Friday, August 03, 2007

Health and Safety

The largest free music festival in Europe has been cancelled on health and safety grounds. The event, centered around the Beatles weekend in Liverpool has been run ever since 1993 and has been growing in popularity. The council have decided to ban all of the outdoor events because the large amount of building work in the city might be dangerous. There have been construction sites in Liverpool for a few years now and no one has ever been hurt at the Matthews Street festival. Might I suggest that the council is trying to save money by cancelling the event. Road closures, extra policing and litter collection are all expensive for such a large event and the council should just be honest and say it does not want to foot the bill.

In a related story kids in Bournemouth are not allowed to borrow arm bands when using swimming pools. The official line is that germs will be spread as people inflate them. As one parent said 'they would rather let the kids drown than have them catch a cold.' Methinks the real reason is cost. They don't want to have to buy spare armbands for people who forget theirs and they don't want to be sued if a kid drowns because of faulty armbands that they have supplied.

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