posted: 30-05-2013 08:59 Post subject:

Much as I dislike litter-louts (and smokers!), I think the Council is being too heavy-handed here:

Truro cigarette end drain drop fine sparks row

A man fined £50 after dropping a cigarette end down a drain has said he did so because he had seen street cleaners sweep rubbish into drains.
Truro restaurant manager Dave Jode, 31, was seen dropping the butt into the drain by two Cornwall Council officers.
Council staff said it was an offence to discard litter in public and they did not believe rubbish was put in drains.
And the council said Mr Jode was going to just be cautioned but was fined when he refused to give his details.

Environmental crime officer Brian Keast, one of seven such staff employed by the Liberal Democrat-Independent led authority, said he and a colleague issued Mr Jode with a £50 penalty notice because he would not give his details when asked, which Mr Keast said was illegal.
He said: "We were going to explain to him the damage to the environment. He dismissed us completely.
"If he had spoken to us, it would have just have been a caution."

Mr Jode said he had put the butt down a drain as opposed to just leaving it on the ground, and he was not aware of it being an offence.
He said: "Where are the signs? Where are we taught this? A crime? I don't think it is.
"I and others have seen road sweepers use the same drains. If the council can do it, and get away with it, then why can't others?"

Mr Keast said he "would question" that sweepers put rubbish into drains.
He said: "If we witnessed that, we would speak to our contractors."
"If we spoke to them, I'm sure I would be assured that this is not the case."
Cornwall Council said cleaning up litter, including cigarette and cigar ends, cost "thousands of pounds" a year.

Mr Jode failed to pay the penalty notice and was taken to court. He now has been ordered to pay £220 in fines and court costs.
He said he would "drag his heels" over paying it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-22704665

If you refuse to give your details, how do they take you to court? Confused

Posted: 30-05-2013 09:37 Post subject:

Posted: 30-05-2013 12:24 Post subject:

Posted: 07-06-2013 08:49 Post subject:

Fish prove a slippery health and safety issue for Waitrose
Staff at a Waitrose supermarket refused to fillet a fish for a customer on health and safety grounds after claiming it was too slippery.
By Richard Gray
8:54PM BST 06 Jun 2013

The case has been highlighted by the Health and Safety Executive as an example of where rules designed to protect staff and the public from harm have been misused.

It comes after another Waitrose customer complained that a butcher at one of the supermarket chain’s stores had refused to bone a leg of lamb for him. Stuart Rock. a London based publishing company owner, said the butcher had said he was able to do the job, but was not allowed due to health and safety.

In the case of the fish, an unnamed customer contacted the HSE after trying to buy some filleted trout from the supermarket's fresh fish counter.
Waitrose advertises on its website that customers should “just ask if you’d like your fish skinned or filleted”.

The fish counter assistant agreed to fillet a whole trout for the customer, but a supervisor stepped in to say it would not be possible on health and safety ground because the fish were too slippery, the HSE reported.

The HSE, which has a panel to investigate health and safety myths, said it was an example of “poor customer service hiding behind the health and safety excuse”.
It added: “Slippery fish are a fact of life."
“Whilst fish filleting requires the person to know how to us knives safely, it is reasonable to expect this service to be available at a fishmonger's counter in a supermarket especially when the website advertises the service.”

Judith Hackitt, chair of the Health and Safety Executive, said: "I'm glad the customer didn't fall for this red herring. Cool

“This is just another case of poor customer service and nothing to do with health and safety.”

Waitrose apologised for any inconvenience for both incidents.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10104833/Fish-prove-a-slippery-health-and-safety-issue-for-Waitrose.html

Posted: 07-06-2013 09:29 Post subject:

Waitrose Shouldn't allow their staff to take the health and safety line, they should reel them in. Smile

Posted: 07-06-2013 11:10 Post subject:

We're not still floundering around carping on about this are we?

Posted: 07-06-2013 13:11 Post subject:

They clearly shop in the wrong plaice.

