Except you could or rather they could; on checking the Food Standard Agencies regulations I can find nothing that states cafes are not allowed to reheat cooked chicken for any reason. (I have emailed to ask but they are yet to get back to me at time of posting) In fact there are guidelines that suggest if you are to reheat chicken that you should make sure it is hot enough to ’discourage the growth of bacteria’ – yummy! 

You hear these sorts of stories all the time and if I hadn’t bothered to check then I might walk away tutting thinking this was yet another example of the nanny state oppressing my right to have hot chicken.

I don’t want to single this café, or their misinformed staff, out as acting foolishly, they are only doing what they think is right. But I do wonder how this misinformation spreads, and how many other people harbour health and safety protocols or fears that simply aren’t true? How much of this nanny state, that the government is currently reviewing, is actually down to the general publics’ irrational inflation of health and safety regulations rather than genuine guidance? We all know Cameron likes to touch the tabloids’ hot spots and maybe we should have seen this coming. But rather than towing the old line that there is too much red tape perhaps this government review should ask how these health and safety fears are sown. Maybe just maybe, if our media wasn’t peppered with stories of ‘elf and safety’ gone mad, then we all might be a little less sensitive when it comes to this stuff. But they just report don’t they? Not make shit up.

It is very easy to blame the government for being over protective but in my experience most actual health and safety guidelines seem quite reasonable when you think about it and are there because accidents happen and guidelines are introduced to try and prevent them happening again. Sometimes it maybe just common sense, but what is common sense to you might not be to everyone else; a quick read through some Darwin Awards will confirm that.

Yes there are some people that take health and safety regulations too far and it can seem ridiculous when they do. At this point I am reminded of an exchange I had with the cleaner in my first year at University in the Halls of Residence during a room inspection.

Your bin needs emptying

It isn’t full yet

You still have to empty it

Why?

Health and safety

What do you mean health and safety?

It’s a fire hazard How is it a fire hazard?

It is a half full bin, I don’t smoke and even if I did we aren’t allowed to in out rooms. The bin isn’t even near a plug socket in case you thought some freak spark might set it alight.

There might be food in there, that’s dangerous if you leave it.

There isn’t any food in there. I eat in the canteen like all the other students in halls.

Its still health and safety.

But I don’t understand what is dangerous about a half full bin.

You still have to empty it every day.

Do you empty your bin at home every day?

(At this point she stuttered for a bit said yes and then walked off.)

In hindsight the cleaner probably didn’t deserve some presumptuous eighteen year old pointing out the flaws in her argument. She was just following what she thought the regulations were and they may well have been the regulations, I don’t know. Either way it was a stupid rule and I enjoyed a good debate at the time never mind who it was with.

That exchange happened 10 years ago, these health and safety fears have been part of our everyday life for years and no matter how much the government review it I don’t think that will change. I suspect the media will keep saying ‘elf and safety has gone mad and people will continue to invent regulations so we end up in a kind of perpetual motion health and safety regulation making machine. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go empty the bin.

Update

The Food Standards Agency got back to me, this is what they said;

I am not aware of any restrictions on reheating chicken, as long as it is reheated properly and served straightaway. I have attached a link to the guidance we provide to businesses which you may find useful for your article:
 
http://www.food.gov.uk/foodindustry/regulation/hygleg/hyglegresources/sfbb/sfbbcaterers/
 
I hope this is helpful.

“The current cold weather in the UK is part of the normal regional variations that take place in the winter season. It doesn’t tell us anything about climate change, which has to be looked at in a global context and over longer periods of time.”

Do you see that Daily Express? The current cold weather doesn’t tell us anything about climate change stupid.

The Mail on Sunday and The Sunday Telegraphhave been quick to jump on the anti global warming bandwagon albeit a little more underhandedly. Both featured articles about research by Mojib Latif, a climate expert at the Leibniz Institute at Kiel University in Germany. His research, according to the Mail, challenges the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs. Although the Telegraph’s report was slightly better I especially liked the way they referred to our current temperatures as ‘Arctic’ (with a capital ‘a’) you know that place where average winter temperatures can be as low as ?40 °C? Not that I would want to accuse them of exaggerating. The problem with these articles is that the Leibniz Institute research doesn’t challenge global warming at all, and despite clarifications from the scientists, who stressed that the research did not challenge the predicted long-term warming trend, they went ahead and misrepresented it anyway. I’m picturing a petulant child right now with his fingers in his ears going ‘NAH NAH NAH I can’t hear you’.  

It’s been a busy week for The Mail on Sunday and The Sunday Telegraphwho, not content with being on the global warming denial bandwagon, decided to jump on the anti health and safety bandwagon as well when they accused the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) of issuing warnings to businesses not to grit public paths because this could lead to legal action. Was this more evidence of a heath and safety conscious society gone mad? Was it balls. In actual fact the IOSH position on gritting public areas is almost exactly the opposite. The Sunday Telegraph did take the time to contact the IOSH before they printed the article who were only happy to provide a statement from their Policy & Technical Director Richard Jones but this was ignored. ‘NAH NAH NAH I can’t hear you’.  

What is the point in contacting people to clarify a story if all you are going to do is completely ignore them? When are there going to be measures in place to stop this sort of behaviour? At the moment newspapers can just carry on fitting stories to suit their political agenda regardless of whether the evidence or story supports it or not. Without proper punishments and legislation the media is free to essentially make shit up and get away with it time and time again. Its a disgrace and the public deserve better from their news outlets regardless of their political bias.

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.