Regulations setting energy efficiency criteria and energy labelling for small appliances only affect new appliances being sold - there is no requirement for anyone to ditch their older appliance, and in fact there is quite a strong incentive not to do so, if you own a 2200W vacuum cleaner and you will no longer be able to buy a new one that is equally powerful. Secondly, the regulations do indeed take account of the energy required in manufacture, both by setting durability criteria and end-of-life rules.
This report doesn’t relate to safety regulation at all. It’s about the cost of regulatory compliance in the financial sector.
sorry I mistyped “3amp fuse”, it was supposed to be 13amp ( standard)
I apologize for the confusion:smack:
please read my post #74
Disgusting, yes - what you are saying is truly disgusting. A “considerate” opinion obviously depends on whether or not you are the worker or other person at risk.
The problem is that you were born about a century or so too late. The “make a profit and the workers be damned” mentality was normal in thre 19C, but we have progressed since then. OK, some of us, and in certain countries. Out in the Third World the mayhem goes on. Outsourcing jobs from the highly regulated advanced countries to the Third World benefits nobody in the long run. (I’ll skip a long discussion as to why.)
Any chance that you might grow a conscience in less than geological time?
Health and Safety rules are generally A Good Thing. The problems arise when individuals start creating their own rules or implementing the existing rules with no application of common sense.
As a truck driver I came across this fairly often:
One place insisted the everyone wear a yellow vest and hard hat - this even applied to me while driving my truck in their yard.
One place, after being fined because someone was injured, decided that drivers would have to be well clear of the forklift trucks that were loading them. Sensible - yes? The problem was that they built a cage with Armco and we had to stand within it, even if it was pouring with rain. If anyone needed the toilet we had to shout for attention and work came to a complete stop until they returned.
A paper manufacturer insisted that drivers were not to climb onto the back of the trailer. We were loading 6’ reels stood up on end and the only way to strap them down was to reach up and position the strap and corner protectors from the floor of the trailer. They told us to drive out and park in the road where they were no longer liable.
A friend drove a low-loader, delivering machines to building sites. He went to collect a 30-tonne machine from a site in London, loaded it on and started to chain it down. The H&S bod came steaming over and told him that he could not stand on the bed of the trailer - bear in mind that this was a low-loader and the bed is maybe 18" off the ground. A stand-off ensued as my friend (quite rightly) refused to move without the machine being secured and the H&S guy refusing to allow him to do it. Senior management got involved and they cordoned off the area to allow him to work. A job that should have taken an hour or so, took half-a-day.
A constant source of irritation is the widespread situation where the rules - yellow vest/hard hat/ keep to the marked walkways etc - did not seem to apply to management while we were threatened with being banned from the site if we did not conform.
So, you don’t believe the financial sector needs regulation? Because 2008 would like a word with you.
(Sorry, off topic, but Toughlife brought it up)
Have a look at the BBC documantary “Hidden Killers of the Post-War Home - Full Documentary” Hidden Killers of the Post-War Home - Full Documentary - YouTube
The episode on earlier time periods are also worth watching
If I was going to have my house rewired, I’d rather have someone with casdave’s attitude!
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Unfortunately there are workers who try to use safety legislation in order to avoid carrying out tasks they would rather not undertake - partly idleness, and partly its just resistance to instructions from their managers and supervisors.
You can usually recognise those folk because they will decline do do something and instead say something along the lines of “Can’t do that, its against Health and Safety”
Well of course that is all complete tosh, the HSE quite clearly encourages workers to look after their own safety by using their own expertise to find safe ways to undertake work.
If you are a supervisor or manager you will reconise this type, the ones who do know what they are talking about will instead tell you that a task may not be accomplished in a particular way and state specifically which part of Safety protocol is the problem they might well know the exact law being breached, and it is then a very good idea for the supervisor or manager to then ask for alternative safe methods of working.
Safety law is not there to prevent work activities, it is there to enable work activities, but in a manner that does not give rise to danger.
As a union rep I have had to deal with recalcitrant staff who simply fail to understand that their role is to carry out lawful instructions of managers safely - half the time I’m trying to keep these workers out of trouble by giving them advice on their job description - sometimes that comes down to reminding them of the consequences of their behavior.
The other issue with safety is that of managers who simply fail to interpret safety law correctly and take an unreasonable approach - so that you get really stupid company rules - such as not cleaning walls above 6 feet because its supposed to be risky - but of course it is not provided the proper working methods are used.
The post by Bob++ is an absolute classic and demonstrate not the weakness of safety legislation, but the intransigence and lack of knowledge of the site management.
Imposition of meaningless and stupid safety rules that are based on ignorance by managers actually tend to make workplaces more dangerous because it reduces the credibility of the safety practices that do matter.
As a union rep I usually have to look at things from the management point of view, and the truth is that most of the time the managers are right, and when they are wrong it is far more productive to offer practical alternatives and advice, I’ve often found that company safety officers are usually third rate - they got the bit of paper certificate but have rarely actually done the work they are trying to control.
There is a certain truculent type who will use ANY rule as an excuse not to do something or exercise power over the working environment or some process.
They will invoke some block and demand other prove they are compliant with some higher authority before work can proceed. It is a power play and common feature of many organisations.
Health and Safety
Human Rights
EU
Computer Security
Data Protection Act
SAFE
Electrical wiring
Building regulations
Take your pick!
However, travel to a country with none of these things and you soon realise why they are there. Just walking from the plane through Mumbai airport you see workers operating angle grinders with no guard, sparks everywhere, no goggles. Moving heavy loads in sandals and no helmets, Plugging in power tools into electrical sockets using bare cables. The number of accidents they must have is shocking.
Legislation in the UK has developed largely as a result of some awful disasters and hideous accidents. It has been hard won. I remember well how Health and Safety taken much more seriously in the Oil and Gas in the UK after the Piper Alpha Oil Rig disaster. It began to catch up with the safety standards the were put in place in the Chemical industry after the Flixborough disaster. Hopefully we will get some joined up regulation when the Grenfell investigation reports on the factors that caused that hideous towering inferno. This legiislation by catastrophe is not a particularly good record and it does not suggest the UK is very proactive.
Regulations are there for a good reason and it is quite possible to do a job while following them. They need not be anti-competitive or hinder business if they apply to everyone, equally.
Let us separate the issue of petty politics in the workplace from rules that are designed to ensure safe working. For a workplace to be safe, it needs much more than a rule book, it needs a workplace culture that understands and avoids risks and hazards while going about its business.
For every jobsworth who presents obstacles there are cowboys who take risky shortcuts to get a job done so they get paid faster.
Both types are pimples on the backside of progress and it is an unfortunate experience to have to work with them.
The British standard for domestic electrical fittings is very safe and has prevented a lot of electrocutions and fires. Looking at it is history, it seems to be have been conceived with the best of intentions for the safety in the home by experts in the field. For once, we got it right.
Better a formally appointed committee with the public interest in mind than companies and their lawyers competing to promote a standard that leverages their patent assets.
Anyone with common sense would do that anyway, that’s why the handrails are there. The regulation exists because too many people dont’ have common sense, and some of them hurt themselves falling down the stairs.
I never used the handrails when I was a child. Because (1) They were too high. (2) I bounced when I fell down, (3) I wasn’t very high off the floor, and (4) I had excellent flexibility and balance.
It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s, when I almost stumbled going down stairs, when my dad made a narky comment about using the hand rails, that it occurred to me that hand rails were now in reach. I’ve used the handrail ever since. Only started because somebody made an narky comment.