Health and Safety

[david and julie]

I was listening to the local BBC news tonight and an article came on about taxi drivers.

Since 1949 Manchester taxi drivers have done a free annual run to Blackpool for local disabled kids. They dress the cabs(around a 100 or so) up with baloons and bunting etc, local business donate and people line the route to cheer and wave. The cabbies had a commitee to arrange everything for free including their time and fuel etc, just to give the kids a day out.

The commitee have had to disband this year and donate any surplus funds to charity. The younger drivers are not interested anymore because they are now expected to provide extra insurance, risk assessments and one volunteer per kid who must also have a criminal reference check.

Saford and Trafford used to do similar but have stopped too.

Health and Safety is OK but sometime it does seem OTT.

 

[Panjandrum]

Groan.
There's a child protection theme in there too.
Once upon a time people who worked with kids were able to do sensible things like leave them home or wait with them until they were collected. You can't do that on your own anymore. I guess I am not complaining about the need to protect kids, and in bemoaning the passing of an apparent age of innocence I am ignoring the abuse that actually DID happen in the past. But it is depressing - and frightening, when I think of the way that things I took for granted 20 years ago would be considered unacceptable today.

 

[AdamW]

Once when I was 10 my schoolteacher gave me a lift home, she just lived round the corner from us. No teacher would dare do that now because of the risk of allegations.

My parents and brother (being in teaching), my sister and myself (having done some schools outreach stuff) all have a "free of paedotivity" certificate... a sign of the times? Even so, it is only a very loose line of defence: the certificate proves I'm not on the sex offenders register, but seeing as so many sex offences go unreported every year (and so many people make false allegations), I could be a flasher, a cottager, and a tube-train brusher-upper, not to mention a whole host of other things, and still be "safe" to work with children.

Just like to point out I'm none of those things: It's too cold to be a flasher, not really interested in sex in public toilets and I'm far too lazy to stand up on the tube.