Health & safety gets plenty of negative publicity when it, allegedly, stops ordinary people from enjoying themselves, but there has been much less trumpeting about its real successes
It is hard now to remember how much we used to take it for granted that some jobs were dangerous & could leave families without a breadwinner through death or injury at work. I remember a boy in my class whose father was killed by a locomotive engine which careered down the incline up which it was hauling limestone.
Very little was available in the way of compensation in those days & state benefits were, on the whole, dependent on your contributions to the National Insurance Fund. I was sanguine enough to feel ( or at least to hope) that working at a Saturday job in Woolworths at the age of 14 would not put me in a position of having to claim financial help on the strength of my weekly 1½d (I think) stamp for industrial injury or illness cover.
Among the less well known Olympic successes is the fact that not one construction worker died as a result of an accident on the site at Stratford, another achievement that can be put down to the meticulous planning, attention to detail, & training.
And while I am about it, McDonalds have not received enough credit for their role in recruiting & training the volunteers. Yes of course the volunteers deserve huge personal praise & thanks, but even the best need a good framework in which to work – clear but one which trusts their judgement while providing clarity of roles & good organisational backup
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