Health and safety gone mad!!!

Ellfin safety gone mad right enough. I sometimes wonder though if we take our own health and safety seriously enough. This summer we were working in a house that was so dirty we all ended up ill. I had a lung infection that is still being treated, my workmates all had stomach complaints. I knew the job would be bad when I priced it up but didn't expect this, I still feel responsible for my guys illnesses though.
Yesterday I went with the plasterer to look at a job. The smell of dog mess in the house was so bad we had to leave. I wont be taking any chances in the future.

 

Try doing door access systems for local HA's, glass around loft hatches, sharps everywhere, needles stuck into buttons on door entry panels so when you go to push a button......, run a cable in a cupboard for a handset in the hall, some use the cupboard as a kennel, dog sh!t and **** all over the floor, others use it as a recycling store for numerous empty cider bottles-all paid for by us!...needles taped to the underside of stair bannisters, guess why!.knives blue tacked adjacent to the front door in case the tenant doesn't like a certain visitor.

Yet the HA has to provide for them, we install the access stuff to prevent unwanted visitors sleeping in stairwells, setting fire to stuff in the communal areas, yet all the scroats do is jam the electric strikes, chock doors open, nick our tools etc whilst we are trying to protect them, I could go on, but hey, you get the picture.
We're too fecking soft in this country and it really boils my **** tbh.

Rant over.
Rich.

 

I keep on telling her she needs a high viz on, does she listen?, does she heck, so I just keep going to the bottom of her steps, look up, ready to read the riot act, and then I need to go to the loo! , oops, to much info , lol.

 

Tell me about door access systems.... Years ago I lived in a block of flats with a communal entrance with a door access system. Locals would kick the door in almost every week. Council would repair the entry door and access system, only for it to be kicked in again. I suggested to one of the workmen, it might stop if they made the door open outwards. (harder to kick the door against the rebates) only to be told, H&S don't like doors that open outwards. (not like it opened out onto a pavement, as there was a path leading to the door from the pavement 25 yds away)

 

Nowadays they want them to open out for H&S purposes, apparently it's easier to push the door open from the inside than pull in an emergency,'Tis H&S gone crazy these days.
We're ripping out communal fire alarms after a blocks flats have been made sts-safe to stay-because a resident continually burns toast and everyone's then outside, these fire alarms cost thousands to put in not that many years ago.

 

It's just another of the many parasitic industries that's been created in the last few years, like bat report companies or great crested newt investigators. All they do is reduce the unemployment figures and increase the cost of living.

 

It's gorn crazy, I tell ye...

When I were a lad, still at skool, and around 17 years of age, I got my first summer job working for a local TV shop up in t'Utter He-Brides. The job I had was to install aerials on the roofs of house so's they could catch the newly introduced 625 lines.

What a laff. The funniest was in the town of Stornoway, in a terraced row of 3-storey Victorian houses. Ladder on full extension, and - since I was the youngest, working with some old coves - I was sent up this ladder carrying a roof ladder in one hand.

And it was blowing at least a '6', with rain to suit. Virtually blinded by the conditions.

But the funniest part was me holding on to the top of the - unsecured - extension ladder as it slipped first one way and then the next along the cast-iron guttering, whilst hauling the roof ladder up and on to the roof. I remember - it was soooo funny - finally getting the ladder on to the roof and then trying to push it up the slope and, with every push, the ladder I was standing on would leave the gutter by a foot or so.

Hilarious.

And then another youngster fell off a raised platform on a hotel roof and crashed through a large skylight before ending up inside the building. Not sure what happened to him - it was kept mysteriously quiet.

How we laughed.

People nowadays chust don't know how to have fun.


Off you go, gents - have a pint on me. Sit in the corner of a pub and 'tut' and 'shake your heads sadly' at how soft we've become. Imagine trying to save people from being roasted in an inferno, or a child from being crushed by an electric gate that has no safety stop.

 

Mmm I detect a hint of sarcasum here, yes I too have had loads of fun during the non safety era of the sixties, to me it was a training ground where you had to show if you got the metal for the job, if its too hot get out, was the order of the day, you have to know the guy you're working with is batting for the same team, now what you've got is fast track card carrying 'giz a job' types some who don't speak English ( thats not a racial slurr) its a inability to shout a LOOK OUT warning if needed,
I'm no longer allowed on sites because I won't BUY a cssc admission ticket to sites, the HSE have not made sites any safer but they're created a business with themselves being the fat cats, sites used to have a sign at the front

"SAFETY IS YOUR RESONSIBILTY FOR YOURSELF AND OTHERS"

IT SHOULD START AND STOP THERE,

 

Hmm, I'm just not entirely sure that H&S is a bad thing though. Years ago, the maximum fine for H&S issues, including deaths, was a paltry £20,000. Back in the day, (pre 1984) human life came pretty cheap. The farming and construction industry were the leaders as far as deaths and extremely serious injuries went. I used to get the HSE safety bulletin every month. There were some pretty horrific stories within it's pages (couldn't wait for it to drop through the letterbox ) I'm sure, these days, we're all pretty much aware of our responsibilities under H&S legislation. I'm sure that company directors are aware of the consequences of H&S lapses, so push H&S (maybe a bit too far)

 

We can all cite examples of H&S gorn mad, and the last time I was helping out at school to clear a loft out of some carp, the Site Manager had to say, winking, "don't sue us if you fall of the stepladder..."

As far as I was concerned I, of course, wouldn't dream of suing because I had volunteered to help and hadn't even been asked.

But, what if a teacher stands on a desk in her class to change a lamp or switch on the OHP - and falls off breaking a leg? They'll be of work for a goodly few weeks, and that will cost the school £1,000s. And, if a senior teacher had asked her to do this, the school would most likely lose a goodly extra number of £1,000s.

So, it's now simply a case of everyone being told; "H&S says you cannot do that simple job - end of." And if anyone does decide to do that simple job and falls off, they haven't a leg to stand on.

 

Tom, you only detected a hint

Seriously, tho', it was a bludy miracle that I - and others - weren't killed doing that 'simple' summer job (and I suspect that other kid was never the same again...).

And where would this forum be now? cough

Did I have the option to say "You gotta be bludy kidding me?" when faced with that ladder? Nope, not really. The 'expectation' to do the job and the peer pressure was chust too great.

But was it right? Was that a time of complete loonacy? Too darned right it was. Very glad we have progressed as a society, and if that means - for example - that teachers are no longer allowed to climb on to desks (ooh-er, missus), then that level of "H&S gorn mad" is a price worth paying.

 

That's the thing DA. We used to accept things like falling off a ladder/chair, desk etc. I'm sure we've all done stupid things before, where we've hurt ourselves, and thought afterwards "What on earth possessed me t do that?" . Seems to me that these days, people still do stupid things, but immediately start finding someone else to blame. At work, I'm the only person there who can go up a step ladder with more than 3 steps, because I've had "Ladder Training." H&S is a half day training course at work once a year (which most of them forget before they've got out the bloody door of the training room). All of my colleagues are aware of their responsibilities to residents under the Social Care Act, but few are aware that they have greater responsibilities under the Health and Safety at Work Act.

 

The trouble with some modern health & safety is it takes away people ability to think for themselves, simply things like changing a light bulb and climbing a small step ladder, what's the hell is the 3 step rule all about, having to have somebody hold the steps ????, this leads to a total lack of common sense, you then become the same as the type of person who thinks up these stupid ideas to make our lives safer, well I say, if you never fail you never learn, if you never learn you never think, if you never think you become a robot.