Tuesday 8 March 2011

FakeCharity Du Jour

The BBC wheels out its template yet again...

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is proposing to reduce unannounced workplace inspections by a third, the BBC has learned. A leaked letter from the HSE outlines plans to withdraw inspections from entire sectors of industry, including some where "significant risk" remains...

The move has caused concern among health and safety campaigners. Professor Rory O'Neill, editor of the safety magazine Hazards, believes it signals a fundamental departure from the HSE's role as safety watchdog. "The HSE's job is to make the workplace safe, but now it's being explicitly instructed not to do that job right," he said, "The implication for health and safety is that workplaces will become deregulated."


The HSE are in my bad books for perpetuating myths about white asbestos, but who be the publishers of Hazards?

Ah... their website says "Sponsored by National Union of Teachers, Unite The Union and Unison - The Public Services Union.

6 comments:

Bill Quango MP said...

Why is it so hard to stop this nonsense. Fake charities receiving funds to tell us to give them funds. Paying toddlers to go to school. Council propaganda newspapers. Even away day cabinets.

Sigh..

Salamander said...

White asbestos - Chrysotile may be less harmful than the amphibole asbestos types, Amosite and Crocidolite, but the point is white asbestos is often found together with the more dangerous types that definetly cause cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma. Are you willing to take the risk?

Google Thetford asbestos for more info

Bayard said...

Salamander, the vast majority of white asbestos in this country is in the form of corrugated roofing and walling sheets or rigid board used for soffit linings and the like. In this form it is bound with cement in such a way that no fibres are released, even if the boarding is smashed up. The only danger from it is from the dust caused by grinding or drilling and this danger is no greater than that from other dusts like sandstone, coal or slate.

"Google Thetford asbestos for more info"

Well I did, and turned up nothing to say that the chrysotile mined at Thetford was contaminated with amosite or crocidolite, only evidence of a lot of scaremongering and compensation seeking.
The worst that was said about chrysotile was that it was a "known carcinogen"; well, so is coffee, but I saw no calls for that to be banned.

Stop scaremongering!

Mark Wadsworth said...

BQ, I dunno. Because voters are stupid and politicians keen on empire building?

Sal: "Chrysotile may be less harmful than the amphibole asbestos types, Amosite and Crocidolite, but.,.."

Oh come off it. That's like saying "Chalk powder may be less harmful than plutonium or arsenic, but..." See also what Bayard says.

neil craig said...

If it isn't directly funded by government I wouldn't count it as a full fakecharity. Perhaps a semifakecharity.

UAF the street thugs set up to defend our freedoms by beating up BNP supporters in Parliament Square while the police looked the other way, are largely funded by government unions. Tho be fair to them they have also been publicly approved by the leaders of the Labcndem Party so a bit more official thugs than "semifakecharity" would suggest.

Mark Wadsworth said...

NC, fair point, but it is funded directly by public sector trade unions, which themselves are funded directly and indirectly by the government ('Union Modernisation Fund').