HealthandSafety

Snow clearing is not something we are wonderful at in the UK. We don't seem built to withstand more than an inch of the white stuff, but that's probably because we don't get much snow, so we don't get to practice.

This week we had between half a foot and one foot of snow in great areas of the country, and for one day our infrastructure was brought to pretty much of a standstill. Personally it doesn't unhinge me that this happens once every twenty years or so, but the way the commentators and pundits are having a hissy fit you would think we had just experienced the Apocalypse!

Ease up everyone, it snowed, we will clear it up in a day or so and we will survive, I promise.

Taking up this theme it seems as though anything that happens which is remotely negative is someone else's fault. We have truly become imbecilic if we expect someone else to take care of our every need. I know how insidious this is by comparison. I went to Spain a year or so back and was walking down a pavement (sidewalk) and noticing it was uneven turned to my companions and said, "pavements like these wouldn't be allowed in England!" I had caught the dreaded disease of "health and safety!"

This ailment is brought about by groups of little civil servants who exist to eliminate all risk from our lives. It resulted yesterday, when it snowed, with their not allowing any buses to run in London. They did this and stopped most of the trains and underground on the basis that it could be dangerous, not that anything bad had happened, but that it could, therefore it must be stopped from happening.

Of course if we were truly to eliminate risk we would never do anything and then nothing bad could happen, but the unfortunate truth is that nothing good could happen either.

If Health and Safety had been in charge of the financial sector of our economy there is no chance that we could have fallen into the abyss in which we presently find ourselves. However it is equally true that we would never have enjoyed any prosperity prior to the problems.

It is not the natural habitat of mankind to live risk free and never can be. There are bad things and bad people out there who mean us harm, and we'd better be a little toughened up or we won't survive the harsh realities that are sure to find us. Otherwise we will be like the Native American tribes who led a life free of our germs and diseases until we arrived and shared ours with them. The result was the decimation and subjugation of entire civilizations.

We need to be responsible members of our society, for our own benefit and that of each other. Government cannot and must not try to legislate or micro manage every aspect of our lives when the way we behave and treat one another is our own responsibility.