Health&safety At The Coast

[Guest]

On 20/08/2019 at 20:28, RollingJ said:

I'm assuming your post was 'tongue-in-cheek' @probedb. All I can say on this subject is - why does no-one take responsibility for their own actions these days?

 

Common sense seems to have gone out of the window.

Of course  Yep, agreed, people have stopped relying on common sense and seem to expect there's some health and safety legislation that will magically protect them.

[andyofborg 11]

On 21/08/2019 at 19:13, RollingJ said:

I agree that the H&S brigade have gone OTT @bassett one - and blame the legal profession for much of that, they saw what their mates in the States were up to and thought 'we'll have some of that, too'.

As regards harbours &c, I think you will find that where the public officially have access, say fro harbour-side to a vessel of reasonable size, safe gangways are provided, but that is not always practical if you are boarding say, a small fishing boat, nor is that easy to fit handrails to vertical ladders.

I'm not sure if it is the H&S brigade who have gone OTT. There are always individuals who go to extremes but most of the people who do this as a day job and have been properly trained and qualified are quite sensible about risk management.

 

What has happened is that there a lot of individuals who have some sort of H&S responsibility but get  very little training and support and so take an exceptionally risk averse stance to most things. The media get hold of examples where this has happened and basically write click-bait articles with hysterical headlines. These stories seldom provide the necessary balance and so the example become embedded in the minds of the reader, especially the hard of thinking ones, as a divine instruction. 

 

The real villains here are the insurance industry who are making a business decision to settle a claim rather than challenging it based on cost to them rather than the merits of the claim. 

 

[RollingJ 1,999]

You may very well be right, but these 'click-bait' articles, disregarding the sensationalist headlines, do illustrate how risk averse society appears to have become and there does not appear to be anyone responding them to point out that almost any action/activity can have unfortunate consequences unless common sense is applied.

[andyofborg 11]

1 hour ago, RollingJ said:

You may very well be right, but these 'click-bait' articles, disregarding the sensationalist headlines, do illustrate how risk averse society appears to have become and there does not appear to be anyone responding them to point out that almost any action/activity can have unfortunate consequences unless common sense is applied.

even if you apply common sense then there can still be unfortunate consequences. 

 

 

[RollingJ 1,999]

5 minutes ago, andyofborg said:

even if you apply common sense then there can still be unfortunate consequences. 

 

 

True, but life is full of risk, the application of said function will reduce it.

[ECCOnoob 1,020]

3 hours ago, andyofborg said:

 

The real villains here are the insurance industry who are making a business decision to settle a claim rather than challenging it based on cost to them rather than the merits of the claim. 

 

Who can blame them?

 

It's all well and good saying things like that but under the current protocol there is no facility to recover costs from the claimant even when they lose or withdraw their claim (except in extreme circumstances which have a high threshold to be proven in the courts).

 

Ultimately that means that a claimant can happily rack up their legal costs,  safe in the knowledge that if they dropped the claim at the 11th hour or lose at court they can simply walk away with no penalties and no risk of costs being claimed against them.

 

Insurers and large corporations have no such luxury.  They have a straight decision between paying out say a £2,000 claim or incur £25, 000-£30,000 in unrecoverable legal fees to try and defend it.

 

When they have a obvious duty to protect their insured's purse or in some cases even the public purse it's not one that's taken lightly.

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by ECCOnoob