The problem is that the whole industry in risk aversion has spun out of perspective

Even the course of the descent from the west avoided any blood-pressure pumping glimpse of the incinerator, while St Helier projected a refreshingly ‘relaxed’ comparison to the glitz of a pre-London Christmas.

Having emerged from a convivial pre-flight lunch with a fellow transport ‘anorak’ who’d been lamenting the huge sums that London in particular had been forced to spend on renewing its bus fleet to meet ‘safety’ requirements on low floor/low step entry, only to find the initiative cancelled out by thoughtless motorists who park at bus stops and prevent drivers from tucking their buses against the curbs anyway. No such problems on our patch, I quietly confided.

Traditionally, we’ve maintained a robust sense of local realism and distaste for the absurd, which has shielded us from the excesses of the ‘elf and safety’ brigade whose activities achieve little more than to hobble any initiative or enjoyment.

For example, I couldn’t imagine anyone from TTS being detailed to strip the horse-chestnut trees in the Royal Square to deter youngsters from gathering autumn conkers, as has befallen the branches of many similar council-owned trees in the UK. Nor, to my knowledge, had local supermarkets removed piglets from toy farm displays in order to avoid offending Jewish or Muslim shoppers, or had parents been taken to court for not escorting their prodigy from homestead to school gate.

Silly me. Leafing through back copies of the JEP, I found the curse of the risk-averse had indeed made it across the moat. It was particularly ironic that the target was the honorary police stall at the JEP Homelife exhibition, a ‘can-do’ body of folk renowned for their common sense and used to cutting through bureaucracy and coming up with inventive solutions to unique local problems.

Rendering useless the free pencils they’d been handing out by mutilating the business end for fear the points could inflict injury must have added a particular insult. Nobody, presumably, took account of the potential risks from the need to use blades or sharpeners to resurrect them – or have those also been consigned to the ‘never to be touched again’ museum?

I know it’s one of those ‘here we go again’ subjects, but like the intrusion of Google into our streets and driveways, the advance of the self-serving safety crusaders is something we’ve collectively huffed and puffed about, but then rolled over and acquiesced to. Of course safety is a paramount consideration in performing any activity. But, self-preservation is a natural instinct. Darwin may not have seen fit to write it into On the Origin of Species because those flouting it simply didn’t survive.

The problem is that the whole industry in risk aversion has spun out of perspective. There is every benefit in being warned if a pathway is subject to the possibility of rockfalls, but do we really need to be told that attempting to open the door on a moving tube train is ‘dangerous’? I suppose it’s only reasonable to take account of the gap between what is generally considered sensible and how frequently individuals flout both natural and legal boundaries.

But the ‘law’ can be used with dulling effect. In fact, it’s not the ‘real’ law at all. It’s often the invention of some petty council official, usurping powers enshrined in a pretty sensible legal framework – namely, the Health and Safety at Work legislation, which since 1974 has served to protect employees from some pretty dangerous practices – and clamping down on minor activities containing minimal risk, simply to ensure no maligned individual will fabricate a compensation claim.

Not surprisingly, the only individuals capable of envisaging a problem where none exists are the misery tsars themselves. I have no doubt the dubious ‘sport’ of rolling down grassy hills in pursuit of large cheeses could cause damage to skin and bone, and I have little sympathy for inebriated students who come to grief when ‘ceremonially’ jumping into freezing river water in the early hours. But the antics of a council killjoy, with clipboard and high-visibility jacket, who tried to stop an annual charity bike-ride, not for fear of hazardous riding, but because, according to his sound meter, their PA system was too loud, beggars belief.

How refreshing, then, to hear Tory grandee and former policy adviser Lord Young promoting a root-and-branch sweep-out of the ‘national neurosis’ which, he contends, has allowed ‘petty tyrants to flourish’. Despite his politically embarrassing gaffe that, even in recession, ‘most Britons have never had it so good’, the House of Lords learned last Thursday that the government broadly supports his views.

His recipe includes cracking down on personal injury advertising which promotes a knee-jerk compensation culture, simplifying consent forms for educational trips abroad, slashing ‘red-tape’ surrounding the holding of community events, insisting on supervised risk assessment training for officials and threatening councils with fines for wrongly cancelling events on a spurious health and safety pretext.

So that’s sorted. Except . . . lovers of a traditional Friday fish and chip supper might yet be feeling the pinch. Fortified by a patronising zeal to keep the nation healthy, the local council in Grimsby has apparently persuaded chippies to replace their 17-hole salt shakers with new ones pierced with just five holes in order to reduce customers’ salt intake – you understand the logic, I’m sure. I can’t help believing that like those disadvantaged would-be scribblers at the Homelife exhibition, someone’s still missing the point.