Pigs can be a swine for 'elf and safety!

If you have ever fed a shed load of pigs, like I have, you will know they can create quite a rumpus at feeding time. Pigs have something in common with health and safety experts. Both are highly strung, prone to sudden bouts of squealing, and when determined to go somewhere nothing much deters them.

The latest example of health and safety overkill is in the booklet "Farmwise - An Essential Guide to Health and Safety in Farming". It is bound to be a good read. Because there is a large amount of squealing at feeding time, this handy hint book suggests that mechanical hoppers are used and that farmers keep out at feeding time. They suggest farmers wear earmuffs to protect their eardrums from the noise. I never had a problem with pigs and their noises. What I did at breakfast time was to sneak in whilst the snoring was going on, gently place the grub in the troughs and then announce to the somnolent sows that "Breakfast is served!". They were never amused. It was very cruel cheating these pigs of adequate squealing time.

Yes, it's a racket. But it hardly goes on for long. I never worked in a shed full of 400, but then I'd suggest the Health and Safety Executive passed their concerns over to the RSPCA rather that looking like prize plonkers and colluding with farmers who are involved with factory farming.

This safety warning can hardly apply to pigs feeding in the open on a free range basis. Pigs only squeal when they are distressed or over-excited. A happy, stress-free pig grunts. There's nothing in that booklet about grunting.

Health, safety and stupidity

I'm all in favour of good health. I think safety is something we should all be aware of, but I am dismayed by the increasing level of stupidity that is infecting the powers-that-be in the world.

Good health must surely be a value that everyone strives for. Seeing little children starve in Sri Lanka because the Sinhalese majority has taken against the Tamil minority (racism exists all over the world!) is distressing indeed. There is no reason for malnutrition in the 21st century. Safety is something we should always be championing. It is totally wrong for a construction company, for example, to take short cuts with builders safety. It is wrong for drivers to take a cavalier attitude towards pedestrians. However, trying to judge whether the moon might land on a school full of children represents mind-boggling stupidity.

Captain Mainwaring was keen to judge Private Pike as a "stupid boy". But we have stupid people these days in positions of authority. They stupidly perceive of every possible scenario that danger can present. Stupidly they think we cannot walk in snow, stupidly they think we might fall off stepladders. Tree climbing, jumping, walking fast, all these things are looked at with a suspicious eye. Not because they care much for the person who may fall off a stepladder, but because they fear litigation by greedy people.

That's the nub of health and safety. Precious little to do with health or safety, rather it is fear fighting greed. Lawyers seeking to encourage banana skin dropping so they can pursuade a gullible "trippee" to sue whoever. The prize for monumental stupidity goes to the brain-dead occupants of the Health and Safety Office of the Bodleian Library. These morons deem the stepladders, used to obtain books from high shelves, present a risk to health and safety. Laurence Benson, the library's director of administration and finance, said, "The balcony has a low rail and we have been instructed by the health and safety office that this increases the risk. As part of the process the restriction on the use of ladders on the balcony have been introduced. The library would prefer to keep the books in their original historic location - where they have been safely consulted for 400 years prior to the instructions from the Health and Safety office." There we have it. Used safely for 400 years. Not one undergraduate has fallen off the ladders. So where it was perfectly acceptable in 1609 to go up the ladders, and ever since, in 2009 it isn't.

Now we find another fear-driven bit of nonsense. Schools favour replacing knotted school ties with clip-on ones. Some schools have raised concerns about ties catching fire in science lessons, getting trapped in technology equipment or ties getting caught when pupils were running. They even think pupils might want to strangle one another. All this nonsense is driven by fear. I had a perfectly good school tie I remember. I did science lessons and if the tie got in the way I used to place it over my shoulder or tuck it into my shirt. The good thing in the Sixties was we didn't have such stupidity surrounding us. Now children are growing up with teachers fearful of the slightest trip or fall. It used to be called mollycoddling.

I suggested to one teacher when we had the snow that the school wouldn't be producing any Arctic explorers. My remark was met with a look as if to say "it's the system, not me!". Now where did we hear that last?

Man "decapitated" on Greyhound Bus!

Rumours abound about a Greyhound bus stabbing in Canada. Apparently a young man was stabbed and, according to witnesses, beheaded aboard a Greyhound bus in Manitoba on Wednesday night.

Police have not confirmed the identity of the victim pending notification of his family, saying only that he was stabbed while riding on a bus that was en route to Winnipeg from Edmonton.

Such things are extremely rare. However, I would not think it above the suspicions of fellow passengers to think each other capable of peculiar or odd behaviour. I well remember travelling on a Greyhound bus (it could have been a Trailways) and a chap regailed me about whether the Queen ever came out of Buckingham Palace. "She does come out, doesn't she?" he repeated, seemingly at every turn in the road. Another passenger gave me chapter and verse on her journey from the Roman Catholic church to the Mormons, via what appeared to be every denomination in the USA! Yet another had gory details of the Vietnam War.

Most are genuinely agreeable and make exceedingly good travelling companions. But, as far as I know, there is little or no screening for nutters and nuisance-makers. These you have to deal with according to your own abilities.