Posted: 02-07-2013 09:44 Post subject:

And now, H&S for dogs:

There’ll be howls of outrage
Dogs won’t like new advice about not throwing sticks
By Judith Woods
6:45AM BST 02 Jul 2013

Sit, Daisy! Sit! No, not on the ground, it’s dirty; use this hypoallergenic cushion. Paw! On second thoughts, being a quadruped, you might fall over and sustain a personal injury that was not your fault, so maybe not.

And Fetch! Oh my dog – not the stick! Are you crazy, Daisy? You might tear your gums or rupture your windpipe or impale your abdomen or stab yourself in some sort of freakish Lemony Snicket-style misadventure.

Don’t you know Sticks Can Kill? They may be marvellous to chew and fabulous to fetch, but the health and safety brigade have decreed that joyfully ripping apart bits of old branch with your carnassials is no longer an appropriate pastime.

Hush, puppy; subject to a risk assessment, you may be permitted to run, but only in pursuit of a soft, man-made ball that has previously been sterilised in my domestic autoclave.

When I read that dog owners had been ordered to stay away from sticks due to the “horrific” hurt they can cause, I must admit I thought it was a spoof.

But no, the grim warning has comes from none other than Robin Hargreaves, president elect of the British Veterinary Association, who operates on one dog a month that has sustained serious stick injuries.
“Never throw sticks for dogs,” he said. “Even if you do it now, never do it again. It is a violent incident that causes real damage.”

Were I the owner of a hound hospitalised by a stick wound, I would doubtless agree. But in the grand scheme of things, I believe the pleasure outweighs the risk and the prospect of cotton wool collies is every bit as unappealing as Paris Hilton’s handbagged Chihuahua.

Like all dog owners, my pet’s welfare is paramount. Daisy, who turns six in October, is a much-loved member of our family, without whom a country walk or frolic on the beach or snuggle on the sofa would be unthinkable.

'''

But though psychologically delicate, physically she’s swift and robust – and she loves playing with sticks.
A tennis ball is her toy of choice (it goes faster and further), but when she finds a stick that is suitably gnarled and heavy, she will heft it from the undergrowth and thwack us, painfully, on the legs with it until we throw it for her.

If we linger too long or indeed attempt to confiscate the thing, she will leap upwards and seize it in her teeth, swinging, alarmingly, off the ground as she does so.

Yes, I understand terrible mishaps occur, but given that man has been throwing sticks for his best friend for about 30,000 years, I don’t think they qualify as a major cause of mortality.

What does kill and damage many more dogs is obesity. According to the PDSA, more than a third of dogs are grossly overweight and miserable with it. A great many more perish from diseases linked to overfeeding and under-exercising than to unhappy accidents involving sticks.

For many dog owners, throwing a stick is a quick way of giving their waggy-tailed charge an extra run around. When I was nine months pregnant, I taught Daisy to bring the stick back to my garden chair, so I didn’t have to keep bending down to pick it up.

Throwing stuff for dogs is also, unfathomably, huge fun. As long as Daisy enjoys fetching sticks, I’ll keep on throwing them. Carefully.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/petshealth/10152883/Therell-be-howls-of-outrage.html

Posted: 20-07-2013 09:58 Post subject:

The dreaded 'health and safety’ has claimed another life
The Coalition promised to bring back common sense, but nightmarish stories of 'responsible' adults refusing to rescue people are still legion
By Judith Woods
7:44PM BST 19 Jul 2013

A demon is stalking the land, an invisible chimera, a terrifying lusus naturae that places us, our families, our children, at risk. David Cameron has publicly branded it a “monster” he intends to slay. But I think the Prime Minister needs to increase his dose of kryptonite because the mighty scourge of health and safety is alive and kicking – which is more than can be said for its latest victim.

When coroner Michael Rose this week voiced his dismay at paramedics who refused to rescue a dying man from a water-filled ditch, we learnt, with heavy hearts, that this menacing New Labour-promoted hybrid of truculent jobsworthiness and self-righteous imbecility has not been stamped out.

“I will not say what I think of health and safety,” said Rose, speaking at the inquest of Somerset agricultural worker Michael Thornton, who died after his Land Rover Discovery, which was being driven by one of his friends, swerved off the road. “I was brought up in a country where men risked their own lives to save others. That was a period in our history which has almost ceased.”

