Following on from yesterday's piece about Nanny banning firemen from entering smokers' homes to offer fire prevention advice, I would like to continue with the general theme of fire safety.
It transpires that those appliances that you and I assume are there to help us fight fires, fire extinguishers, are a clear and present danger to our health and safety.
That at least is the view of Nanny's chums in Hamilton Townsend, managing agents for a block of flats in Bournemouth.
A risk assessment (pass the sick bag) was recently carried at Avon House and Admirals Walk by a buildings risk assessor, these people make a very nice living on the back on Nanny's rules and regulations (under the Regulatory Reform Fire Safety Order 2005 the managing agents of every private block of flats must hire professional assessors to carry out a risk assessment).
The risk assessor recommended that the fire extinguishers be removed, as they are dangerous.
Eh?
Seemingly these extinguishers may delay householders from escaping a blaze, and may be dangerous if they are used by untrained people....ah...an opportunity for some wide boy to charge us money to "train" us to use these things!
Rather bizarrely this report has the support of Dorset Fire and Rescue Service, to the extent that extinguishers have already been removed from the two blocks.
The hapless residents of Admirals Walk were informed in a letter from their managing agents that:
"unless all residents are trained to operate the fire extinguishers, there is no legal requirement to maintain these in communal areas of residential blocks".
Pete Whittaker, the protection policy manager at Dorset Fire and Rescue, said:
"As part of the assessment, the assessors now look to see whether fire extinguishers are actually required in that particular block. In some cases, they are no longer needed and provide more of a hazard being there.
We do not want to encourage people to leave their flat to fetch a fire extinguisher from a hallway and then return to a blaze. We want people to get out safely.
Obviously in some cases, an extinguisher could come in useful in a communal area but with new building regulations, every escape route should be completely fireproof. It very much depends on the individual property and what the assessor believes is the correct course of action."
Complete tosh!
It was not that long ago that Nanny was telling us to ensure that we all had fire extinguishers.
Given the onslaught of absurd and contradictory health and safety rulings and edicts, people have totally lost what vestiges of respect that they may have had for health and safety "professionals".
A "profession" that is rapidly consigning itself to the dustbin of history!
I watched this item on South Today last night on the BBC....I thought there's one for Ken.
ReplyDeleteThose that I really feel sorry for are the Firemen that go on TV or on radio to defend these diktats because they are told to.
Nanny is out of control.
I can thoroughly recommend attending a fire extinguisher training course though - a day of supervised arson and setting off lots of noisy and messy extinguishers. I suppose if nanny found out what was involved the training would be banned too.
ReplyDeleteNanny will soon be claiming that fire alarms do long-term hearing damage to anyone within close range.
ReplyDeleteThe solution: Hearing-friendly fire alarms that, in the event of fire, emit only a soft, amber glow from a low-voltage, green-friendly, non-carbon-based power source.
The next problem: enormous, carbon-spewing fire engines careening around corners on crowded streets pose an obvious danger to health and safety (not to mention to the polar ice caps), and should be relaced by one-man (ermm, sorry, "person") motorscooters powered by 49 cc electric engines which may be supplemented by human pedalling.
Each fire person may pilot his or her own scooter to the emergency site, sans ear-piercing sirens, of course (see fire alarms above) and never exceeding the speed limit or other traffic regulations.
Firepersons will of course be expected to stop at all pedestrian cross-walks, and should they find it more time-efficient to use bicycle lanes, they will naturally be required to shut down their electric motors and rely exclusvely on pedal power.
Since fire extinguishers have already been banned, they won't be exptected to fight the fire (too much danger of smoke inhalation, anyway), but they will assist any residents who have successfully evacuated the structure in filing claims for assistance from appropriate state agencies. They will also soothe shattered nerves by providing grief counselling and conduct post-traumatic stress disorder evaluations.
It's funny how, once you get going with all of this, the ideas just seem to flow. Might I have a future among Nanny's minions?
Black Sea,
ReplyDeletea fertile imagination is not enough to qualify for a position with Nanny, you have to first undergo an 'Irony-removal lobotomy' and - most importantly - you have to believe (no, really BELIEVE) in all the shite you are peddling. So, sorry, you would fail on both those counts.
Anyway, I suspect that Nanny already breeds her own.
