To hell in a handbasket with kids fun

[Eastie]

Playground bar to be lowered in the name of safety
Playground equipment across Australia would be lowered by a metre under a proposal aimed at reducing child injuries. More than 1200 children are injured on playground equipment in Queensland each year, most when they fall. Almost half suffer bone fractures, the Queensland Injury Surveillance Unit says.
Australian safety standards suggest playground equipment be no more than 2.5m high and be surrounded by 20cm-deep padding. Monash University researcher Dr Shauna Sherker says more should be done to reduce the number of young broken limbs. Dr Sherker said the 2.5m height limit had reduced the number of playground head injuries but limbs were still being broken. Lowering the height to 1.5m was the most sensible solution ,she said.

Sure, there's some frightful play equipment and playground setups out there, but 1.5m? Oh well, I'm sure we'll all sleep more peacefully knowing that such people are looking out for our kids.

________________
“Paging passengers Fun and Excitement – your flight to hell in a handbasket is now boarding”

[silentC]

Mate, if you ask me the kids of today are going to grow up as a bunch of sissy whingers. From the time they first set foot in any kind of institution, such as a day care centre, they get molly-coddled. They're not allowed to play in the sun, everything is padded. It's virtually impossible for them to hurt themselves.

Can you imagine what it's going to be like when they get out into the real world and realise that outside the public-liability-inflicted cocoon of childhood, things can hurt you, even kill you? It's going to breed a bunch of litigators and protestors. They'll have been brought up beyond the reach of any danger and so their tolerance for anything that has even a remote risk attached is going to be out the window.

I reckon it's like the current concern over under-developed immune systems. Parents are so obsessed with killing germs that kids don't get exposed to them any more, so their immune system doesn't develop the antibodies it needs to combat every day germs and hey presto, a bunch of sickly kids that are always 'coming down with something'.

The same principle applies. You have to be cruel to be kind. Let them break their bones - it's the only way they'll learn about the real world. As my Dad used to say: "if it doesn't kill you it can only make you stronger".

[DaveInOz]

bugger me ....
I grew up rough and it didn't do me any harm.
I never broke anything, couldn't afford to, I was lucky to get a bruise as I walked home from the mines, in the snow. Id see the rich kids at church, limping and cluching at limbs.God they looked happy, still we was honest, poor as dirt but honest.
I did see a playground, once, from a distance, the other kids playing and laughing, but I couldn't stay to watch, if I was late home one of me 37 siblings would eat my half potatoe, raw. Had to eat it raw, the only fuel we had was the coal I would brush out of my hair after work in the mines, but it made us strong damn it!
Kids today - they don't know they are alive.
:p

[ozwinner]

There doing the same in the building industry.
More rules and regs than you can poke a stick at, I even got a letter from a big builder ( Simonds ) telling me that if I dont wear sun protection on site I will be asked to leave until such time that I wear it.
Come on please, we are breading a bunch of soft cocks.

Cheers, Limpy :( :(

[Eastie]

Limpy (i've never seen anyone use on of these ":o" but I'm guessing now would be most inapropriate :D ),

The governments WorkSafe department are fanatical on this issue – that’s the main reason for the hype from employers who want to steer clear of 'the big stick'. And don’t forget the big company you mentioned got hit $60k in the Magistrates Court from a WorkSafe prosecution last year for not having scaffolds up as per Australian Standards (no-one was injured – just incomplete scaffolds around a couple of house jobs) – once bitten twice shy. They challenged in the County Court but the Judge advised them along the lines that if they proceeded with the challenge he would make the Magistrates fine seem trivial.

I'd like “you” to think of this as if you were in charge of such a large business. The risks associated with UV are long term, the damage is cumulative and just as exposure to noise, asbestos dust, … etc. need to be controlled at work, so does UV exposure and the responsibility lies with you, the employer. In a recent router noise post there was comment on employers legal responsibilities for having to provide hearing protection – the same goes for UV. Also as a large employer you would have heard about Boral and how one of their past employees was recently given the green light to sue relating to skin cancer – basically an open chequebook.

What your employees do in their own time is their business. At least you (the employer) have covered your assets (limp or otherwise) and can have confidence that if any one of your litigious employees (including subbies) seeks to claim against you for skin cancer as a result of UV exposure you have taken reasonable steps to protect their health (i.e. ensuring they know of the potential health problems, use appropriate protection, ...) and more importantly remove the risk from yourself and your companies interests.

Safety is often the guise company’s use for shifting the risk to others in an effort to negate risk, remain viable and prevent corporate/shareholder loss.

Eastie,
The safety avenger

PS.
I'm off to build a 1.5m slide - the rug rats should find that a real hoot!