The paramedics say that after carrying out “a risk assessment”, they decided against entering the water to treat Thornton, who was pulled free of the capsized car by his two friends and dragged on to the top of the vehicle, where they tried to resuscitate him.
When a police officer arrived on the scene, he didn’t hesitate in wading into the 10ft-wide ditch and carried the dying man to dry land. But it was too late.

The coroner praised the Pc’s actions, but did not say if the victim could have been saved if the paramedics had gone into the water. It has been left to his parents and his former partner to agonise over the “what ifs”.

Compare their health and safety caution, or cowardice, or whatever you might term it, with the so-called Angels of Woolwich. The women who instinctively, humanely responded to the savage attack on Drummer Lee Rigby didn’t carry out a risk assessment before they approached the still-armed killers.

Cub Scout leader and mother of two Ingrid Loyau-Kennett was brave enough to remonstrate with the two men. Mother and daughter Amanda and Gemini Donnelly-Martin refused to be cowed and sat by the dying man, offering him comfort as his blood, his life ebbed away.

Afterwards, Gemini, 20, said: “We did what anyone would do. We just wanted to take care of the man. It wasn’t brave; anyone would have done it.”

But the tragedy is that not everyone would have done it. In 2008, Lincolnshire police, firemen and paramedics watched Karl Malton, 32, drown in just 28 inches of water because they were told by their bosses it was too dangerous to climb down a 15ft bank using ropes and ladders to reach him. Evil or Very Mad

A year previously, a 10-year-old, Jordon Lyon, dived into a pond to save successfully his eight-year-old sister, Bethany. But when Jordon got into difficulties, police support officers in Wigan claimed they weren’t trained to perform a water rescue, so these adults did nothing. Nothing. Jordon was dead by the time a “suitably trained” officer arrived.

The nightmarish stories are legion: last year, Simon Burgess died in a 3ft-deep model boating lake in Hampshire after apparently suffering an epileptic fit. A doctor told his inquest that he might have been saved by the emergency crews who had been called to the scene but their superiors ordered them not to go into the water – all 3ft of it. And they meekly followed orders.

Why someone didn’t just shout “I resign!” then wade into the water defeats me. It was a pathetic indictment of a modern mindset in which fear – not of death but of contravening regulations – infantilises adults and leaves them unable to act on their initiative.

All this despite the fact that in 2011 the Coalition announced that in a return to common sense, emergency service workers would be exempt from prosecution when acts of heroism breach health and safety laws.

Of course it goes without saying – but I’ll say it anyway – that 99 out of 100 emergency crews unflinchingly risk their lives to aid those in danger and distress. God forbid that me or mine should find themselves at the mercy of that one in 100 who would rather not bend a rule to save a life.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/10190924/The-dreaded-health-and-safety-has-claimed-another-life.html

Posted: 20-07-2013 10:13 Post subject:

Anybody who works for any of the emergency services in any capacity should be fired instantly if they refuse to help someone because of "legislation".

Of course, if you don't have the ability to help that's different (e.g if you can't swim then maybe diving into a river to help someone isn't helpful), but I just can't understand the mindset of anyone who would just stand and watch someone else suffer, struggle and die when they could have helped.

Are we expected to believe that these people never break any legislation? Never creep over the speed limit? Never "accidentally" take a pen home from work? Never record a TV show and don't erase it as soon as they've watched it?

But, oh no....better not get into that three foot of water to help that drowning child, I might get told off.

Absolute arseholes, all of them. Evil or Very Mad

Posted: 20-07-2013 10:43 Post subject:

Posted: 20-07-2013 10:58 Post subject:

Yes, that's the place. News reports:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-17131333

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/district/fareham/9546030._Health_and_safety__prevented_firefighter_rescuing_drowning_man/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2106423/Simon-Burgess-body-floats-Walpole-Park-pond-emergency-workers-stand-watch.html

Note the second part of that last link:

Posted: 20-07-2013 14:56 Post subject:

Posted: 24-08-2013 13:48 Post subject: