Nanny's health and safety Gestapo have struck again.This time the Gestapo have raided the hotel health club that I use. To save the embarrassment, for the moment, of the good people of the hotel in which the club is housed I will not give away their name. They run a good hotel, aside from this aberration, and have always looked after myself, family and friends very well.
Anyhoo, let me tell you what has happened.
The club has been in existence for a good few years now, and aside from the five years that I lived in Sweden I have been a member since around 1994. During this time there has always been a bowl of fresh fruit, in the reception area of the club, for consumption/scoffing by the members and hotel guests.
Can you guess what happened?
Yes, that's right, the health and safety Gestapo have decreed that the fruit presents a health and safety risk. Therefore it has been banned.
As far as I am aware, there have yet to be any fatalities in the club arising from the consumption of a contaminated piece of fruit. Maybe they are worried about a spot of polonium getting mixed up with it...who knows?
I would suggest that, at a pinch, apples and pears could be contaminated by dirty hands. However, bananas and oranges are safe; as no matter how dirty the skin, or the hands that touch the skin, no one will be eating the skin on these.
I would also ask how is it that supermarkets, farmers' markets and the French have managed to sell fruit (that is poked and prodded by dirty little hands) for countless years without a mass outbreak of corpses littering the street?
Suffice to say, I am not particularly hopeful about the prospects of the traditional mince pies and wine being laid out on the reception desk this Christmas (as has been the case each Christmas since I have been a member).
All very silly, and very unnecessary. I have sent the hotel a copy of this, and will let you know if they rethink this daft policy.
Ah, but Ken, was the bowl of fruit active or inactive?
ReplyDeleteIs fruit simply too expensive these days to be left out for all and sundry to ransack as they wander past?
Were you told the real reasons for the removal of the free gifts? (And did you report the receipt of these benefits-in-kind on your tax return?)
Or perhaps they simply found too many newly arrived international visitors, mistaking the hotel for Lunar House, availing themselves of a free lunch.
If the latter then even the oranges and bananas may be suspect unless you know a way of peeling them without touching the skins.
Just some thoughts to be going along with, some of which may or may not be included in the Safe Society (Hereafter referred to as SS) instruction manual.
As an American enthusiast of NNB, I've sometimes felt a twinge of guilt in excoriating Nanny for her many foul and cretinous deeds. NNB is after all, about the Nanny State in Britain, and I am not British.
ReplyDeleteDoes the Bible not urge us:
"Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
Therefore, in the interests of trans-atlantic fraternal harmony, may I cast out the beam from mine own nation's eye, or at least call attention to it?
Yesterday, New York City enacted two prime examples of the globalized Nanny State. First, restaurants must now display for their customers the caloric and fat content of each item on the menu. For many dishes, this will be difficult to calculate accurately, and no doubt there are fines for inaccuracy.
Number two, Nanny (New York Style) will ban almost all trans-fats from restaurant cooking. Whether or not you object to trans-fats, Nanny says they are bad for you, and you shan't be allowed to decide for yourself.
BTW, it seems to me that if there were a genuine and widespread demand for either of these two measures, the free-market might be able to accomodate it.
Evidently, a city which touts itself as the smartest and most sophisticated in America, if not the world, is inhabited by eight million souls unable to safely order from a restaurant menu without Nanny's hand-holding intervention. As Ken might say . . . pathetic.
Good work, Nanny, you're Big Apple branch office is a great success. By comparison, banning a bowl of fruit is small potatos, or something.
NNB? You are thinking of the other blog, Nanny Nose Best.
ReplyDelete"NNB?"
ReplyDeleteDidn't I mention Nanny's third bit of New York nonsense? She has mandated that from this day forward, all abbreviations are to be phonetic?
Citizens of the YK (Yunited Kingdom) will be update in due course.
ROFLOL
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile another nanny department is trying to get us all to eat 5 pieces of fruit a day..... ooh, a nanny civil war. Lovely!
ReplyDeleteYou are quite right to be concerned about the mince pies. They are quite clearly potentially leathal.
ReplyDeletethis chat all seems a bit fruitless !
ReplyDelete