In the past twenty five years, a cloud of stupidity has cloaked itself over our sceptred isle, one that has stifled progress and given rise to a culture of health and safety madness.
Today’s adults are born of a society which has grown up with “where there’s blame there’s a claim” advertisements on television encouraging people to sue. Not only have we become tolerant to the point of obsequiousness but we have also become a generally more defensive and readily litigious society. Couple this with a madcap “down tools brothers” mentality that is perhaps the last remaining legacy of the old days of 1970s militant Labour, the growth of Health & Safety awareness has had a huge and stultifying impact on our progress as a society and the commercial world in general.
Now, when an engineer visits from a telephone company to fix a line or broadband in the home, they have to wear protective boot covers lest the homeowner makes a fraudulent claim for dirtying the carpet or damaging their precious laminate flooring with a drill bit. Ladders have to be affixed using numerous safety cables and adopting multifarious risk aversion procedures in case a gust of wind takes both it and said engineer for a flying lesson – and they mostly have to have a jobbing ‘mate’ in attendance, not a junior to learn the craft of the senior engineer, but one who can act as a witness in case something goes wrong and the aggrieved customer tries to sue the company!
Oh, and when the engineer finishes their job, be it a new line or simple repair, there is a 32 question checklist which has to be completed, one tick box question of which asking whether there has been any damage to the property by the visiting engineer (again to negate any subsequent claim the client may wish to make).
In schools, the madness of H&S reaches ever new heights. Teachers are now banned from applying sticking plasters to the cut knees of clumsy kids falling in the playground for fear that they may suffer anaphylactic shock or, worse still, die and therefore be held culpable for child abuse or negligence. Come Autumn time when the conkers fall to the ground, a game which has been a playground favourite of boys for over 150 years, the traditional game as I knew it is out of the question lest a rogue fragment of horse chestnut fly off the string blinding said child. A couple of schools have conceded to the outcry of traditionalist parents in allowing such playground games to continue but only on the proviso that safety goggles are worn and only if bouts are supervised by a responsible adult!
It fares no better the older the student gets either. H&S damns the lives of older academics too. Just take those graduating gems at the Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge who were told not to pose for end of term pictures, where throwing one’s hat in the air is de rigueur, in case someone was injured by the falling headgear! 
Due to the folly of H&S, we now find police officers and emergency service personnel stultified in the performance of a job they once swore to uphold with their lives; standing at the bankside watching the drowning die in lakes and rivers because they either have to carry out a risk assessment first or are not allowed to get into the water in case it is, wait for it, ‘dangerous!’ The vow to “protect and serve” the public appears to mean nothing nowadays with PC Plod seemingly debarred from entering even a gentle trickling brook! Of course, once several senior staff have been notified, the risk assessment has been carried out and the tick box operation has been done then yes, by all means, jump in and save the drowning child!
H&S mayhem and madness operates in the seats of power too. The Mayor of Maidstone was apoplectic when the flag proudly bearing the town crest was removed from her limo. Mayor Denise Joy was apparently told by council officials that the flag breached all H&S good practice as it could be a hazard to drivers and pedestrians if it fell off. Try telling that to Elizabeth Regina and the driver of her numerous Bentleys!
For the elderly, H&S is just another confusing terminology of the modern world that they will never understand. It is without question that some older folk are extremely town proud. They clean the streets without pay and lovingly tend to flowerbeds to make their local environment better for others. For years, Wiltshire pensioner June Turnbell had done her bit for her local village by tending to a council-owned flower bed but this was all ended because of health and safety concerns when trumped up officials told her that her efforts breached safety rules because of the bend in the road beside the plot. If she was to continue, Ms Turnbell was told, she’d have to wear a flourescent jacket, have ‘Men at work’ signs afore and after the flowerbed being worked on and engage her own lookout! The bed now looks forlorn as it has been left to fester with weeds. 
It gets worse. Public swimming pools in Bournemouth were told to stop lending inflatables to families who hadn’t brought their own as they couldn’t guarantee they’d be free from bacteria – and some companies now even routinely ban the regulation birthday cake and candles as they pose a fire risk. Not only that, portions have to be cut with a plastic knife for fear of someone cutting themselves!
As if we didn’t know it, the world truly has gone mad with the epicentre seemingly right smack bang in the centre of the UK – but were things that much different years ago? Sure, we never had the health and safety police we have today and we were less inclined to complain and litigate at the drop of a hat – but come on, mayoral flags, celebratory hats being flung in the air and swimming ring bacteria! Have you ever heard such nonsense? Just come and live in England and you’ll find out just how oppressive, stultifying, CCTVd and weird this place really is. 
For all the beautiful green and pleasant land we are renowned for, the warm beer, the history, the legendary cricket matches fought on picturesque village greens, there are overpaid, officious idiots making rules that make this United Kingdom of ours a disjointed, unfair, unjust and disunited land of stupid rules and regulations that puts good people off what they do, generating a sub-class that will, in time, take over the asylum along with all the other ne’er do wells!
There is no easy solution as the mould has been cast long ago with the first slip and trip claim made against a council and the first industrial injury claim. Now the issue of H&S has become endemic to the point that numerous adverts telling us how to make a claim if we hurt ourselves can be seen on every channel. How the British have declined as a nation with this health and safety madness. I thank you!
Barry Cashin - Journalist, Columnist, Life Lover 
