Rising Bollards Again. Might be scrapped?

Oop, a ray of optimism, careful!

I can hear a choir singing in the background ;-)

Who is to blame? Who says so? Someone has to make the judgement and it's going to be either the insurance company or lawyers, because it can hardly be the people involved as they're far from partial. Neither is the insurance company, the closest people to being impartial would be the lawyers...

So have my friends and family, I've not heard of any knock-for-knocks..

Not really, I think you might find that there's a little dark storm cloud following you around...

Seriously, while there are bound to be situations where lawyers and "Knock-for-knock" stuff has kicked around, I've not heard of any in my circle of friends and family, and not much being moaned about online, if it was as prevalent as you seem to think (i.e. in almost every case) then there'd be some kind of, well, evidence.

Blimey!

It's not a case of just smiling along with everyone else with eyes closed, it's just that you only seem to see evidence that supports the doom and gloom side of life.

Sorry mush but that's just not the case. There's constructive criticism and there's doom-mongering, some people just wait for disasters, don't remember the bits that work and just remember the bits that don't work. You do appear to belong to this camp, as did I some years ago. Not noticing when things work but noticing when they don't isn't "seeing things as they really are".

Anyhow, cheer up FFS, it's much better to be your own boss I'd agree but people doing things for the right reason is more prevalent than people doing it for the wrong reason, you just don't notice it as it's the norm.

|| That's partly true, but the biggest problem is people with job || titles like "Health & Safety Officer" (a job created simply || to deflect the blame from managers as yet another ploy || to avoild taking responsibility for their actions when they || report to the MD) who have rather empty days to fill, and so || invent problems.

As someone whose current job title is exactly that, I should say a word or two in my defence. I was put in charge of H&S after an accident to another employee (all his own fault, and he admits it) caused the H&S people to descend on us from a great height. I have been given a free rein to go through the entire company, do the necessary assessments and put things right. I have found all sorts of dubious or plain shoddy practices and I have not yet had one of my recommendations questioned or refused. And some have cost serious money. The one condition I insisted on when I took on the job was that I would only deal with real risks, not trivial ones. Done right, health and safety is a very positive thing to promote in any kind of business.

|| H&S should just be part of a project managers/line managers role, || without someone picking holes all the time.

Ideally it should, but all the project and line managers I know have a very healthy focus on performance and profit, and quite right too. They need someone "picking holes", or they would never consider issues such as - one example - how do I make sure everyone is accounted for if there is a fire?

|| I'm not surprised kids are glued to their computers to get || adventure - Scouts etc can't even eat the food they cook these || days, never mind building rope bridges, death slides etc etc. || It's getting to be a very dull, sanitised world......

I agree.

|| The goverment only creates laws if there is a percieved need.

And what is the most common profession of government ministers, including Our Honoured and Beloved Leader and his greedy sponging wife?

including

The Government only make laws when they want to be seen responding to a problem rather than applying the laws that we already have.

My proposition is that for every new law, two should be repealed. Dammit, they've been passing laws constantly for hundreds of years, we don't need any more !

AWEM

Machinists being given piece work rates that could only be achieved by leaving off the guards is another example.

Nor have I ever come across it.

Ditto.

Greg

If they were settled on blame they would ALL have to go to court, what do you think your premiums would be like if that were the case?

Oh come back to reality Richard, very few people involve solicitors in anything other than conveyancing, that's why so many solicitors specialise in this type of work, most of the rest do wills and divorces. General legal practices do very little litigation despite this litigation culture we're developing, that's done by a few specialists. And if you consider how much work you get for your money with a conveyancing compared to the estate agent who does sod all you get a good deal from them. I can only assume you've had a really bad experience, but most people haven't.

Greg

Reality check, the railways mess was created by a government privatising a publicly owned infrastructure and trying to artificially engineer competition, similar messes have arised with gas, electricity, telephones, water, etc.

To blame H&S people for this is truly perverse.

All true, but NOT caused by the legal profession, caused by the artificial carving up of the industry into separate private companies. Each has shareholders to please so inevitably will not simply accept liability for anything they don't have to, each has their own insures who likewise have shareholders so won't blindly accept responsibility.

Yes it's a mess and frankly a disaster for the country, but you're directing your anger in the wrong direction.

