Weekends up, was the last piece for the heading

Current speculation in our office is that the announcement that Rob Strange is standing down as Chief Executive of IOSH is somehow linked to a current vacancy for Archbishop of Canterbury. Is that the kind of thing?

"Straight off the internet verbatim." and therefore it must be true just as is all the information from official bodies

I was giving advice at Director level on the subject of Lone Working and the need for Risk Assessments in particular for staff who visit clients with mental health problems in their own homes and who may present violence and agression. I focused on the initial visit where there may not be any information about the client, who else lived in the property, the area etc. Therefore, advised on a procedure forthe initial visit two members of staff should attend to complete a Risk Assessment to enable a decision if it was safe for future visits alone. A Director was not happy about the doubling up for the initial visit. When asked what his reasoning was he said if there is no known risk it was not necessary to double or complete a risk assessment.

I had suspected that the correct reason for the saying "wrong end of the stick" that Rich has given is correct, in that case I have been on the receiving end for many, many years!!!

Despite my interest in history and knowing that the Romans used sponges on sticks instead of toilet paper which presumably hadn't been invented in those days, I confess I wasn't aware of the subject phrase stemming from such implements. I thought it was more to do with a person or animal being hit or beaten with a stick and therefore getting the wrong end of it - so perhaps I've misunderstood the phrase for years. By the way, for a very well prerved example of communal Roman loos (alias latrines) try visiting Housesteads Roman Fort located beside the Roman Wall in Northumberland. Though I haven't been there for many years, it's likely that the information for visitors will include snippets about sponge sticks. It's slightly curious that the Romans were adept at using (and perhaps also developed) structural concrete but apparently didn't develop toilet paper - which begs the question of when toilet paper was developed and by whom.

When I was about 5 years old and in reception class at infant school several of the other boys seemed to cause great amusement one afternoon by saying "bxgger off" to each other. I'd never heard this expression before but was sufficiently impressed by its laughter generating capacity that I uttered it to the class teacher, a grumpy spinster lady of mature years. Instead of being amused by it, as I had naively expected, she became furious, shouted at me to go to the back of the class and that she would wash my mouth out with soap at the end of school. I had no idea what the expression meant and therefore couldn't understand why the teacher reacted as she did. I was terrified, to the extent that when the teacher tried to get hold of me after all the other kids had left, I ran and managed to get out of the building and off the school site without being caught. Subsequently from my suddenly acquired phobia about going to school my Mum twigged that something had happened and therefore contacted the school to be told that I had sworn at the teacher. She went to have a discussion with the headteacher, also a respectable mature spinster, who was initially most reluctant to tell my mother what I had said, and then asked if my father was prone to swearing! My Mum explained that neither she nor my Dad swore and that it was most likely that I had picked up the expression from some classmates whose parents or older siblings did swear. Furthermore, she was not impressed by the teacher's over-reaction to my utterance when it would have been more appropriate to tell me that what I had said was rude and shouldn't be repeated. Though my foul-mouthed nature was probably added to my school record, a positive outcome of the incident was that I was promptly transferred to another class which had a somewhat younger and much nicer teacher. In long retrospect, there were several lessons involved: One was that people should not use words or expressions if unsure of their meaning. The second was that people should not assume that others - especially young children - necessarily understand what they're saying. The third lesson is that accused people threatened with punishment should be told - and if necessary have explained to them - what they are being accused of!

I agree with Graham that whilst this topic has been fun it does have a valid safety slant regarding how we get the health and safety message across and whether the intended target understands the message. As a trainer - accents/ regional words or phrases can make the course interesting to say the least and being Welsh I am always having to make sure that everyone understands what I'm actually saying!!!!!

Talking of sinks .......... Many moons ago, in the last millennium, I was working on site in Cornwall. We started 'snagging' the works and found a Belfast sink in the depot that had two hot taps and two cold taps over it. We asked the plumber why there were four taps and he said it was asked for on the drawings. The drawing said "pair of taps, Hot and Cold" - so that's what he fitted, a pair of Cold taps and a pair of Hot. Cornish logic is unbeatable