Mark Thompson said:Quoted message said:He explained that the sign was for H & S reasons, to prevent walkers
suffering injury from horses or cyclists rampant.
Quoted message said:This is illogical. What about protecting cyclists from horses 'rampant'
(or the other way around), or for that matter, protecting cyclists from
cyclists and horse riders from horse riders? Sounds like a complete idiot
over reacting, as seems to be the case in all silly 'Health and Safety'
rules.
I was walking in Dalkeith Park the other day, and a kind man employed
by the Scottish Executive handed me a safety leaflet. It was a map of
the area identifying hazardous places, and on the other side was a
list of hazards and to avoid them. Let me quote.
"ACTIVITY: walking near watercourse or ditches within Dalkeith Park.
HAZARD: Contamination, slips, trips, and drowing.
PROPOSED ACTION: Avoid walking near the bank of the river and other
watercourses."
I think this may have been a response to some of the locals doing
really dangerous things in Dalkeith Park, like living in tree houses
suspended by ropes over the river in order to obstruct the cutting
down of the trees to make way for the nice new bypass. A real hazard
for drowning there, if the National Eviction Team were a bit careless
about how they cut these protestors down. Naturally the public wanted
to watch the fun, but they could easily have tripped over tree roots,
slipped in mud, drowned in the river, etc., so the NET kindly erected
a public viewing platoform in a safe place where trees obscured a lot
of the action in case you got too excited.
The river was clearly marked on the map the kind man gave me, so that
I could avoid going near it. But if I'd done that I wouldn't have been
able to meet the protestors who were camped dangerously close to the
river :-)
--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]
