After reading @roachmeister’s latest blog post about health and safety I wanted to add my comments specifically about this article by Jeremy Clarkson in the Times.

Clarkson really is a clueless twat when it comes to these issues, rather than a considered article about when health and safety is poorly implemented he prefers to give a couple of extreme examples and then wanders into his hideous attack mode for which he is so infamous;

Health and Safety is the cancer of a civilised society, a huge, ungainly, malignant, pulsating wart.

These idiots will argue that your office carpets are more perilous than a terrorist bomb.

You just know that it is only a matter of time before Godwin’s law comes into play, and sure enough Clarkson does not disappoint;

The human cost of the Holocaust was incalculable whereas I fell down the stairs only yesterday and it cost nothing.

Ok, he isn’t directly comparing health and safety officers to Nazi’s but by invoking the Holocaust in his argument we all know what he is insinuating. You expect this hateful bile to sit nicely on the pages on the Sun but its all the more galling presented in the pages of a broadsheet. Perhaps I am naive to think this.

When he starts talking about Health and Safety in TV you would assume this to be an area he could talk about with some knowledge, but no, why let facts get in the way of a good old fashioned rant? I happen to work in TV so I know a bit about assessing risk on shoots and the so called ‘health and safety brigade’. First of all I haven’t worked on a programme where we hire ONE health and safety officer, not one. If you look at the credits for various programmes you won’t see any health and safety officers on there, you also won’t see any on the credits for Top Gear, I’m guessing because they don’t hire one either.

He goes on to say that by filling out a hazard assessment form that if something does wrong the accountability is suddenly deferred to the person that filled out the form and that they are then liable. What? Just… what? Seriously? I have filled out risk assessment forms before I don’t remember anything on them that said I was suddenly liable, if there was I wouldn’t have filled it in and I don’t know a person that would. We have public liability insurance to cover us on shoot for £5million does Clarkson seriously think that his producers cover this? Does he think anyone with an ounce of common sense is going to believe him?

He calls health and safety people Programme Prevention Officers, I love Top Gear and having seen some of the stunts they do on there it beg the question what did they want to do that Health and Safety prevented them from doing? I genuinely would really like to know. They drove a car to the North Pole for fuck sake!   

Clarkson happily talks about risking the lives of his crew like it is just a laugh and blissfully forgets that it is the stringent health and safety rules and advances in car technology that saved his co presenter’s life not so long ago.

Update

I just realised that the Jeremy Clarkson article was written in 2004 two years prior to Richard Hammonds accident. Whilst my last statement is now clearly unfair the sentiment stands, if a proper risk assessment hadn’t been done and the neccessary measures not taken to ensure the safety of the crew then the consequences aren’t worth thinking about.