Or not, as the case may be. From The Metro:
Hundreds of Britain's pick-your-own fruit farms may be forced to close their gates to the public because of health and safety fears.
The increased burden of red tape has already forced the closure of pick-your-own fields at one farm. Phil Boddington says he can no longer afford to let people on his land after officials told him to cordon off potholes and install handrails on drainage ditches surrounding his prized strawberries...
The Boddingtons have been welcoming families on to their farm in Tregoney Hill, near Mevagissey, Cornwall, for more than 40 years. During that time just two people have been hurt while gathering fruit. However, a woman who was injured in a fall last year is in the process of suing...
Thursday, 4 June 2009
Strawberry fields forever!
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8 comments:
Wrong villain, as in most E&S cases: it's NWNF lawyers enforcing tort laws that have already existed with unprecedented vigour, not meddling bureaucrats.
John B,
It is basically a 'chicken and egg' question - which came first, the 'crats or the NWNF crowd.
Unfortunately it is obvious that the 'crats created the environment in which the NWNF crowd have enriched themselves.
So the implied villain is E&S as the Metro suggests. This story was also featured in today's Telegraph.
JB, as WfW says, you can take your pick from whining customers, NWNF lawyers, the insurance companies or the H&E boys - possibly even whiney farmers keen on a bit of free publicity - but we're talking about a field here FFS, of course there are ditches and pot-holes and stuff.
If you picked up your kids from 5-a-side football and one had broken a leg on a pothole and the other had nearly drowned in a ditch, then for sure, sue the organisers, but not a farmer.
Bugger I was looking forward to picking my own this year
It would have been cheaper to bury her where she lay.
Presumably the woman & her lawyers get legal aid for this case. Without that it would not be made.
The rule of thumb is that eegulations cost the regulated 20 times what it costs government to enforce them. With 200,000 assorted in the H&S mafia the wealth lost is calculable & since each 1% of GNP means 12,600 excess deaths it is obvious the H&S industry costs us over 12,000 lives a year.
Health and effing what concerns? Have these bureaucrats any brains at all?
JH, no. Nobody with brains would be surprised to see ditches and potholes on a farm.
If people really cared, then Strawberry Farm A would advertise that they have fewer ditches and potholes than Strawberry Farm B and the markets would sort it out, because Strawberry Farm A would be able to charge slightly higher prices, and if these higher prices more than covered the maintenance costs, it would make higher profits and so Strawberry Farm B would do the same repairs and compete away the higher profits.
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