Who's laughing now?
Friday, October 17, 2008 
Richard Littlejohn (left) is one of my favourite journalists. His column in the Daily Mail is consistently good and often brilliant. He has a problem, though. The bizarre and petty officialdom that Littlejohn has mocked for many years is now so commonplace that most people's response is no longer anger or incredulity but a shrug of the shoulders and resigned acceptance. Of course it's absurd, people will be thinking, but what can we do about it?
Today, Littlejohn writes:
Prevention is always better than cure, which is why the Government is encouraging us all to take up an offer of a free home fire safety consultation. Mail reader Sheila Bushell decided to avail herself of this service for a couple of reasons. It not only confers peace of mind, but can also stop your insurance company wriggling out of any claim in the unfortunate event of your home burning down.
She sent me the letter from the London Fire Brigade confirming her appointment. It also contained a warning: 'While our primary aim is to provide you with this valuable service, the Fire Brigade has a legal duty to provide a safe working environment to protect the health of its staff. To assist us with this, we would therefore ask that if you do smoke, you would do everything possible to provide a smoke-free environment when our staff visit you in your home by refraining from smoking both during the visit and for a period before our staff are due to arrive. We suggest a period of one hour; ventilating your home before the visit to clear any smoke. If a smoke-free environment cannot be provided, our staff will need to assess the situation before proceeding, which in some instances may result in the visit being postponed.'
What, Sheila wondered, would happen if her house was actually on fire? Would the firemen refuse to put it out if they arrived to find her puffing on a Silk Cut to calm her nerves while her earthly possessions went up in flames? As it happens, Sheila doesn't smoke. But she was appalled by the absurdity of it all, and the impertinence of being told what she could and couldn't do in her own home.
We're talking about an organisation which rushes into burning buildings for a living, yet refuses to enter any premises to conduct a routine inspection if there is evidence someone has been smoking there less than an hour previously. Are they really suggesting that firemen are more at risk from inhaling the lingering fumes of a small cheroot than saving someone from the 18th floor of a towering inferno?
Full article HERE.
As Littlejohn would say, you couldn't make it up. But this is actually happening and few people seem to care. For years Littlejohn has been ploughing a lone furrow with this sort of stuff. He has lampooned, lambasted and laughed at politicians and petty officials.
But he can't change the world on his own. We should ALL be joining in, pointing the finger of mirth at those idiots in authority for whom common sense has become a foreign language. Health and safety has become a disease that is slowly sucking the life out of this country.
This sort of thing used to be funny. Who's laughing now?
Reader Comments (7)
Couldn't agree more and, to keep up with the latest absurdity, I regularly check the site, 'Nanny Knows Best' which you link to from The Free Society homepage. Every day Ken Frost highlights a similar tale with contact links to the offending organisations so that we can give them our feedback! It is dispiriting to hear such nonsense day after day but the powers that be would surely get the message if there were a sustained onslaught of objections from the public. Such action appeared to work in the case of Telford Council's proposal (see Suzy Dean's article on The Free Society).
Here are some pearls of wisdom direct form the London Fire Brigade's website, at least they acknowledge that we don't all want to give up:
If you are not ready to give up smoking this time around, follow these simple precautions to prevent a fire at your home:
•Always make sure your cigarette is fully extinguished.
•Take extra care when you’re tired or have been drinking alcohol. It’s very easy to fall asleep without realising that your cigarette is still burning.
•Never smoke in bed - if you need to lie down, don’t light up. You could doze off and set your bed on fire.
•Never leave lit cigarettes cigars or pipes unattended - they can easily overbalance as they burn down, land on a carpet or newspaper and start a fire.
•Where possible buy child-resistant lighters and matchboxes - every year children die by starting fires with matches and lighters.
•Use a proper, heavy ashtray that can’t tip over easily and is made of a material that won’t burn.
•Tap your ash into an ashtray – never a wastebasket – and don’t let the ash or cigarette ends build up in the ashtray
http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/news/NewsReleases2008_12Mar08.asp
Dave -
Thanks for that..............
Surprised that they missed out the most obvious tip, however:
"If you MUST smoke, don't forget to take your thumb out of your mouth first."
If the bailiffs turn up and I light up a fag, will they go away?
This article reminded me of a story I read in the Halifax Courier just over a year ago. The Board of Governers chaired by a LibDem councillor (who was pictured) wanted to ban tobacco smoking by firefighters and others on all outside areas of premises of the local fire station! It appears that this kind of mentality is spreading. As Richard Littlejohn often says, "You could not make it up!" Hopefully it will all end in tears (for those displaying this limited mentality, I mean).
If the fire service are that concerned about a little ciggy smoke inhalation, then perhaps they should have electric powered vehicles, as their fire fighters are at far more harm from the diesel engines of the fire engines when they start up, inside the fire station, than they are from any amount of SHS!
It is a massice cause for concern that so much common sense has been lost!
Its all so dispairing to read articles like this, its getting to the stage where its not even laughable any more. I guess this is their aim to scramble our brains to such an extent that we will not be able to distinguish between what is real or what is false, scaremongering and brainwashing at the same time so that people will be so dumbed down that they cant keep up with their spiel so that they can bring in their stealth bans and taxes. Psychological torture is now in force in civilian life, who needs to join an army to fight for their country, whats the need anyway when the foreigners are now living next door. Seems to me that future wars will be about political correctness or incorrectness or whatever way your brain has been directed.