No, way off the mark, government is the self perpetuating organisation you should direct your anger towards. Government is NOT the politicians you elect for a few years but the hoards of unelected beurocrats who outlive any politician.

Government creates laws primarily to preserve it's authority, systematically tightening it's grip on society. Secondly it does things to increasing the power and wealth of individuals within it's ranks by adding beurocracy and fuelling their businesses interests Thirdly it appeases a bunch of politicians who are themselves there to appease the population by maintaining a facade of democracy.

The third motivation is the only reason we ever get laws that benefit people, such as the fundamental shift of responsibility from workers to employers that is responsible for the boom in health and safety, to the benefit of employees and cost of employers. A difficult ballancing act for government because it conflicts with it's secondary movivation.

Insurance companies are in business to make a profit just like everyone else, they're not charities!, how can you expect them to pay out when they have a reason not to?

Lets get this right, insurance companies don't instantly pass a claim to lawyers as that would be far too expensive. First their ordinary low paid staff assess the claim, they talk to their counter parts in the insurance company of the other party and if they can agree at this level they do, because that's the cheapest option and keeps your premiums down.

Failing that they pass it on to higher paid staff called loss adjusters who get into the nitty gritty of the more complex cases, very few claims ever get any higher than this because it's just not worth the cost of involving the legal profession.

If you're very unlucky and it involves potentially large sums or money (we're usually talking serious personal injury claims here), and the case is not cut and dry, then and only then do the lawyers get involved.

Why would insurance companies pay lawyers to be involved in a case with a maximum payout of say =A35k for a right off?, it would be idiotic and push the premiums through the roof.

So the world's ills are due to lawyers and H&S staff?, hmm.

Greg

You should try employing people. Lawyers are an everyday part of life :(

Latest one is a claim from an employee (someone else's thankfully) that his human rights have been breached by putting his initials on labels of product that he produces.

We also took Solitaire off some industrial Windows CE terminals - that ended up as a complaint because it was "a training aid"!

When employees decide you have 'wronged them' (legally or otherwise) it's cheaper to pay them off than to fight them. The paperwork and time in a Tribunal case is enormous. The same applies to those employees who trip over masking tape. Thus a huge 'where there's blame there's a claim' culture has sprung up - you can earn more by making claims than by working.

There was a family not far from here convicted of deception fairly recently - they were in the habit of deliberately braking in front of cars and causing shunts to get whiplash compo. They'd had literally dozens of payouts each.

Whoever blamed the greed of the GB public had it dead right unfortunately....

I agree the present situation is a nightmare for employers, but putting it into perspective they only account for a tiny percentage of the population. The people making claims are also a very small minority, I certainly don't know anyone who has ever done it, so I stand by my assertion.

Twas me, but there's nothing new in greed, what's changed is the legislation that lets them translate this greed into money, that's the real problem that has to be tackled. Greg

|| Twas me, but there's nothing new in greed, what's changed is the || legislation that lets them translate this greed into money, that's || the real problem that has to be tackled. || Greg

No, I think there has been a change in people's expectations. Nowadays, people expect everything to be supplied to them, cost- and problem-free, or they get angry and looking for a fight. "I have my rights, you know!" Look at some of the people hit by this Farepak thing. The perpetrators disappear, and there is a huge fund created to help the victims out, contributed to by businesses and individuals who have no responsibility for the mess but wish to help people in difficulty, and next we see them on TV saying it's not enough, only 15p in the pound, it's ruined the kiddies' Christmas, the Govt should do something, etc. It's a sad situation, they've been conned, and I feel sorry for them, but since when did I (as a taxpayer) have responsibility for reimbursing every Tom Dick and Harry who made an unwise financial decision? I've made a few of those* and no-one's bailed me out yet.

I have no idea why that one's had publicity, other than the christmas angle, but if you want an example of when this doesn't happen, bear in mind the thousands of people who have been paying into occupational pensions but have lost the lot because their businesses went bankrupt owing the pension fund millions. No-one's stepped in to help them out despite it being a much more deserving case. Protection is now in place to stop this happening again but those to whom it has already happened are stuffed.

Basically, when there's a cute fluffy animal or some other hook to make a good story out of some plight or another, publicity drives a humane response, but if it's just a bunch of wrinkly blokes then it's ignored even if the lax regulations put in place by the government played a large part in pension mis-selling.