Police having a bad time

It’s not a good time for the police. They are starting to suffer from higher prices just like everyone else. The police are being forced to cut front line jobs to save on the cost of fuel. I would make the police ride bikes but it seems that they have to be trained and pass their cycling proficiency test before they are allowed to even ride a bike.

The police are also facing the possibility of having the price of handcuffs rise when their biggest supplier goes out of business within the next few weeks.

Not even Labour would do this

Homeowners face having to pay a specialist to inspect their trees under a safety regime drawn up by one of Britain’s most respected watchdogs.

The British standard for tree safety inspection would require all trees to be checked by a “trained person” every three years, with a still more rigorous “expert inspection” by an arboriculturist every five years.

Tree owners will also be obliged to conduct a “walk-by” inspection themselves once a year.

The drive to make all trees subject to inspection is being led not by the Health and Safety Executive - which opposes the move - but by the British Standards Institution (BSI). Highly respected in the building and engineering industries, it is better known for its views on the composition of cement than on the health of trees.

I don’t think even the government would go for this. It would lead to even higher taxes and could be bad for the environment. There will be tens of thousands of trees under the authority of each local council. Could you imagine the bill councils would have to pay? All it would lead to is councils paying to have trees knocked down because they would be unable to afford the maintenance without substantially increasing taxes.

The government would be mad to go along with this. It would damage them during a time where they are trying to look like a green and environmentally friendly party.

Another hospital bans flowers

Banning flowers in Dorset County Hospital must have been a success because now other hospitals are trying it.

This time South End hospital has decided to ban flowers for health and safety reasons for a trial period of one month starting July 7th. The ban is being introduced because the hospital believes flowers could pose a safety hazard with all the hi-tech medical equipment around beds.

Could this idiocy be coming to a hospital near you? It wouldn’t surprise me.

Paddling pool banned again

For nearly a quarter of a century, Lourdes Maxwell has celebrated the arrival of summer by putting a paddling pool in the garden.

This year, however, her two grandchildren and the children of her neighbours may have to find another way to cool off in the heat.

Miss Maxwell's local council has decided that the pool - which is only 2ft deep - needs a lifeguard.

The 47-year-old divorced mother of three has also been told she must have insurance before she can inflate the toy outside her house in Portsmouth.

This is just ridiculous. It’s a paddling pool for gods sake! Why can’t councils just let adults take responsibility for their children? Of course this is not the first time this has happened. I blogged about this happening to Katie Joyce almost 3 years ago.

Nothing has changed. Health and safety bureaucrats only do this because they can’t get real jobs and it doesn’t look like national or local government will take action to stop it because they have had 3 years to stop it.

Bin men not doing their job

During August last year it was reported by the Daily Mail that it was too dangerous for Portsmouth’s bin men to empty their own bins so resident had to do it instead.

Craven District Council have decided on the same course of action. They don’t want their bin men getting hurt so they have decided that residents should take the rubbish out of the bins themselves.

Why are these people paying council tax if they have to do everything themselves? It is a bin man’s job to lift rubbish and put it in the truck. If they don’t want to do that they should find another job.

They never lived happily ever after

Children's books that don't have happy endings should be banned, it was claimed yesterday.

Youngsters are already exposed to enough misery in their lives and should be protected from such stories, says a parents' group.

The Happy Ending Foundation is planning a series of Bad Book Bonfires for later this month, when parents will be encouraged to burn novels with negative endings.

The foundation has also written to school librarians across the country to coincide with Children's Book Week, which began on Monday, urging them to take ' controversial' books off shelves.

When are youngsters exposed to misery? They aren’t exposed to misery at all. Maybe bad grades mean that they are exposed to misery? Either way these idiots should be ignored and then ridiculed if they keep on with this idiotic campaign. Children are wrapped in cotton wool enough. Why would we want to do wrap them in more?

Having sad ending isn’t going to damage children for life. They should know that not every situation will turn out rosy. If parents don’t like it they can simply not buy the books to read to their child. Problem solved.

Diversity training is useless

It’s official. Police diversity training is useless but atleast the experts have began to realise that. Dr John Coxhead, who worked for ten years as a liaison officer with gipsies and travellers thinks that forces should stop putting so much effort into training courses and return to "common sense," I couldn’t agree more but unfortunately the people in charge at the top don’t have common sense.

