'Elf and safety

[Ferru123]

Charity shop worker drowned in lake just 3ft deep after firemen refused to wade in due to health and safety rules

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1n3fnlriW

Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?

Jeff

[LeTiss 4pm]

It's a joke isn't it

We would never win another world war, we are run by a bunch of jellybacks. My grandad always told me, about how he and a fellow mechanic were repairing a fire engine during the Southampton blitz. His ears were ringing with the huge explosions and the sky had an orange glow with all the fires

That would never happen now. He'd have to wait for some goofy idiot to conduct a risk assessment

[nicrag9]

Always remember that this is in the Daily Mail, which is notorious among real journalists for twisting stories to fit their elf and safety campaign and similar. The basic story is often somewhat slightly based on reality, but the facts are then significantly twisted. My favourite was a few years ago when they ran a story that a kindergarten was teaching the kids, bah bah white sheep, and bah bah fluffy sheep, because of political correctness gone mad. The Daily Mail never bothered to speak to the school, but others did. The real story was that they had taught the original bah bah black sheep rhyme to the kids, and were then using something the kids knew to teach them new colour and texture words. Nothing to do with political correctness, just competent teaching, but even after this was pointed out, the mail never ran a correction. I work with old documents, and it is interesting to see how people were killed and crippled in the past, up until quite recently. That is not to say that things have not gone too far the other way, because they often have, but we need to be careful about taking it back too far the other way.

Nic

[Ferru123]

Hi Nic

I agree that the Daily Mail has a tendancy to distort stories (ditto the Express, with their constant nonsense about soaring house prices!).

You might like this song about the Mail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI

Jeff

[nicrag9]

and have you seen this website
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/
which takes a few of the day's stories and puts a wonderful tabloid slant on them. It is very politically incorrect, and often extremely funny. I think it is by the same people who do Viz, so you can see how tasteless it will be.

[Euler]

I was at a train station once when a women next to me fainted and fell on the railway lines. She had fallen head first and was bleeding from the head. The most amazing thing was that nobody helped. I instinctively jumped onto the tracks to try and remove her, but everybody else just stared at us. I had to shout at the commuters to give me a hand.

I then pressed the station tannoy only to be told they couldn't call for help so I got somebody to phone 999 while I put this women in the recovery position. I then ran over the road to the Tesco store to tannoy to see if there was a doctor or nurse in the store, remarkably there was. She gave me her car keys and asked me to put away her shopping and look after her son while she tended to the women. Very trusting, but then she was a nurse!

The thing I remember most about the whole incident was how difficult it was to get people to help. I don't think it was because they didn't want to, but they were afraid to. I think the myth of getting sued is embedded in culture now, whether it is real on not.

I'd happily do the same again, even if there was some bullshit H&S issue stopping me.

[hgodden]

Interestingly as a comparison Peter I witnessed something very similar in Spain...

I'd just hopped onto a tube in Barcelona whe4n suddenly there were screams (and shouts in Catalan which I didn't understand) from people inside the train and on the platform. This was in the early 2000s so my instant reaction was to jump straight off the train incase it had something to do with terrorism lol.

Anyway it turned out that a man had somehow managed to get himself stuck on the platform, from where I was standing it looked as if he had got himself trapped in a manhole. Fortunately the people on the platform had managed to alert the driver of the train that was about to run him over in time and the train stopped within about 10 metres or so of him. But as soon as the train had stopped 3 men jumped onto the tracks to help the man. I often wondered if it would be the same over here.

There's a famous study in psychology where they staged a mock 'rape' in an alleyway just yards from a busy street with many people going by. Surprisingly very, very few people came to help the woman even though they could hear her cries for help. They call it Bystander Apathy and aparantly it's quite common in such situations, which is pretty surprising really for obvious reasons

[CaerMyrddin]

When I was at the Uni, we studied fire safety in buildings and one of the most relevant aspects was how people behave in this situation.

The english were the best in this, they were able to keep calmer than most. On the other hand, there was a small question were people were asked if they were willing to enter a building in flames to rescue a baby and in this particular, the english were the less willing to risk their lives.

Tbh, I don't think it has anything to do with law suits, but a way of facing life. Don't take it as a bad thing though, for instance when you faced the subway bomb attack, everything was back in track quickly. If it was here, well, We'd still be dealing with the trauma and discussing if we should reopen the subway...

[Ferru123]

Bus driver orders everyone off after someone spills
their coffee - http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... offee.html

[Ferru123]

Health and safety inspectors to charge £256 an hour to tell companies what they're doing wrong - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/your ... wrong.html

Good work if you can get it...

Jeff