Posted By Lee Murray Andy - how on earth are the insurance company making council tennants, aren't there laws about cloning and the like? Or is this, as I suspect, reference to the removal of window boxes etc. from balconies?

Posted By Sean Fraser And don't forget - some of these stories are either gross misrepresentations or entirely fictitious!

Posted By Alex Ryding Well there are some traditions surviving; I have no idea how this one does! http://www.tarbarrels.co.uk So while you local council bans conkers...Come barrel burning instead!

Posted By Keith Whittle Alex - the barrels are awsome! Risk assessement? hahahaha

Posted By fats van den raad Overkill!!!!... I think not!! Have you ever had your hand trapped in one of those infernal contraptions??? If you have you wouldn't take such a light hearted approach to it. It was a packet of Maltesers that proved my downfall and my entrapment. Once that lid on the tray where you get your stuff out closes behind your hand, you've had it. When you find yourself in a situation like this people come up with the strangest ideas. One guy even suggested that I would be freed if I let go of the Maltesers!!! Yeah right... that's gonaa help. I'll still be trapped AND without my Maltesers. Not bloody likely!!!!!

Posted By Tamara Stuart I like Maltesers too.

Posted By Sean Fraser Don't know about the rest of you but I found the Scotsman article to be reasonably balanced and quite informative. And I hadn't known about the bra - breast cancer link before so I'll be looking into that further (if you pardon the expression). Mind you, the issue comes back to denying people opportunities to improve their living environments by blanket banning the use of the window-boxes when a more sensible approach would be to find a way of ensuring they are propoerly secured and enforcing that instead. This sort of thing treats people as children or sheep, tacitly stating that they are incapable of identifying these hazards for themselves and taking appropriate action to reduce risks. Bans should only be a very last resort (just like PPE) and only when all other possibilities are exhausted, like smoking (no pun intended). Perhaps if children received better education at a young age about hazard awareness and risk perception, we wouldn't have quite as many of the kinds of injuries reported in the article and we wouldn't need to be having this conversation. I think that as a profession, we should be assisting in achieving the goal of mainstreaming occupational safety and health into education, 1] for the education sector itself but more importantly 2] in order to get children participating in safety and health at the youngest age possible so they carry these important principles with them not only into the workplace but for whole of life. I can already hear the cries of "for goodness sake let children be children" but I would ask you - if we do not make the effort to encourage people to be more responsible for themselves at the earliest age, are we honestly prepared to continue with the pain, suffering and loss that injury and ill-health causes year on year? I agree that often experience is a good way to learn, but if we follow that concept to a logical conclusion then what we should be doing is injuring people at work in a controlled manner and then saying "imagine how much more it would hurt if it ripped off the finger rather than just trapped it". Is it not possible to say up front that falling out of a tree will hurt, instead of waiting until they do and saying "well you won't be doing that again, will you?". Of course it is. Won't stop children climbing trees, but they might be a bit more aware of the dangers and mitigate the risk of falling (or the consequences should they do so). For more information on the mainstreamining of OSH in education, go to the European Agency for Safety and Health website: http://europe.osha.eu.in...sheducation/index_en.stm

Posted By Sean Fraser Merv, Not quite sure if you are responding to my last post and if so, what point are you making? I certainly do not advocate blanket banning or changing the environment so much that it is the equivalent of wrapping people in cotton wool. I agree that risk assessment is a must - but what I advocate is teaching such assessment to young children so they grow up capable of doing it for themselves automatically, not having others do it for them. And I say again - why are we trying to change the ingrained attitudes of adults when we would be reaping much greater rewards in teaching children when their brains are still developing? So much additional wasted effort with inconsistent results and a gradual change in behaviours. Start as you mean to go on - don't keeping on at the adults waiting for their Damascus moment to strike, assuming that it ever does. The Church of Safety has to be careful that it doesn't become exlusionist or it will be preaching one aim while actively working against it. The term risk assessment often provokes a groan and many consider it an impediment to getting the job done - but if this had been taught at a young age then it would simply be an accepted part of living (note - NOT just working!). It would also be done so habitually that it wouldn't even need much in the way of records, one of the barriers to getting the assessments done. We could then move away from a record based bureucracy and towards habitual behaviours that are prevention oriented.

Posted By Jim Walker Am I the only one who notices a common thread in all these daft pronouncements: i.e. it is usually from local authorities. And whilst it is blamed on "elf n safety" my guess is it is really down to mediocre legal departments who have little concept of risk assessment and slap on blanket bans rather than sensible risk controls. LA colleagues please comment. Having said that, my missus used to work in A&E and the injuries caused by mind boggling stupidity makes you wonder where some people have left their brains. Adam, ref: ROSPA, thanks goodness IOSH shows restraint, long may it last.

Posted By Zoe Barnett I have just fallen over trying to walk without swinging my arms properly. Merve, I'm afraid I'm going to have to sue.

Posted By Robert Bradford Jim, I read somewhere that the two most plentiful elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity