Day 210: Cupboards and lobotomies

Sunday 3 October 2010

I only managed a few hours on the van this weekend due to major shopping excursions on Saturday and incessant rain today. Whilst the picture does not show a huge amount being completed in the van (partly because I ran short of timber) a lot of time was spent drawing full size templates in order to get the joints and angles and the lengths of the timber sorted out before a single cut was made.

The Conservatives are wanting there to be a rethink of Health and Safety legislation and the way it is implemented, but after a couple of heated threads on the SBMCC forum I am actually changing my mind as to whether this is a good thing or not. I used to think that it was just the youth that received a common sense lobotomy when they went to school, but it is now apparent that there are those in all generations that are afflicted. Was it always so, is the current Health and Safety legislation the symptom or the casue and do personal injury lawyers actually make things better or worse?

There seems to be this current culture that it is always somebody elses' fault when things go wrong and there is never and degree of personal responsibility. Locally we have a recurring story about a boy who died as a result of riding his motorcycle into the rear of a parked lorry. So far the parents have attacked and started campaigns against; the council for the lack of streat lights, the lorry company for parking their lorry the wrong way round and not displaying marker lights and the police for not presecuting anybody. What they don't appear to be able to accept is the logical conclusion that their son was not riding his bike in a manner suitable for the prevailing conditions and so takes a lot of the responsibility for his own death.

You may or may not know that here are regulations that govern the intallation of gas and electricity, and lay down minimum good safe practice for doing so. Now at present the regulations are not (necessarily) mandatory for self build motor caravans but they are eminently applicable, the wiring regs even have a section specifically for caravans and motor caravans but there seems to be a fraternity within the SBMCC that doesn't understand the difference between non-madatory and non-applicable, and seems to think that because law doesn't make you follow the regulations you shouldn't follow them and they keep telling people such, as a result a lot of good sound advice is getting drowned out and often shouted down by the 'Its your van..' 'Its not applicable..', 'Its not mandatory..' brigade. Not only does this attitude show a great deal of ignorance and stupidity, in the long run I think it will mean that the ability to self build  motor caravans will be taken away from us as a result.

1 comments:

Gromett 9 February 2011 at 23:41  

Couldn't agree more. Common sense can cover most things but specialist items such as gas and leccy do need proper guidance and the regulations are a good starting point.

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