[Malcolm Armsteen]

Makes perfect sense. Platell, Vine, Moir etc. They all have their own personal struggles/difficulties/insecurities in life but unlike most people they deal with it by attacking, sneering and name calling to make themselves feel better. That's their way of dealing with it and that's what sets them apart as utter cunts.

We call them bullies in other contexts.

[Andy McDandy]

Fits the overall narrative. Women as trivial, petty, irrational, obsessed with details such as hair and shoes. For a woman to be strong, she has to compete with men on their terms rather than her own.

Short version: men who hate women.

[satnav]

Platell showing her usual lack of class by turning an obituary into a pointless dig at health and safety.

A Mountain of Courage

A sad farewell to Doug Scott, 79, who died this week, the first Englishman to conquer the most dangerous south-west face of Everest.

At a time when when elf ’n’ safety jobsworths run riot, we should celebrate the courage of a man who, after breaking both his legs ascending The Ogre in Pakistan, crawled on his knees through a snow storm to base camp and championed our spirit of adventure.

My rather pathetic salute to him was to watch The Sound Of Music’s Climb Ev’ry Mountain . . .

Any climber makes it to the age of 79 clearly took health and safety quite serious. Scott like many climbers of his generation were instrumental in making climbing and mountaineering as safe as it could be he helped to design and make a lot of pioneering climbing equipment and sat on many bodies that focussed on the safety of climbers.

[The Rationalist]

The same frigging jobsworth's who put in the halo that saved Romain Grosjean's life in Bahrain. Health and Safety gone mad! Will be the first in the queue to disable her airbag!

[MisterMuncher]

Platell showing her usual lack of class by turning an obituary into a pointless dig at health and safety.

A Mountain of Courage

A sad farewell to Doug Scott, 79, who died this week, the first Englishman to conquer the most dangerous south-west face of Everest.

At a time when when elf ’n’ safety jobsworths run riot, we should celebrate the courage of a man who, after breaking both his legs ascending The Ogre in Pakistan, crawled on his knees through a snow storm to base camp and championed our spirit of adventure.

My rather pathetic salute to him was to watch The Sound Of Music’s Climb Ev’ry Mountain . . .

Any climber makes it to the age of 79 clearly took health and safety quite serious. Scott like many climbers of his generation were instrumental in making climbing and mountaineering as safe as it could be he helped to design and make a lot of pioneering climbing equipment and sat on many bodies that focussed on the safety of climbers.

It's just reflexive silliness at this point. Anyone engaged in an activity that appears risky must be against health and safety in everyday life, and damn any kind of factual logic to the contrary.

Then again, they all hate cyclists on the roads, and any kind of extreme sport that emerged past 1950...

[youngian]

and any kind of extreme sport that emerged past 1950...

As someone who carries a stick walking in the Fenlands to prevent ankle twisting, I hear you. Ratcheting up risk should come with a good reason like saving children from a burning building. A lot of Kiwis seemed to be involved in this foolishness (met one who tightroped between hot air balloons). I can only assume there’s eff all else to do in New Zealand.

[Andy McDandy]

There's always a whiff of reverse ageism, a "never did me any harm"/"YOLO" attitude. Older person did dangerous thing in youth - character forming. Does dangerous thing today - no H&S guy is going to tell this old geezer what to do.

Bunch of kids/anyone younger/browner than the target audience does a similar thing - how irresponsible, not a care in the world those kids, waste of mountain rescue time, abandon them up there next time, bloody idiots, what were a group of them doing white water rafting anyway, eh?

[Oblomov]

I'm a lowly cog in the H&S process but it's willful and malevolent misunderstanding from the righter side of the fourth estate when they opine about my field like this.

The majority of health & safety work (or least the kind I do) is identifying who is a duty holder and what responsibilities they have as per various legislative acts. It's a largely advisory practice where we can do as I've just mentioned but also identify risks to people's health and/or safety and suggest control measures to mitigate this within reason. It's a company's prerogative to ignore this advice but when (not if) an accident occurs and someone needlessly comes into (possibly life-altering or ending) harm, said company will not have an enjoyable time in the dock trying to justify saving a few quid on control measures as adequate excuse to not implement proper protection protocols or policies.

So it's actually a bit of tangled web of legal back-and-forth, not po-faced killjoys snatching conkers out of the hands of children or robbing them of the childhood delights of dunking a toaster in the bathtub

[Boiler]

I'm grateful for H&S noticing that the job I do exposes me to occupational asthma (colophony) and potential poisoning from toluene di-isocyanate and thus required screening for OA and fume extraction for the harmful toxins. Never mind the provision of emergency circuit breakers at benches and isolation transformers as appropriate.

Oh, and welcome back Obs.