Posted By Scottie CMIOSH I am a chartered H&S practitioner. I am also a production manager resposible for the other bits of the pie. I can't help but feel that we, as a profession, make mountains out of molehills and worry a little too much over the smaller issues. Jeremy Clarkson has a point in his rants about the safety profession. We really need to see the bigger picture. Come on, argue the point that H&S is the most important thing on the planet. Go on, you know you want to............

Posted By Charley Farley-Trelawney Scottie More than interesting but, Jezza is not on his own when the lack of knowledge will blame Health & Safety legislation. 'It' should be acknowledging that it is the potential litigation that is foremost in peoples minds which leads to ridiculous media coverage, and brings to everyone’s attention the "ol health and safety rules" again have caused blah blah. SHOE MENDERS!!!!, it is almost certainly LITIGATIONAL reasons not H&S in the majority of hyped up reported cases. When will they get 'it' through their thick heads??? CFT

Posted By Philby' Clarkson has a rival when it comes to vitriolic motoring journos...for those that are enlightened, AutoItalia has an article by Roberto Giordanelli which describes 'us' as health and safety gestapo! Bearing in mind he is talking about the purity of classic cars and how they drive, going back to the sixties might be an object lesson in style, but I think he missed the point in terms of fast cars that you can walk away from after an accident...ie they are safer. I agree that sometimes that H&S seems to be overzealous but I also understand, as is succintly put by Charley, that this is a perception largely fostered from outside influences and others who use H&S to put a stop to activities they cant be bothered to manage or just plain dont want!

Posted By TBC With you Stuart

Posted By Richard Davis Philby.... not read the comments in AutoItalia yet, but Roberto seems to be jumping on the bandwagon like so many others.... easy to do when there is same daft legislation passed (or mis-interprated by over zealous councils and the like) I was at Brooklands AutoItalia last month in my '78 car with 4 x twin choke Webbers leaking petrol all over the place, and yes I know I'd be better off jumping out of it rather than bumping into something.... but a bit of danger and excitement is a good thing!!? Yesterday I did the London-Brighton classic car run with 150 others.... it would be a shame to have any of these fine machines legislated off the road.

Posted By Richard Park Of course employers and the public don't tend to agree with us. Our job is to change those people's minds about ways of working and to show them that the easiest way is not necessarily the safest. Jeremy Clarkson is only right in cases where people have been prevented from doing stupid things for their own entertainment, which is pretty much his forte.

Posted By Alan Hoskins I just wish he'd put equal emphasis on the other stupid (in my view) rules such as banning parents from videoing Nativity plays and the like, and hare-brained ideas from people such as the Mayor of London to ban photography in Trafalgar Square! (not implemented though). Yes, I'm a grandparent with a video camera, and yes, I'm an amateur photographer... I declare an interest. Alan

Posted By Chrisinwood Jeremy Clarkson is either someone you find entertaining or you hate him, seems the general opinion. He is just an entertainer and sadly uses safety as a joking point. More than often he IS misinformed about safety, however lets all remeber we are safety professionals, this is what we do for a living, and hopefully most of us are competent and have an in depth knowledge of legislation etc. Therefore it is bound to offend people when you have someone on TV gobbing off about subjects he has little or no knowledge off. However we must NOT take it personally! We ARE PROFESIONALS after all. Im sure (well i think so) that most of us would agree that we have read something about safety that we disagree with (conker ban, snowball fights etc). Most of the time though these type of decisions are NOT made by safety professionals but by someone (headmaster) who 'thinks' they have a knowledge of safety, whereas in fact have little idea. These instances do give us a bad name and sadly, yes, people do generalise safety and we are all like the gestapo. However the one thing we have on our side, and what should be in the back of our minds is, we KNOW we are contributing to peoples safety all the time, we help people to go home safely at night, we know we have morales. We should not be afraid to laugh at ourselves when we read or hear ridiculous suggestions by 'non professionals' and the key to it all (in my humble opinion) is that we are slowly but surely educating people. SO let clarkson have is daft entertaining opinion, i know that anyone who mentions his opinions to me will be treated to a nice chat about what was wrong with what he said and why. Only my view

Posted By Bill Fisher The Moderators have allowed the Clarkson' Threads to run for a time (this one for example has had 964 viewings and 14 responses). All well and good but the fact is that Jeremy Ckarkson's views are entitled to the same respect as any from you. We may disagree violently, think the comments are farcical or agree with them but we are all entitled to express our views. The Clarkson' Threads, whether supportive or otherwise, are now focussing on a persons opinion which the moderators view as a breach of the Acceptable Use Guidelines. At the end of the day these Forums are here to allow an exchange of professional opinions and not to attack an individual's views. The Moderators suggest that should you feel strongly on the subject then write to SHP, Clarkson etc and seek a response.