Showing their lack of common sense Devon and Cornwall Constabulary have decreed that their officers are no longer allowed to rescue drowning swimmers or even hold their hands out. They also must carry out a dynamic risk assessment before throwing a life belt.

PCSOs are also useless when faced with slightly determined criminals. They are not allowed to tackle violent yobs, respond to any serious incident and issue fines which makes them more useless than traffic wardens.

Council sees sense

A 79-year-old woman has been permitted to tend her village's flower beds again after she was told to stop gardening due to health and safety rules.

Wiltshire County Council said June Turnbull from Urchfont, near Devizes would have to put up warning signs and be supervised when tending the blooms.

The parish and county councils have now agreed she can carry on, as long as she wears a fluorescent jacket.

Atleast the council has seen a bit of sense. The council was extremely stupid when they over reacted to this incident. She was doing no harm and shouldn’t have been stopped in the first place.

Hospitals ban flowers and knitting

Despite never having a single injury from knitting needles in their hospital Congleton War Memorial Hospital has removed knitting needles from their hospital for health and safety reasons.

For three years, the Congleton War Memorial Hospital in Cheshire had provided a "knitting box" in its main waiting area, containing wool and needles and inviting patients and visitors to knit a square while they waited.

Yesterday the League of Friends of the hospital hit out at the ban as "pointless" and "soul-destroying for the patients".

The chairman of the League of Friends, Michael Lambert, said: "The idea was you would knit a small square and they were all sent off to charities and turned into large blankets and clothes for the needy. The knitting box was extremely popular and now it has been taken away. Many of the older patients are so upset."

You might think that knitting needles could be a bit dangerous even though no one in the hospital has ever been hurt by them. Do you think that flowers are a health and safety hazard? Dorset County Hospital does and they have banned flowers for health and safety reasons.

Both of these hospitals are idiotic in the extreme. Even if the knitting needles were dangerous what better place is there than a hospital to get treated? We

No smoking? What does that mean?

The smoking ban has again ended up causing stupid things to happen. There are several hundred used London Underground “No Smoking” signs for sale in an Islington antiques shop. A notice next to them explained that every sign on the Tube has had to be changed as the old ones no longer comply with the new law.

Transport for London confirms that the old signs had to be taken down. They now have to say: “It Is Against The Law To Smoke In This Station.” Apparently “No Smoking” just doesn’t do the job anymore.

Don't hurt their feelings

Convicted criminals working in the community are to be barred from wearing fluorescent jackets because their feelings might be hurt if passers-by hurl abuse, it emerged last night.

Government officials are worried about the health and safety of burglars and thugs if they can be identified as they carry out their punishments.

In a spectacular U-turn, probation staff have been told to stop putting up signs saying street work is being carried out by convicts - or forcing them to wear bright yellow jackets branded 'Community Payback'.

Instead, a small plaque will be erected long after the yobs have gone, to make sure their delicate sensibilities are not put at risk. The decision makes a mockery of repeated Labour promises to make 'tough' community sentences - such as tidying parks and fixing benches - more visible so that the public can see justice being done.

Last year England's most senior judge, Lord Chief Justice Phillips, secretly passed himself off as a convicted drink driver and donned one of the jackets to see what community punishments were like.

And a modified version of the yellow jacket he wore may have a reprieve.

In a classic example of Whitehall confusion, some criminals working in the open air will still wear them - albeit without any logo to suggest they are convicts.

Why? Because the high-visibility jackets could help prevent accidents - as required under health and safety rules.

This country must be the laughing stock of the criminal world. When did criminals ever care about the feelings of their victims? They should be visible to the communities they wreck to humiliate them into stopping their criminal ways but under Labour it won’t stop them. Labour are easy on criminals when they have said that they would be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. I would like to know when we will actually see them being tough.

No smoking signs for under cover police

You might think that the smoking ban is barmy and if you do it’s about to go into a whole new level of barmyness. Police will now have to put up no smoking signs in their vehicles. The rule also includes police cars with undercover police inside.

This will of course compromise undercover police work Labour isn’t going to let a little thing like crime fighting get in the way of the nanny state. They would rather let thousands of criminals escape than allow the police to light up a cigarette.

