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My word, this really is a surprise.

The HSE credits the Health and Safety at Work Act with an 84 per cent reduction in employee fatalities between 1974 and 2010, as well as a 75% fall in non-fatal injuries.

Fancy that.

Bureaucracy claims it is doing a good job.

Isn\’t that just amazing?

5 thoughts on “My word, this really is a surprise.”

  1. I’m really glad for them that there are no other possible factors that could mess up their calculations. Well done HSE, keep buggering on!

  2. Hmm. Last time my HS consultant came through, she measured the height of the hanging fire extinguisher in reception and stated it didn’t fall between the approved heights.

    I said, “bol***ks. we got all local users (some of whom are a little height and strength challenged) and found that they could all move the thing (it’s a heavy 0ne) ‘cos the height we put it at allows them to get a hand under it and still push up.

    We documented it. But she is adamant. We’ll get fined if an inspector comes round.

    Great stuff! Rules is rules, innit?

  3. Well, as accidents at work were generally described as industrial injuries back in ’74 & Maggie was able to totally destroy British industry from ’79 on, reckon the credit for the fall should go to the lady with the handbag & the Safety elves be made to account for why the current levels are so high.

  4. I read somewhere (it was a book by either Ron Bailey or Bolch and Lyons) that simply raising real incomes of British workers by 10% in the late 70’s would have had an effect on mortality equivalent to ending all (yes, all) workplace deaths. This isn’t to say that no such deaths would have occurred, but more to point out that wealthier means healthier.

  5. Re David Gillies@4

    HTF would that work out?

    Back end of the 70’s I was working in a UK,manufacturing company.
    In ’78 the unions screwed out of the company a 10% pay rise, a 12% productivity agreement on top of that & we got an extra 5% shift premium payment plus as much fictitious overtime as we wanted.*Should think my main health risk was alcoholic poisoning.
    This was the days of double digit inflation. It wasn’t the people in work that were suffering because we were all on the catch-up merry-go round. It was the pensioners & those out of work who found prices of services & in the shops heading up beyond their means.

    Sounds like someone’s talking serious bollocks.

    *Factory closed ’80 when the manufacturing went abroad. It’s now an executive housing estate. The other big employer in the town went the next year. That was two household names.

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