I recently came across something on the Health and Safety Executive site called myth of the month where they set out to debunk some health and safety myths about the Health and Safety Executive being miserable killjoys.

Ho ho, a bunch of health and safety myths. This’ll be a bit of a laugh. Chortle.

And indeed it was, only for entirely the wrong reasons. The HSE appear to have demonstrated that not only do they not understand why people have been complaining about Health and Safety guidelines, but they’ve also missed the point entirely on what people have been complaining about.

Of course, it does appear that they have missed the point slightly. A number of things are done, not done, or cancelled by various different organisations as a result of the recommendations of their Health and Safety officers, or their Health and safety policies. This does not necessarily mean that the Health and Safety Executive has been involved in banning them, nor that they are being banned for any good reason, although in many cases — such as organisations banning people wearing flip-flops to work as a trip hazard — there is a good reason for organisations not to allow something, even if the HSE report it as a myth because they didn’t ban it.

They also show a quite remarkable lack of detail, reporting things as myths which I’ve never even heard of as a myth, and seem to set up quite a few ‘straw man’ myths — such as “village fetes being banned” when the story had been that home made cakes were banned by Dundee Council on Health and Safety grounds — and that other people were deciding that the permits and insurance required for a fete weren’t worth it. Nothing about the fete being banned by the HSE, so the HSE are spot on, but their straw man is missing the point entirely…

But those of you with an interest in the bizarre will no doubt be pleased to learn that ice cream toppings have not in fact been banned by the HSE. Of course, the fact that no-one suggested that the HSE had banned it in the first place is not to be found on the site itself, you’ve got to dig out the story yourself to find the truth that it was the company themselves who had banned it, because they deemed it may be unsafe to customers and present a slip hazard if the toppings were to drop on the floor…

In another example of nanny state rules blighting Britain, world-famous Morellis Gelato claims its popular toppings pose a serious hazard to the public if they fall on the floor. The Italian chain, with parlours at Harrods and Selfridges in London and on the seafront in the well-to-do resort of Broadstairs, Kent, has banned staff adding little extras because customers might slip over.

Instead they are given the ice cream with the topping – such as chocolate and strawberry sauce, chopped nuts and pieces of fresh fruit – served in a separate tub.

Daily Express

…obviously if the HSE were to confirm that they would not in any way consider ice-cream toppings on the floor a potential slip hazard, then I’d be happy to accept the ice-cream toppings thing was a myth. Otherwise they are just attacking another straw man: that the HSE banned it. They didn’t, but companies have an obligation to minimise slip hazards for their customers — and I bet the HSE would have words with them if they didn’t!

But the rest of the myths are in the same sort of vein — no detail to the original article or story which may have inspired them, and the myths are so badly set up as straw man arguments that it’s extremely difficult to believe that there was ever a widespread myth that:

• Safety expertts have a new year’s resolution to make the lives of business people as miserable as possible
• Children need to be wrapped in cotton wool to keep them safe
• Kids are banned from playing conkers without wearing goggles

Now some of these were actually true — the HSE themselves acknowledge that one head teacher did require conker playing children to wear goggles in the interests of health and safety — so it’s not a bloody myth at all. The only difference was that it wasn’t banned by the HSE themselves, only by people following health and safety procedures that they believed was the appropriate thing to do. And whether anyone actually thinks the purpose of the HSE is to make business people miserable is highly unlikely.

And as for the cotton wool thing, fortunately even the HSE realise that no-one has been literally advising that children should be packed in cotton wool (for a start, they could choke, which would be a H&S issue) but then they manage to cock up the advice itself:

Risk itself won’t damage children, but ill-managed and overprotective actions could!HSE Myth: Children need to be wrapped in cotton wool

Right. So risk won’t damage children, will it? So we should encourage children to play on a motorway, should we? Of course not. That’s not exactly a sensible thing to do. Fortunately they do describe what you should do with a couple of extra key words (my emphasis) elsewhere in the text:

Health and safety law is often used as an excuse to stop children taking part in exciting activities, but well-managed risk is good for them.HSE Myth: Children need to be wrapped in cotton wool

Well-managed risk. Where the risks are low (and possibly compensated for) and the benefits are higher. However, the HSE again miss the key point: no-one is suggesting that the HSE want to ban kids from having fun, what they tend to suggest is that the red tape, insurance and so on required to legally cover their backs and ensure that the HSE deem the risks to be well-managed are so onerous that it is not worth the effort. That is the problem. And that is what the HSE have repeatedly fail to look at, instead continuing to attack straw man arguments…

As the HSE have managed to so ham-fistedly and badly put together non-existent myths, demonstrate that they really don’t understand what anyone is concerned about, and in general have missed the point so badly that they actually have gone a long way towards proving the very thing that this section of their website was set out to disprove — that the HSE have had a sense of humour bypass and are out of touch with ordinary people.

They could have, and should have, done an awful lot better.