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We all know stories of noble Knights on horseback who fought valiantly for King and Country in days of old. They are stuff of legends. We also know that if they existed today they would have lawsuits coming out of their ears from thieves and vagabonds whose arms they had severed and whose human rights they had violated. They would be phoning Claims Direct when they get injured in the battlefield and then sell their story to Hello Magazine. Their demise would ultimately come after being hounded by the paparazzi and chased into a tunnel in Paris...Today we live in a world of fear. Fear of getting sued. Fear of terrorism. Fear of global warming. Fear of falling foul of the three most hated words in the English dictionary: Health and Safety.
Now, I don’t like being told what I can and cannot do. I’m an adult and therefore capable of making decisions for myself. As a youngster I did some things that might be considered dangerous or stupid. For example, I once surfed down London Road in Rayleigh on a double bed. I spent an entire morning round a friend’s house when I was 13 jumping off the balcony of his parents’ house onto strategically placed mattresses. I have free-style climbed up a mountain in Tenerife with half a litre of water. As a small boy I used to slide down the stairs backwards just to wind my mum up. I used to spend my weekends jumping down enormous hills on a mountain bike and, although I occasionally got hurt, I never once died. I’ve done other things like scuba dive dozens of metres under the sea and jumped out of aeroplanes and have never been even slightly killed.
Without wanting to sound like a cardigan wearing pensioner, I’m sure things were different in my day. When I was a kid – and I’m only talking about the 80’s here – I’m sure there was less emphasis put on health and safety. A good example is at my local playground. There used to be great things in there like an enormous slide, a roundabout that actually went round at more than 2 mph and a sea-saw that, if you pushed hard enough, could actually catapult the other poor child into the hedge.
But the council took them down, probably because they were deemed too dangerous. They replaced them with rubbish. Not only that but they replaced the concrete base with some soft rubber matting. What the hell is that all about? What is wrong with concrete? I can tell you now, I never once fell off any of the climbing apparatus but if I ever did, I could assure you I would never do it again.
Surely this is the biggest problem with this heath and safety nanny state nonsense. People are being wrapped in cotton wool and are never being given the chance to learn things the hard way. As a result, we are seeing an influx of what I like to call pussies.
And it’s the pussies that are making these rules up. Often these are ridiculous things like Tescos being forced to remove a Christmas card that made a joke about ginger kids; people not being able to do electrical work in their own homes in case they electrocute themselves; censoring everything on TV because it might offend one person in the country; banning those big Mars Bars because they might make people fat; putting ridiculous signs up everywhere that do nothing but state the obvious.
Smoking is a classic example of this. Now, whilst I’m all in favour of banning smoking in public places because, as a non-smoker, I don’t like other people blowing poison into my lungs, I really think having signs on the packets that state smoking kills is just plain silly. How long will it be before the government start putting signs on beer saying “Warning. May cause copulation with fatties, mingers and gingers.”?
They spent years attempting to get smoking banned and, now they have succeeded in that quest, they have inevitably turned their attention on alcohol. All these scary adverts that have started appearing on the television and these annoying daily surveys on the news that conclude that drinking gives you cancer, polio, herpes and AIDS is just the beginning. Soon there will be huge signs on bottles of beer informing you that you will die if you drink it, the minimum drinking age will be increased to 50 and you will be deemed an alcoholic binge drinker if you consume more than half a pint a month.
The truth is the government don't want people to stop smoking or drinking because that’s where most of the tax is and, therefore, the economy's biggest benefactor. If they really wanted to stop us doing it they would make it illegal. It’s the same story with cars and petrol. All this nonsense about 4x4's destroying the world is of secondary importance to the money they earn from it.
On the subject of cars, speed advisory signs are another annoying nanny state invention. There are now signs all over country roads - where the speed limit is 60 - advising drivers to take certain corners at 40. If there is a speed limit why the hell should there then be an advisory? Most people are stupid and don’t know the difference. As a result the roads are now full of idiots, usually old people in Nissan Micras, convinced they have to drive the entire journey at 40.
Councils across the land have also started replacing 60 limits with 50. What the hell difference is that going to make? If you have a head on collision with an oncoming car, the combined speed is still 100mph – just 20 less than it would otherwise have been. It’s not going to improve your rate of survival one little bit.
So what I want to know is this: Why, when the pussies who make these rules spend billions of pounds a year of tax payers’ money on pointless health and safety changes, haven’t they focussed their efforts on banning that horrible thick plastic packaging that you can only get into if you’re prepared to lacerate your hands to pieces?