The "Idiot Noakes" presenter - not an unusual approach even today.
Thursday 24 February 2022
Seventies Health and Safety
The "Idiot Noakes" presenter - not an unusual approach even today.
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The "Idiot Noakes" presenter - not an unusual approach even today.
8 comments:
Utterly terrifying. Noakes may have regretted his on-screen persona, but there is no doubting his enormous physical courage.
That film could never be made today, of course. There's a shot of the steeplejack with a cigarette in his hand, which is a serious health and safety concern.
It got me thinking how times have changed. When did people start getting so concerned about safety? A friend who is interested in the London Underground told me that they used to have "open days" for the public in the late 1960s. They did guided tours and allowed people to wander down interesting tunnels on Sunday afternoons. The current was still switched on, and they were casually asked to avoid stepping on the third rail unless they had thick rubber-soled boots on. Another change is accents. Noakes was something of a joke Yorkshireman, with a strong accent that we kids used to try to copy. "Aye, good orld John Noooaaarks!" But in that clip he actually sounded quite posh, his accent barely discernible. Did he tone it down, or were we just not used to it on the BBC then?
I would like to echo Sam's first paragraph.
And on that theme, this is a nice little read:
http://www.rogermurray.co.uk/Fred/chimney.html
Rick
People started getting concerned about safety in the late 70s early 80s when American lawyers really got the bit between their teeth over suing corporations for public liability. The concept spread like wildfire and across to the UK and it's the main driver of health & safety culture.
You can overdo this anti-safety stuff. I was once invited to become Safety Officer in a lab and replied "Do you really want to see most of the rooms closed down for a fortnight while they try to adapt to my instructions?" "Instructions?" "Oh yes; I wouldn't accept responsibility without being given authority."
I thought the whole place was dangerously sloppy and people were allowed to be menaces to each other. The Boss went off to find someone else to do the job.
Years later I found myself on a lab Safety Committee. I was happy overseeing most of the stuff but was uncomfortable having any responsibility for the BSL3 rooms. Too ignorant of biology, you see. Mostly it didn't matter - risks and blunders often fell into the categories physics/chemistry/engineering or simply "bloody fool". But sometimes it might matter a good deal. Still, I would probably have been a better bet than whoever played the same role in the Wuhan lab, eh?
Sam - blimey, those London Underground tours do sound rather casual, but maybe we were more casual about many things. Climbing trees, cycling without helmets, even motorcycling without a helmet. I suppose it shows how behaviour can be changed in quite fundamental ways.
Rick - very interesting link. I don't think I could have done it, but from what he says he was drawn into it and once started couldn't back out.
Tammly - it has become an important and crippling bureaucracy driver. Those at the top make sure there is no way they can be held responsible even if they have to make impossible health and safety demands on the whole organisation.
dearieme - in my experience, labs seemed to become more hazardous as they became larger, as throughput increased and the people at the bench were lab assistants doing a routine job. This was tightened up of course, but meticulous people who are prepared to do routine work to a permanently high standard were never easy to find. It sounds as if Wuhan had the same problem.
Labs should hire people with OCD for benchwork. After all they are prepared to hire some pretty autistic people for IT work.
I've seen a piller drill in a school workshop which was so extensively provided with H & S safety features that it couldn't actually be operated at all. I've seen instances in the industrial workplace where H&S procedures obstructed and stopped dead, necessary work procedures and progress. I don't imagine the Chinese have the same problems.
dearieme - the best did have a hint of OCD but there were never enough.
Tammly - I sometimes wonder how much practical work is done in schools compared to earlier decades.
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