Subverting Health and Safety Rules

This is an honest plea on behalf of sanity and those lovers of simple fun.  It offers sensible ways in which to beat the misery-guts who tell us what is healthy and safe “for our own good.”  These grumps and groaners erode our freedom of choice.  They can be found at every turn, squeezing the joys and pleasures out of almost everything, under pain of, well, pain, or even death.  Oh no!

Today, I gave a toddler 6 jelly babies with no ill effects, save for a slight tantrum because more were not forthcoming.  So I gave him 3 more, which he put in his mouth, all at once.  “Whew – narrow escape there,” say the Health and Safety brigade, “He could have choked, or possibly suffered a sugar rush that sent him reeling round the room  and crashing into a table.  Head injuries, ambulance and stitches for sure.”

I also let a seven year old walk through a supermarket, out onto a busy high street to post a letter  – all by herself.  “No.  She could have been abducted, molested, lost and terrified, how dare you call yourself a caring person?  Notify social services, report this person for child neglect.”  And so they go on,  these harbingers of death, destruction and guilt.

I intend to flout the Health and Safety police at every opportunity.  First job is to hang out of the upstairs windows while cleaning the frames, without the use of a safety harness, so there.  Because I hate my big exercise ball, I am going to let my grandchildren bounce on it and fling themselves all over the place.  My hope is that it will either burst or deflate and nobody will panic.

When I get the chance, I am going to smuggle a few skipping ropes into the junior school playground, because they are forbidden there.  Why?  On Health and Safety grounds, based on one incident where a child was accidentally slapped by an over-enthusiastic skipper’s rope, that’s why!    According to the misery-guts, the risks of seven year olds strangling each other and poking eyes out with skipping ropes are too high for these items to be allowed.  I can think of lots more transgressions, which I hope to share at a later  date.  I urge you to think up some of your own and act upon them,  letting fun and common sense prevail.  But hey, be careful out there.