The Funny Game Of Rules and Regulations

Aren’t the olden days a funny thing? Something that it seems no one has ever lived in, as everyone who lived whenever the “good old days” were had someone then talking about their “good old days”. When were they exactly? Who knows!

One thing I always notice about people talking about “the good old days” is that there is a real case of the rose-tinted glasses. Have you ever noticed that when someone is on a nostalgia trip, maybe with a couple of pints just to help them on their way, that it was always some kind of golden age, where the worst thing to expect was a spot of scrumping, then being chased by a ruddy faced officer called Plod. “Oh, the ‘50s were a grand time” we’re told. Funny how no one reminisces about the infant mortality rate being 29.2, as opposed to 6.9 in 2003 eh?

One thing that they didn’t have back then, however, was ‘Elf and safety. Mr And Safety is apparently one of Santa’s Elves who, when told he could not have a new bike, decided to take it out on everyone in the country with rules and regulations that seem to have been plucked out of the air! Or so the rumour goes anyway.

Oh, how the ‘Elf has become a byword for going over the top, a sort of OCD for the safety conscious. Take my offices for example; if someone wants to pop out for a smoke (not that I smoke, it’s not healthy or safe) they cannot just stand outside the door on the steps, they must walk all the 10 metres to the gates and stand on the pavement outside. This, you see, is because the ‘Elf has said that cars and people must be separated, because a car is clearly going to drive up the steps at 5MPH and run them down. Therefore they must stand on the pavement. By the road. Where the cars go past at 30MPH. Hmmm…

Mr ‘Elf can take it too far sometimes. I’m aware that I would be a tad puzzled at the prospect of rewiring my whole house, therefore I will pay Mr Blacskewitsz from Krakow to do it for me. Do I really need a rule to back this up? Do I really need to get a certificate to show that I am aware I cannot do this?

So that poses a question. Do we really need the ‘Elf?

The simple answer is… YES!!! I can whinge all day about having to get a piece of paper from a Polish sparky, but without the ‘Elf we’d be back in the days when the equipment in the workplace regularly took peoples arms off, or simply walking into the factory gave everyone cancer, as the asbestos the Boss installed was cheaper than the healthier fire-retardant. Like “the good old days” it’s easy to decry todays silly rules and fantasize about a time and a place without them, but we forget very quickly why they were brought in for us in the first place. Because we cannot sit there and allow anyone to be crippled unnecessarily just so we can smoke on the steps.

‘Elf, come back! All is forgiven!

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