Remember Trevor the Lockkeeper? He was the one who was threatened with losing the cottage that came with his job, so he sold recordings to help buy the house.
He wrote last week:
Just to let you know that I had so many referrals from your site that I ended up writing a book on Behavioural Safety. I know it's not your cup of tea (or any boaters) so I'm sort of mentioning it out of gratitude.
The gist: www.behaviouralsafety.org.uk
You can order the book from that site, although it's also available on Amazon (and all good behavioural safety bookshops) at £8.
OUCH! - Behavioural Safety Between The Sheets (Of Paper)
The book is published under the name Garehoff Milland - don't know if that's his real name or a nom-de-plume.
Ouch! Trevor/Garehoff gets me wrong. Behavioural Safety IS my cup of tea!
Accidents are called accidents because they happen by accident, when people are not aware of them. As I see it, behavioural safety is about being aware that something could happen. Being aware is 95% of being safe. I'm all for being aware.
Health and Safety precautions are different - they are designed to stop things happening when people aren't aware or concentrating.
The difference is risk. My view is that people should be allowed to take their own risks.
Of course, there are limits. For example, boys should be stopped from jumping off bridges into the canal, or swimming in locks. That's sensible health and safety.
On the other hand, insisting that a BW lockkeeper with 30 years experience (and more experience than any H&S functionary) be forced to wear a lifejacket is self-serving bureaucracy.
And making corporate grey suits wear lifejackets when they are just taking a 5-min trip on working narrowboat in an urban canal (as happened at the last BW AGM) gives behavioural safety a bad name.
Roger: Brilliant, thanks!
Posted by: Andrew Denny | Tuesday, 11 November 2008 at 11:02 PM
Garehoff Milland LOL. Andrew try Gerroff moy land as in Farmer Palmer of Viz fame.
roger
Posted by: Roger | Tuesday, 11 November 2008 at 12:14 PM
'Was wondering what had happened to that very funny lock-keeper! Thanks.
As to the reluctant wearing of life jackets by BW employees - I've thought about this a lot (Dad was a lifeboatman and flatly refused to learn to swim!)and can see the sense in the rare of a worker falling in the water unconscious, having bashed their head on the way down. However, there's no guarantee (or *is* there?) that they would float the right way up to preserve life!
Nah! It's all litigation, litigation, litigation! The powers that be are preserving their money, not lives....
Posted by: Rosie Robertson | Monday, 10 November 2008 at 10:50 AM