In praise of red tape
Feb. 14th, 2011 07:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frightenedIn Cameron's generally ludicrous article about how if you want essential services, you'd better provide them yourself for no wages Big Society is coming like Jesus to save us all, one bit was particularly egregious:
Now I'll grant you, there's room for discretion in criminal record checks. I don't give a damn if someone shoplifted ten years ago or possessed cannabis ever. But is he seriously saying that if someone wants to work with children (or vulnerable adults, for that matter, though they're generally a lot less photogenic than the darling little kiddies), someone shouldn't check to make sure that they don't have a history of violent or sexual crime?
Oh, but they're volunteers, you see. Because in Conservative Land, nothing is serious unless a profit is to be made from it. So if there's no money involved, then it happens in a magic special bubble where there are never any consequences. It's not a real thing, so we don't have to apply real-world rules. They talk up the importance of volunteering, but they betray their real feelings: we don't need to apply the usual rules, because it's voluntary, so it doesn't count. There's no money. How could it matter?
Okay, that's the easy one out of the way. On to the dreaded Health and Safety.
Now I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that when you're working with children and vulnerable adults, health and safety is extra-important, because they cannot give informed consent to calculated risks. I can say "hell no, I'm not doing that. I don't think it's safe and I don't give a damn what you think of me for it," or I can say "well, it looks scary, but statistically it's safer than crossing the street." A child is neither experienced enough nor independent enough to do that.
That doesn't mean, of course, that health and safety is unimportant when dealing with adults. You know why we have it? Because before we had it, or when it's been ignored, people died.
Bradford football stadium disaster, 1985. The film that gets shown at fire safety training, where they tell you it's gruesome and horrible and you can leave the room if you want. (I left the room. I think a lot of people watch it to prove they can. I've got nothing to prove and my OCD doesn't need any inspiration.) People had said, repeatedly, that there was too much rubbish under the seats and one cigarette could start a fire. Nothing was done and - whoops, who could have predicted? Oh that's right, a whole bunch of people could and did - one cigarette started a fire. People went looking for fire extinguishers which had been removed. Locked exits had to be broken open before people could get out, and fully half of the corpses were found on the wrong side of blocked escape routes.
I'm using really dispassionate language here, because otherwise I'm actually going to imagine the terror of being trapped in a crowd of panicking people with a locked door in front of me and a fire behind me, and then I'm going to throw up my breakfast.
And that is why people get a little bit hysterical about, for instance, fire safety. If warnings had been heeded, if fire extinguishers had been left where they were supposed to be, and if escape routes had been left open, 56 people would still be alive. Stop whining, because sometimes shit gets real.
Cool, let's talk about the Corporate Manslaughter Act. Triumph of the nanny state hating on the honest businessman, yes? No. After the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, which killed 193 people, the company could not be successfully prosecuted, because the judge could not find an individual senior manager to blame. This was even though the official inquiry found that the root cause of the sinking was in the corporate atmosphere and procedures, not the actions of the individual workers, and the coroner's inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing. Similarly, after the Southall rail crash killed 7 people in 1997, the only options were prosecuting the driver, who was not able to make the kind of decisions that would have prevented it, or prosecuting the company, which could not be done because no individual at fault could be identified. This was despite the fact that, by then, it had been decided that there was such a common-law offence as corporate manslaughter, and it was believed that such a prosecution could succeed.
Then you've got Simon Jones, an untrained, temporary dock worker decapitated on his first day of work. It took two years of dedicated campaigning before, in 2000, a judicial review said the company had to be prosecuted, overturning the Crown Prosecution Service's decision. (This was the first time a corporate manslaughter prosecution had ever been ordered.) During these two years, the Health and Safety Executive refused to take the case, and a government minister admitted that plans to protect workers were insufficient.
Finally, this 2007 report found that while construction workers' deaths at work had risen between 1998 and 2004, the number of Health and Safety Executive prosecutions had fallen by three quarters. Somebody wasn't stepping up.
Thus, the Corporate Manslaughter Act of 2007. I can only find one prosecution under it, that of Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings for the death of Alexander Wright. The guy died in September 2008; prosecution was approved in June 2009; the trial didn't start till a couple of weeks ago. Wow, look at that flood of easy and frivolous prosecutions stifling British industry. Yeah.
Incidentally, for all their talk of small businesses, you'd think the Tories would like the Corporate Manslaughter Act. Before it, small businesses were much more vulnerable to prosecution, because it was much easier to identify a responsible individual. They might actually have that one guy in charge, rather than hiding responsibility in layers of management and bureaucracy. Small businesses could be made examples of while large businesses got away with the exact same crimes. But while they talk up a storm about the little guy, they're actually all on the boards of enormous businesses, and it's those interests they're protecting. When they retire from politics, it's gonna be to the board of Mega Giant International Arms Deals, not Mom's Bakery.