[ozwinner]

Scaffold is fair enough, as is a safe work site.
But the sun?, I thought the sun belonged to no one.
If they keep on with these stupid rules, they will find that no one will want to work anymore, its hard enough to find people who want to work without all these stupid rules.
People have to take responsibility for their own actions.
If I choose to work outdoors, I know the concequeces.
Who am I going to sue for skin cancer, God?

Thats just as stupid as saying I will sue Ford or Holden because I was hurt in my car because I didnt put on my seat belt.

I always wear sun protective gear, but thats not the point, the point is that beaurocrats realy like takeing away peoples choices.
They want one homeginous society, ( kinda like Gunns with the forests ).

It makes people easier to control.
CONTROL being the operative word.

The Boral case is totaly different, Boral told there drivers to wear a uniform . If you are told to wear a uniform as part of the company policy, the company has to bear the responsabilty.

The people who come up with all these stupid rules are makeing a rod for their own back, it gives the rest of us ideas...........mmmmm..... who should I sue today.
I know, I'm fat because I ate a burger today, or, I'm drunk because I drank beer.

Please.............................

Al the Anarchist

[q9]

I remember when I was in grade 2 we had a "fireman's pole" that you used to slide down off a 2M (est) high platform.

That was ok but the real fun came from showing off by jumping off the platform to the ground...I don't know anyone that did it (me included) that broke or hurt anything...

not that we found the courage to do it more than once or twice...

ok, once...

[Eastie]

Oz,
We share the same beliefs – unfortunately the Dr. Sherkers of this world don’t and when they get together with their evil lawyer friends we all suffer their lack of sense and real world experience.

Eastie.

[journeyman Mick]

Make it foolproof, and someone will come up with a bigger fool!

August 23, 2009
In news today it was announced that playground equipment across Australia would be lowered by a metre under a proposal aimed at reducing child injuries. More than 600 children are injured on playground equipment in Queensland each year, most when they fall. Almost a quarter suffer bone fractures, the Queensland Public Safety Police says.
Australian safety standards suggest playground equipment be no more than 1.5m high and be surrounded by 30cm-deep padding. Monash University researcher Dr Clueless Twit says more should be done to reduce the number of young broken limbs. Dr Twit said the 1.5m height limit had reduced the number of playground head injuries but limbs were still being broken. Lowering the height to 0.5m was the most sensible solution, unless of course we can get tham to stop all this potentially life threatening "play" he said.

[gatiep]

People over 35 should be dead.

Here's why ..........

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even maybe the early 70's probably shouldn't have survived.

Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, ... and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.)

As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a ute/truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors!

We ate cup cakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill,only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve t he problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. NO MOBILE PHONES!!!!! Unthinkable!

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games, DVDs, CDs at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal mobile phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.

We had friends! We went outside and found them.

We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt.

We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us.

Remember accidents?

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them.

Sports teams had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.

Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Horrors!

Tests were not adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of.

They actually sided with the law. Imagine that!

We didn't know that councillors existed....they probaly didn't and we sorted our problems out ourselves

Commonsence was alive and well...so were we

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever.

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

And you're one of them!

Congratulations!

Please pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good !!!!!

[rodm]

Well I think it is a good idea. The young ones of today are far too tall and lowering playground equipment might just discourage this abnormal growth. These days you can't kick them in the bum without throwing your hip out. :D
I wonder how this soft approach will affect future service and sports people/persons. I don't think you would stop much terrorism with paint guns and it won't be the same watching cricket played with foam balls. Mind you boxing is one sport (?) I wouldn't miss too much.

[AlexS]

When the daughters were just going into high school we moved to the bush where kids still do lots of the things that we took for granted...swimming in the river, climbing trees, helping with whatever the old man was doing, etc, etc, and working at whatever part time jobs they could get for spending money.

When we left (to my eternal regret) and they moved back to city school & university, they were amazed at how their peers, especially the boys, lacked the confidence and skills to try anything physically adventurous.

Over the years, they've lost a bit of bark from time to time, but never anything serious, and they've had adventures that most kids these days never know.

[Iain]

I was walking home from the pub and walked into one of these lowered bars in a playground, I used to be able to walk under it, who do I sue?
I also recall a case of an unsatisfied customer in a brothel who sued, unfortunately I never saw the outcome of the case.
Or the exorcised whose customer didn't pay, had him reposessed:(

[silentC]

When I was just a baby, my parents used to drive around with me in this wicker basket thing sitting on the back seat of their Simca. No harness, no seat belt, not even an ocky strap for christ's sake :eek: It's a wonder I made it out of that death-trap alive!!

[minis4meau]

Hey, if the kids eventually survive to their 80's they will make it to an Aged Care home where they will never get the opportunity of EVER eating a home cooked biscuit, cake or meal that doesn't come from an institutional stainless steel kitchen again.
How many incidences of arsenic loaded pumpkin scones fed to aged care residents by volunteers have you heard of in the last 50 years?
Kill me now!!!
Barbara