CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
 |  Subject: Proudly via AnCaps: A risk-free life? No thanks  Sun Apr 22, 2012 6:35 am | |
| The more we give in to the stupid rules 'saving us from ourselves', the more we lose our freedom
The giant sandcastle at Weymouth adorned with the Olympic rings and flags built to celebrate 100 days to go to the 2012 London Olympic Games has been demolished.
Here's a tricky story for people who like to speak their minds in pubs. A plan to sail the Olympic torch up the Thames, aboard a perfect replica of a Greek trireme manned by 170 British rowers, has been scuppered due to fears over health and safety. According to the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog), there'd be too much risk of overcrowding on the waterfront. In other words, it would be too interesting.
"There was also discussion about people throwing themselves off bridges," said a Locog source, though whether this would be in excitement, protest or a mere sense of theatre among this summer's suicidal, he didn't specify.
Meanwhile, in Dorset, a giant, Olympic-themed sandcastle, built on Weymouth beach at a cost of £5,000 to Locog, has been dismantled "as a safety precaution" for fear it might topple over and engulf a child.
Where does this leave the pint-waving tub-thumper, the opinionated taxi driver, the angry local radio DJ – and, indeed, the kneejerk newspaper columnist? On the one hand: gnarr, gnash, "elf & safety", political correctness, world gone mad, treated like idiots, can't do anything any more. On the other hand: bloody Olympic celebrations, load of nonsense, nothing to do with sport, can't afford it, this ain't China, bound to be washout, low-rent London, rainy track events, verrucas in the pool.
Who does White Van Man want to win in a battle between those who would lock us all in padded rooms to avoid any modicum of physical risk and those who would spend every last penny of the national funds we don't have on unnecessary sideshows, baffling circus acts and a massive jelly in the shape of a London bus from which the last surviving members of Pan's People leap waving javelins with the Queen's face on them?
Well, I know where I stand. Whether it's playing a boys' card game, drinking after 11pm or watching a weird Greek boat sail through the London mud, I've never really known I wanted to do anything until somebody told me I couldn't. As soon as I hear: "That's not allowed", my eyes narrow, my little muscles flex and it's ALL I WANT IN THE WORLD.
This, I appreciate, makes me a contrarian. But we all bridle at being told what we can and can't do; swallowing that annoyance, rather than risk "being difficult", might threaten a different sort of health and safety entirely.
Last week, I stayed at a hotel in Nottingham. It has lovely old Georgian windows overlooking a church, but they only open about three inches due to a very modern metal catch screwed into the side. I asked for this to be unscrewed, so that I could enjoy some fresh air and cool the room.
"Too dangerous," said the lady on reception. "Guests might fall out."
"I won't fall out," I promised. "I'm not five."
"Sorry," said the lady. "It's illegal to open windows further than that on higher floors."
"It isn't illegal," I said. "There aren't laws about opening windows. Yet."
"It is illegal," she insisted. There's employee loyalty for you: making no distinction between the company's health and safety policy and national law.
After a lot of hassle and further attempts, I finally found a member of staff who was prepared to open the window. I won't name them; their excellent attitude to customer relations makes them worthy of promotion, but the company might feel differently and they could get into trouble.
I suspect that many hotel guests have made the same request and accepted the refusal without demur. It's only a hotel window, after all. But it is, surely, in a continuum with the new world of "ID checks", body scanners at railway stations, British policemen carrying guns on the street and toothpaste banned from airport hand luggage, all on the grounds of protecting us from terrorism. These are rules made in fear: the hotel window is at one end of a wedge and martial law is at the other. (Big sandcastles are probably somewhere in the middle.)
Last week, certain key officers at police stations in Lincolnshire began wearing a hybrid uniform to indicate that they are "partnership staff". In other words, they are private security officers, in the employ of security giant G4S and subcontracted by the police force.
Five hundred and fifty Lincolnshire police have shifted out of the public sector and into this private employment. In the future, perhaps the "partnership staff" will never have been policemen at all. But they will have the power to tell us what we may and may not freely do, under the great umbrella of "public safety".
Fail to step up when a jobsworth forbids you from opening a window and you may soon find that a stranger in a sinister "hybrid uniform" is telling you that you can't leave your house without a passport. Both will explain that it's for your own safety. Both are assuming authority over you, without asking in advance whether you're happy to opt into this hierarchy – or showing you its invisible small print.
It is worth sweating the small stuff. We must refuse to be cowed by a dangerous sandcastle. Think of the wider health and safety of human relations, of democracy, and of life itself: its daily shrinkage, in a climate of fear.
We all have to die. However sternly officials dictate the way you must live in order to avoid falling out of a window or being blown up in a theoretical terrorist attack, they can't cure the cancer or the heart disease that'll get you anyway. The imminence and ubiquity of death should make us braver and more determined, not less.
If you meet your end leaping joyfully into the Thames at the sight of a flaming replica trireme: well, at least you lived first.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/22/victoria-coren-health-and-safety
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