I wonder if organisations like MI5 have to do the same thing. Wouldn’t it be strange if they had to do it while following Islamic fundos that wanted to blow up a few things?

Government to abduct child over future abuse

A pregnant woman has been told that her baby will be taken from her at birth because she is deemed capable of "emotional abuse", even though psychiatrists treating her say there is no evidence to suggest that she will harm her child in any way.

Social services' recommendation that the baby should be taken from Fran Lyon, a 22-year-old charity worker who has five A-levels and a degree in neuroscience, was based in part on a letter from a paediatrician she has never met.

Hexham children's services, part of Northumberland County Council, said the decision had been made because Miss Lyon was likely to suffer from Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy, a condition unproven by science in which a mother will make up an illness in her child, or harm it, to draw attention to herself.

Under the plan, a doctor will hand the newborn to a social worker, provided there are no medical complications. Social services' request for an emergency protection order - these are usually granted - will be heard in secret in the family court at Hexham magistrates on the same day.

From then on, anyone discussing the case, including Miss Lyon, will be deemed to be in contempt of the court.

What has this country come to when the government can legally abduct a child and then be allowed to silence any opposition to it? What the hell has happened?

They say she is deemed capable of emotional abuse but isn’t every capable of emotional abuse? What exactly is the criteria for emotional abuse? Couldn't she make a human rights case like the murderer of the head teacher did? Surely she is also entitled to a right a family life?

Don't recycle in Croydon

If you try to be environmentally friendly in Croydon you just might end up achieving the exact opposite especially if you want to recycle. You see you are no longer allowed to walk to the recycling centre. You now have to get in a long queue with your car even if you live right close to it. I hope I am not the only one that can see the idiocy in this.

The council workers have failed to figure out that recycling this way is probably going to damage the environment more than help it but they might know this because it seems that Health and safety considerations trump environmental concerns. The health and safety concern here is that apparently pedestrians and people in cars don’t mix and it’s unsafe. Whoever made this decision needs to be shot.

Hat tip: Nanny Knows Best

Could health and safety bureaucrats get real jobs?

Why can’t health and safety bureaucrats get real jobs? Health and safety is probably the only job sector where you can get money for making decision which are stupid or taking actions which aren’t needed. If it wasn’t for health and safety we wouldn’t have people employed to check the safety of 20,000 gravestones.

It’s not all fun and games in health and safety. Sometimes they have to make tough decisions like what kind of shorts people can wear while swimming. For your information long shorts are not safe. I am so glad I was told about that. I will never swim in long shorts just in case I drown in a very horrible manner entangled in baggy shorts.

EU idiots try to make more laws

A proposal being debated in the European parliament could force construction workers to cover up on sunny days incase they get skin cancer.

Can anyone see the logic in this? On a hot day construction workers take their tops off because they are hot. Forcing them to keep their tops on will most likely kill them from heat exhaustion so the EU is probably going to kill more people than they save.

It is bad enough the British construction workers have to fight off competition from cheap migrant labour without daft legislation coming from Europe making life more uncomfortable.

This proposal is yet more evidence (as if anymore was needed) that the EU is a waste of taxpayers money.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L06205938.htm

Nanny state Britain

Britain is turning into a nanny state more and more. Today in The Daily mirror it was reported that the council have threatened parents to remove paddling pool for children because it didn't have a lifeguard.

Katie Joyce and other mums chipped in for the 10ft plastic pool to give their children a holiday treat.

But when they set up the £50 inflatable on a council-owned communal green without permission, they were warned it would be removed on safety grounds.

Bosses at Warwick district council feared a child could get hurt although the water was only 12 inches deep.

They told families on the Fallow Hill estate in Leamington Spa not to let children use it.

The letter added: "Permission has not been granted for its use. The council cannot be held liable and persons using the pool are not insured. The council are considering removing it."

Residents say the council was unhappy because there was no lifeguard or first aider. But angry parents claim they watch the children and there are never more than six in the pool.

Am I the only one in this sorry excuse for a country that feels that this is ridiculously over the top? This has to stop. Parents have to start taking responsibility for their own children and councils have to start letting them take responsibility.