Ok, as a fire warden for where I work I can kind of see nuggets of sense in this but not for the reasons that Nanny is putting forward. Different extinguishers can be used for different types of fire and using certain types of extinguisher on the wrong type of fire is downright dangerous. For example, use a water extinguisher on an electrical or oil/petrol based fire and the results are likely to be fatal. People do need to be aware of this and this is what our fire training courses demonstrate (and allow the closet arsonists among us to set fire to things in the process :) ). CO2 extinguishers have their own problems in that if you don't know how to hold them you are likely to end up doing a good impression of the Terminator in T2 when exposed to liquid Nitrogen or whatever it was and losing your fingers. However, powder extinguishers should be ok although I am sure Nanny would find some reason as to why they should not be there (fatal to asthmatics ? ).
ReplyDeletePersonally I would say to the householders, get a powder extinguisher and keep it in your home. In the case of a fire if you cannot put it out with that extinguisher then evacuate.
The underlying message behind these schemes (intentional or otherwise) is - the individual must avoid taking personal initiatives but instead defer to the State because the State knows best.
ReplyDeleteOne can see the gradual year-on-year cumulative effects.
I passed an accident on the M25 last summer. Four or five cars had collided, resulting in some bodywork damage, some broken lights, a few broken hearts but nothing really serious. The main effect was that three of the four lanes were blocked causing a significant tailback of traffic.
As I passed, people were sitting at the side of the road twiddling their thumbs or chatting to one another while waiting for the emergency services to arrive. The idea of moving a car to free up at least one more lane was completely alien to them.
They seemed to be of the opinion that, just as tackling a burglar in your own home runs the risk of a jail sentence, or paying for private medical treatment runs the risk of a ban on further NHS treatment, likewise moving a car on the M25 without permission from the authorities might run the risk of a court appearance.
In my opinion, it's this incessant transfer of responsibility and initiative from the citizen to the State that poses the greatest threat from these directives.
It’s almost as if: Nanny knows best!
You know I think I may have found some joined up logic in this (almost).
ReplyDeleteThe major source of fires in the home are likely to be:
Smoking
Cooking with Gas
Electrical wiring problems
Candles.
Nanny is close to completely eliminating Smoking by Law.
Cooking, in any form, is become so expensive that it will fall into disuse along with heating.
Electric wiring problems have already been addressed (in Nanny's eyes) by making it illegal to do an electrical DIY. Presumably the Polish Electricians (or equivalent) will step into that breach and provide full proof fire free cabling.
Candles will become a moral issue as carbon generators - burn one candle, buy 3 trees. Then they will be banned.
So, given the carbon footprint of all the annual extinguisher checking and replacement industry (who clearly have not been shoveling enough cash into the political trough in recent years), Nanny may as well start the process of reversing a few centuries of fire protection sooner rather than later. After all, if there are any catastrophes she is now so adept at blaming anyone and everyone else that she will be completely in the clear.
See? Perfectly logical.
Grant
Anonymous at 10.28 spot on! A very good post summing up exactly what is happening and the worst affected by this are "yoof". In order to be expected to do the right thing society must "engage" with them and communicate with them "in a way they can relate to". Bollocks! The state is removing self-reliance and the right of citizens to shift for themselves and the ones embracing this are "yoof" who understand no other way. They are not being taught our history, culture, rights, freedoms or constitution. I watched Question Time tonight and a young black woman said she was just leaving college and why should she be expected to swear an oath of allegiance to a Queen she didn't know anything about and had never been taught anything about. A sad indictment of our education, our teachers and our government.
ReplyDelete>why should she be expected to swear an oath of allegiance to a Queen she didn't know anything about
ReplyDeleteIf she has managed to get this far without knowing ANYTHING about the Queen then clearly she's been living from Mars and has no right to be here in the first place.
The argument might equally well be reversed though - why should the Queen have to follow through on the oath she took at the coronation? Possibly because she has some concept of responsibilities. An alien concept to many, for whom only "rights" exist.
Why are all fire extinguishers now red?
ReplyDeleteIn 1985, an EU Directive required all fire extinguishers to be red in colour with only a small flash of the old British Standard allowed. So, Foam will have a small cream flash of colour; Dry Powder, blue; Carbon Dioxide, black; Wet Chemical, yellow.
Therein lies the root of the probelm.