CHRISTMAS CHEER

Young children of Arthur Bugler School (Stanford-le-Hope, Essex) spent a long time rehearsing for an appearance in the Corringham Winter Festival. Then they had to pull out because their Christmas carols did not, in the view of the event's organizer, "dovetail" with the festival's theme. Carols are too religious.

At Southwold in Suffolk people have been dashing into the sea on Christmas Day often in fancy dress. Last year £8000 was raised for charity. This year nothing because the Health and Safety wallahs have decided it's too dangerous. The heavy costumes might pull people into the icy depths where giant squid are lying in wait to devour them. Of course it's very cold and these are adults so I would imagine they're not going to swim far out to sea or hang around too long. And of course they're having fun and helping others. Gordon Brown and his Presbyterian friends can't have that.

And Stephen Coulter has ordered his Dorset congregation not to sing the well-known carol "Little Town of Bethlehem" because the iamge it evokes is different from the political situation of present-day Bethlehem. I have some sympathy for this but can't help feeling it's a little over the top. Some of these well-known hymns and carols are an important part of what binds people to the Church.

JEWELLERY IN SCHOOLS

Recent press reports say that Kioni Lansbury, a 12-year-old girl, has been ordered by her school not to wear a "purity" ring — which she says she wears because she favours sexual abstinence. The school in question is The King's School at Ottery St Mary in Devon.
Well sexual abstinence is not a bad thing for a 12-year-old to believe in. And I see no reason why schools should not forbid pupils to wear jewellery. After all when I was a pupil over 50 years ago I was expected to wear a funny cap on the journey to and from school — to be doffed if I met a teacher. And as recently as the mid-1990s I worked in a school that had problems with girls' uniforms. The sixth-form girls were allowed to wear any appropriate dress in lieu of the school uniform that younger pupils were expected to wear. Needless to say some pushed the boundaries and wore things totally ridiculous in a school/work context such as miniscule skirts or pretty dresses more suitable for a night-club. As the appropriate/inappropriate boundary is rather indistinct and hard to enforce it was pointed out that it would simpler to go back to an "everyone wears uniform" rule. In the same way a rule forbidding jewellery altogether stops those who might decide to wear tiaras or earings dangling 5 inches below their ears.
But what annoyed me about this school was the reason they gave. The head teacher is quoted as saying "Kioni cannot wear the ring because it would be extremely dangerous in PE, technology, or science lessons" (usually this argument is also applied to cookery classes). Really? If schools are such a dangerous environment perhaps all pupils should be forced to wear hard hats and yellow jackets. This is the Health and Safety Brigade at work again. I have some knowledge of school science teaching and I know that many female science teachers do not remove their rings or other jewellery on entering the laboratory. And after a spell of supply teaching I can say the same of cookery teachers. The fact is that this school does not want female pupils to wear jewellery and are seeking to justify that attitude with a totally spurious reason. I'm surprised they haven't found a reason connected to global warming which is another phenomenom used to justify all sorts of things.

HEALTH AND SAFETY TALIBAN

The boss of West Yorkshire Police has raised a few hackles by references to the Health and Safety Taliban. He believes that H and S concerns can make it easier for police to do nothing in a crisis. Talking about the recent Menezes case when the Metropolitan force were prosecuted for H and S offences he described the trial as "a triumph for health and safety, a lucrative new territory for lawyers, and a disaster for common sense". He suggests that the armchair H and S Taliban are creating doubt in situation where there was once certainty.
Lisa Fowlie, one of the Taliban leaders (actually President of the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health), claims they are making the country a safer place.
The rest of us can only be thankful that West Yorkshire have a man of sense at the helm.

POLICE AND HEALTH and SAFETY

The drowning of Jordan Lyon has stirred up quite a lot of comment, much of it uncomplimentary to the PCSOs involved. Greater Manchester police continue to insist that for reasons of Health and Safety the PCSOs took the right action in not entering the water as they are not trained for it. Apparently this applies to many real policemen as well. Some letters to the press have pointed out that they had a duty as human beings. It's also only fair to say that accounts of what happened seem rather vague at times but it appears that by the time the PCSOs arrived on the scene that Jordan was already under water. A Sergeant Craig Lippitt who stripped off and dived in had also not been trained in water rescue. Greater Manchester say they will not discipline him for this breach of discipline so he's better off than Tam Brown, a firefighter I referred to in previous post, who was reprimanded after rescuing a woman from the Tay. I suspect that Sergeant Lippitt is one of many thousands of decent officers who want to get on with doing the job like the blogger David Copperfield. David Copperfield has recently "come out" and given his real name. He's off to police Canada. I wish him the best in his future life but he's the sort of officer we can ill afford to lose.