I for one was glad to see David Cameron going public with his dissmay at the current state of the health and safety culture thats engulfed our country.

As a health and safety professional, these ridiculous scenarios (mainly involving Local Authorities) where people are prevented from carrying out health and safety tasks unless they've done a Risk assessment Bonfire night was a prime example, a rugby club had to put up a big screen with flames on rather than a real fire because the local council deemed this too dangerous, how utterly stupid. The blame culture is sadly thr route cause of all this and until we change our attitude towards risk, the health and safety profession will be tarnished with this dirty old brush. I'm rather embarassed by some of the things I see and read, it's job creation at the highest level. I've dealth with personal injury claims from the sublime to the ridiculous, "I fell of this step ladder because I wan't trained in how to use it". In the 40s and 50s in New York we've all seen the picture where stell fixers are walking on a a piece of steel hundreds of feet in the air without any fall protection. there has to be a happy medium somewhere surely????

It's outrageous that the only way to absolve yourself from any blame is to produce ten trees worth of paperwork, give it to a worker and expect them not only to read and understand it but at some point get on with earning a living. I see this in the construction industry everyday. In our everyday lives we take daily risk assessments, when we cross the road, pull out of a junction in our car all these things a far more dangerous than working half a foot up on a stepladder, but the industry keeps telling us that "you need a risk assessment for that".

Health and Safety should save money and lives not be prohibitive, perhaps if clients and customers didn't put so much pressure on contractors they might take their time when working, most accidents are casued by a lapse in concentration, being hurried. I wouldn't dream of telling a painter who's worked as one for 30 years, how to use a stepladder.

I just hope the conservative party get elected it might be the start of common sense law if it does me out of a living I'm fine with that.