And if someone wants to help out with children, we will sweep away the criminal record checks and health and safety laws that stop them.Wait, what? WHAT?!?!?!?!
Now I'll grant you, there's room for discretion in criminal record checks. I don't give a damn if someone shoplifted ten years ago or possessed cannabis ever. But is he seriously saying that if someone wants to work with children (or vulnerable adults, for that matter, though they're generally a lot less photogenic than the darling little kiddies), someone shouldn't check to make sure that they don't have a history of violent or sexual crime?
Oh, but they're volunteers, you see. Because in Conservative Land, nothing is serious unless a profit is to be made from it. So if there's no money involved, then it happens in a magic special bubble where there are never any consequences. It's not a real thing, so we don't have to apply real-world rules. They talk up the importance of volunteering, but they betray their real feelings: we don't need to apply the usual rules, because it's voluntary, so it doesn't count. There's no money. How could it matter?
Okay, that's the easy one out of the way. On to the dreaded Health and Safety.
Now I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that when you're working with children and vulnerable adults, health and safety is extra-important, because they cannot give informed consent to calculated risks. I can say "hell no, I'm not doing that. I don't think it's safe and I don't give a damn what you think of me for it," or I can say "well, it looks scary, but statistically it's safer than crossing the street." A child is neither experienced enough nor independent enough to do that.
That doesn't mean, of course, that health and safety is unimportant when dealing with adults. You know why we have it? Because before we had it, or when it's been ignored, people died.
Bradford football stadium disaster, 1985. The film that gets shown at fire safety training, where they tell you it's gruesome and horrible and you can leave the room if you want. (I left the room. I think a lot of people watch it to prove they can. I've got nothing to prove and my OCD doesn't need any inspiration.) People had said, repeatedly, that there was too much rubbish under the seats and one cigarette could start a fire. Nothing was done and - whoops, who could have predicted? Oh that's right, a whole bunch of people could and did - one cigarette started a fire. People went looking for fire extinguishers which had been removed. Locked exits had to be broken open before people could get out, and fully half of the corpses were found on the wrong side of blocked escape routes.
I'm using really dispassionate language here, because otherwise I'm actually going to imagine the terror of being trapped in a crowd of panicking people with a locked door in front of me and a fire behind me, and then I'm going to throw up my breakfast.
And that is why people get a little bit hysterical about, for instance, fire safety. If warnings had been heeded, if fire extinguishers had been left where they were supposed to be, and if escape routes had been left open, 56 people would still be alive. Stop whining, because sometimes shit gets real.
Cool, let's talk about the Corporate Manslaughter Act. Triumph of the nanny state hating on the honest businessman, yes? No. After the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, which killed 193 people, the company could not be successfully prosecuted, because the judge could not find an individual senior manager to blame. This was even though the official inquiry found that the root cause of the sinking was in the corporate atmosphere and procedures, not the actions of the individual workers, and the coroner's inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing. Similarly, after the Southall rail crash killed 7 people in 1997, the only options were prosecuting the driver, who was not able to make the kind of decisions that would have prevented it, or prosecuting the company, which could not be done because no individual at fault could be identified. This was despite the fact that, by then, it had been decided that there was such a common-law offence as corporate manslaughter, and it was believed that such a prosecution could succeed.
Then you've got Simon Jones, an untrained, temporary dock worker decapitated on his first day of work. It took two years of dedicated campaigning before, in 2000, a judicial review said the company had to be prosecuted, overturning the Crown Prosecution Service's decision. (This was the first time a corporate manslaughter prosecution had ever been ordered.) During these two years, the Health and Safety Executive refused to take the case, and a government minister admitted that plans to protect workers were insufficient.
Finally, this 2007 report found that while construction workers' deaths at work had risen between 1998 and 2004, the number of Health and Safety Executive prosecutions had fallen by three quarters. Somebody wasn't stepping up.
Thus, the Corporate Manslaughter Act of 2007. I can only find one prosecution under it, that of Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings for the death of Alexander Wright. The guy died in September 2008; prosecution was approved in June 2009; the trial didn't start till a couple of weeks ago. Wow, look at that flood of easy and frivolous prosecutions stifling British industry. Yeah.
Incidentally, for all their talk of small businesses, you'd think the Tories would like the Corporate Manslaughter Act. Before it, small businesses were much more vulnerable to prosecution, because it was much easier to identify a responsible individual. They might actually have that one guy in charge, rather than hiding responsibility in layers of management and bureaucracy. Small businesses could be made examples of while large businesses got away with the exact same crimes. But while they talk up a storm about the little guy, they're actually all on the boards of enormous businesses, and it's those interests they're protecting. When they retire from politics, it's gonna be to the board of Mega Giant International Arms Deals, not Mom's Bakery.
