Health police – just try to apply some common sense

Everyone knows by now that, fearing the sort of spontaneous combustion that used to be restricted to the hay lofts of farmers who’d had a bad spud or tom season and whose turn it was to give the Jersey Mutual a caning, the powers that be ordered Neville Ahier to remove a tarpaulin covering his ‘two hooks and a heart’ stall on Gorey Pier because it was deemed to be a fire hazard.

Well of course it was a fire hazard – most things are in certain circumstances if idiots are playing with matches nearby.

I dare say the cars that were parked the day before on the pier were a fire hazard too, given the amount of highly inflammable fuel they carry, but you don’t see the jobsworths ordering their removal, do you?

I actually can’t put this stupidity any better than did June Beslievre, who observed that no one seemed to worry about Nev getting skin cancer, and who asked whether the Fire Service could perhaps demonstrate how a tarpaulin catches fire when it is ten feet in the air. As she said, a couple of buckets of water on site would have solved the problem on the day.

The problem with that, of course, is that it’s too easy, too sensible; it displays far too much practical common sense and of course it does nothing at all for the continued employment – at salaries which match ranks and titles – of our already prohibitively expensive hired help.

I made mention of Terry McDonald and his fireworks deliberately when writing about Gorey Fete, because Herself and I were among the hundreds if not thousands who enjoyed that event’s tremendous firework display that evening.

It’s ironic, to say the very least, that Terry McDonald was all but ruined financially because the tree-huggers put the fear of prosecution (was it breaches of international environmental law?) up so many people, yet I am able to sit in relative comfort on a sea wall and watch a presumably officially sanctioned display which, in the words of someone who has seen scores of them, was probably the biggest and the best yet. This small rock can’t half be hypocritical when it puts its mind to it.

As a topical footnote to the Honest Nev tale, I saw in or near La Gazette towards the back of this newspaper an official notice announcing a couple of vacancies on the Jersey Safety Council – a body set up to ‘promote occupational health and safety in the Island’ which works closely with the health and safety inspectorate.

I’ve no doubt that I could talk for the proverbial fortnight – for the most part taking the mickey – about the Elf ‘n’ Safety mob, but if I did I would be making the same mistake as many others do in thinking that the more idiotic so-called rulings were in fact products of bodies like the health and safety inspectorate, when the probability was that it was some jobsworth terrified of making a decision allowing someone to do something in case there was an accident.

Instead, I will urge any public-spirited resident who believes he or she has something to offer in relation to health and safety issues to look at the advertisement and consider volunteering. I am tempted to suggest that a bit of common sense is an essential requirement, but let’s leave it as it is, shall we?

FOR the life of me I can’t remember the details, and Herself, in one of her ‘let’s get rid of all this clutter and stuff’ moods, has thrown out the newspaper, but did anyone else raise an eyebrow or three after reading the report of the Youth Court hearing in which a 17-year-old had his licence suspended for a string of quite appalling driving offences?

I am not going to criticise anything about the prosecution, the court hearing (as reported) or indeed the sentence. What I would like to know is why this driver, who is clearly a danger to other road users because his licence was suspended, is not able to be identified because he is under 18.

Had I committed those offences, my name, age and probably part of my address at least would have been published and possibly broadcast. Yet this miscreant, who can vote, hold a driving licence, marry, work for a living, have sexual relations with anyone he chooses and enjoy a host of other ‘rights’ that I can’t even think of, is all but guaranteed anonymity when he breaks the law.

Given the way that lot in the Big House have bowed to pinko liberal pressure in giving young people these ‘rights’, might I suggest that efforts be made to redress the balance just a little and teach them that responsibilities go hand in glove with rights?

When in the 1960s the Children Law was first enacted, the media were banned from identifying any person under 21 involved in court proceedings. That age was later lowered to 17, yet for some mysterious reason it was later raised to the present 18.

What’s wrong with the simple rule that if you’re old enough to drive and commit motoring offences then you’re old enough to be named and, hopefully, shamed?

AND finally … Herself and I got the bus to the metropolis last week, on the very day that the drivers were supposed to be starting their strike. The mood was good-humoured, to say the least, and this was as much to do with the driver’s friendliness as it was anything else, it’s nice to report.