The madness of health and safety

In the last week it has been reported that a school in Edinburgh had to employ a tradesman to hang children's pictures at a cost of £350.

Now we are told that a group of parents who volunteered to paint their childrens classroom walls cannot do so because of so called health and safety rules.

Both cases are simply bonkers.

The idiots who have interpreted the rules in these ways are frankly not fit to occupy any position of responsibility or authority.

In the first case, I have to ask why the school janitor couldn't do this? Any reason behind this clearly has nothing to do with health and safety, it is down to the stupidity of contracts entered into under the Labour Governments PFI arrangements. Arrangements which were never supposed to be used for this kind of contract and has exposed those involved in drafting them as incompetent, at best.

In the second case, I'd like to see these so called best practise guidelines, because they cannot say that an ordinary volunteer cannot do something as basic as painting a wall.

In any case, what are they worried about? A volunteer is by definition offering their services voluntarily. Presumably those people understand the risks involved. There is not a court in the world that would uphold a claim by a volunteer against the education department where someone volunteered to help and through misadventure was injured (pot of paint falling over? Slipping off a ladder?)

I think it's time that we dealt with the jobsworths in the education department. Get rid of them and allow common sense to take over again.