Sunday, September 6, 2009

Safety Nazis

We haven't had a go at these wallies for a while but what better day to have a thrash than Father's Day. Dads up and down the land will likely be getting power tools as a suitably blokey present. I got nothing but salutations and thoughts from my daughters but that's way better than a poorly chosen tool that I don't really want. I can't really expect either female offspring or their mother to know that what I really want are two sets of reference drills in 0.1mm increments from 1mm to 6mm and 6mm to 10mm can I? I also cannot expect them to understand that each set costs north of $250.

However in less demanding households the length and breadth of the land the output of Black and Decker's Chinese factories will be being unwrapped. All good. But not so fast. If you thought the mainstream media had been devolved of its lifeline from the Ministries last November, think again. Remember what Sir Humphrey told us all. It is not the Ministers that run the Ministries but the bureaucrats. Nine years of lefty, PC indoctrination cannot be beaten out of the Jobsworths in five minutes so we have, by complete coincidence, a front page item in the Weekend Herald telling us how bloody dangerous the home is. Front page no less. No coup in far flung lands, no utterances from the Obama fellow, no shuffle of the All Black front row; none of these is the most newsworthy thing in the world. It is how bloody dangerous the home is.

Bear with me, this is tedious in the extreme. We are told that the garden is the most dangerous place in the home; well its not in the home at all really, it's outside. Idiot. 400 people a week/moth/year - who cares? - are injured by plants or shrubs. How I have no idea. Once or a twice a gum tree might get blown onto the postman but four hundred? Are there armies of marauding azaleas stalking the suburbs armed to the teeth? Flame trees sticking their roots out at shin height as an unsuspecting artisan passes by? Exploding stands of bamboo around every corner? And we haven't even started on garden implements. I'm surprised anyone is even allowed to look at a lawn mower behind a razor wire fence let alone own one. Even if you manage to fill out all the forms to get a permit to own one you really ought to do OSH approved Masport Introductory, Beginner and Advanced courses before being handed your fluoro safety jacket and ear muffs. And do you realise how incredibly dangerous even a three step ladder is? No? Good, because they aren't dangerous at all.

If you survive the walk up the garden path and actually cross the threshold things get really hazardous. For openers the house is likely full of electricity and that can kill you. Trip over the carpet and there's the rest of your life as a root vegetable guaranteed. But it is the kitchen we have to be really wary of. You would think the walls of the average domestic kitchen were lined with rotating knives instead of wallpaper depicting cloves of garlic and bunches of herbs. The average Kiwi larder is stocked with smart bombs as opposed to jars of Vegemite. And so it goes on.

The Herald tells us that more people are killed in the home than on the roads. Or was it the other way round? We really must have more campaigns about safety in the home as 'the message is not getting across'. Well sod off. Life is bloody dangerous. It is so dangerous that it inevitably ends in death. If I buy a skill saw I do so in the full knowledge that if it can slice through a piece of four by two in a trice it could perform equally efficiently on any of my appendages I chose to put in its path. I'm not stupid. I learnt long ago that taking the covers off wall sockets and sticking my fingers on the shiny metal bits is a poor idea. I know that if I put my mass outside the centre of gravity of a ladder, said ladder will no longer be stable and I will fall off. A bloke called Newton told me the speed at which I will fall to earth and he also informed me that the longer the ladder the worse things get. The amount of acceleration I will be subjected to increases with time until I reach terminal velocity; fortunately I haven't seen ladders that long in Bunnings.

So what is to be done about this parlous (sic) state of affairs? Well obviously nothing. We have to live a reasonably normal sort of life and that inevitably involves using power tools, climbing ladders, spending time in the kitchen and walking past potted plants. But you can bet your bottom dollar that the earnest ones, the weird beards, the loonies, the Greens, the lefties - alright they are all one and the same thing - will approach the problem by banning things. I reported previously of the, I think, 86 things the Greens wanted banned. This latest beat up gives them a couple of dozen more.

Where do we start. Power tools are too easy. Only officially approved operatives are allowed to handle anything from De Walt. Kitchens? A bit tricky. I suppose we could amend the building code so that no house can have a kitchen at all and we all have to eat all our meals at the State Tofu Bar. What about the odd kitchen or two that has already been built? Bombing runs would be the go, but they got rid of the airforce. These killer shrubs and trees? Agent Orange worked well thirty years ago and I'm sure it hasn't lost its efficacy. Dow must have shedloads still in storage in New Plymouth waiting for just this opportunity. But wait a minute if we kill all the trees what about saving the Planet?

Bloody hell, its a hard life being a fully signed up bat shit mad, lunatic, left wing, Green nutter is it not?

Everything these fruit cakes propose on my behalf is stupid, unnecessary and interfering in my life. Go away.

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