Stupid Security Awards now accepting nominations

In message , dated Tue, 22 Aug 2006, PeteS writes

... together with 'health and safety'. So much so that the British government has just issued a 'Don't be silly' instruction about it.

Is there a link to that ?

Graham

For a second I thought you meant robotics managers.

Graham

Yes, but the Ruh is world renowned for not being very good unless someone else writes it for them.

Tah

DNA

In message , dated Tue, 22 Aug

He sez: "No one wants a world where children, in fact anyone, is wrapped in cotton wool, prevented from taking any risks and scared of endeavour."

I fear way too many Americans want just that.

Thanks, Rich

Reminds me of that news story (CNN?) about soldiers in Iraq finding "Explosive IUD". Wow dude, now thats birth control !!!!

Luhan

Maybe they were talking about a bad tempered "Idiot Under Duress"?

However, the letter health and safety regulkations have force of law; government exhortations to apply it sensibly do not.

Paul Burke

No, but links to what happens if you DON'T take healtyh and safety too seriously. It really beats me why teachers do anything not strictly required by their contract.

"September 2003: Teacher Paul Ellis, 42, was jailed for 12 months for the manslaughter of a 10-year-old boy who drowned while on a school trip. Max Palmer was swept to his death in a river as his mother Patricia watched.

June 2002: Katherine Fish, 15, from Largs, died after a bus hired by Largs Academy overturned in Dijon, France. The driver, Mark Chisholm, from Edinburgh, was charged with manslaughter.

October 2000: A French court in Boulogne gave British teacher Mark Duckworth (pictured), from Leeds, a six-month suspended sentence after a girl in his care drowned while swimming during a school trip."

And that's leaving out the myriad claims of sexual misbehaviour against teachers on such trips, (some of which may be true).

Paul Burke

I doubt that preventing the boy from getting in the river was specifically required by contract, probably not even attempting the obviously dangerous rescue that the boys mother did not attempt.

Insufficient data to work with on causality.

Again insufficient data.

The whole lot of them look like miscarriages it eh system to me.

In message , dated Sat,

Very likely; we see a lot of incompetence in the legal system. Evidence not brought forward because its value is not recognized, or presented to the court badly. This may be what has prompted the official announcement on 'Don't be silly about safety'.

But teachers can be a pain to deal with, in my experience. They don't know how to talk to adults other than other teachers.

In article , John Woodgate wrote: [....]

Like others, teachers come in different shapes and sizes. My brother is a teacher and is quite able to talk to parents. He actually enjoys doing so. Early in his carreer, he worked for a "horror story" of a board in a "horror story" of a district. Now he is very happy to have a parent who actually wants to talk about what the kids are doing.

Some places, it has become a "us against them" situation with the "us" being the teachers and the "them" being the rest of the world. I think this is partly generated by the boards. In the distant past, the school board was made up of parents who cared enough to get involved. Some people were good and some were bad, but their motives were basically the same. Today the school board is often a political stepping stone towards higher office.