Posts Tagged ‘nanny state’

UK recreation roundup

The Lincolnshire town of Boston has canceled its annual flower and craft show, a major tourist draw, because it believes the risk of litigation is too high to proceed without hiring licensed stewards at prohibitive rates. (Nick Britten, “Flower show wilts in blame culture”, Daily Telegraph, Apr. 16). In Scotland, “Schools across Renfrewshire have banned pupils from taking part in after-school football [soccer] over fears they would be sued for injuries. … They were banned because volunteer coaches were not covered by the schools’ insurance schemes for after-class games.” (“Legal fears prompt football ban”, BBC, Mar. 12)(via Greg Skidmore, Mar. 14). At the secondary school in Chippenham, Wiltshire, students kick around a soda bottle (presumably of plastic rather than glass) after the school banned conventional footballs from the recess field; at other schools, tag and marbles are now against the rules, and don’t think of touch rugby. “Lots of people just play with bouncy balls, but I suspect that’ll be banned too before too long,” says a 15 year old boy at Abbeyfield (Tony Freinberg, “Can we have our ball back, please?”, Daily Telegraph, Mar. 20). And: “Children have been banned from collecting chickens’ eggs at the National Trust’s showpiece farm [Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire] because it is now deemed by health and safety advisers as too hazardous.” (David Sapsted, “Trust bans children from egg collecting”, Daily Telegraph, May 17).

However, in a widely noted case, a swimming club seeking the right to take winter swims in ponds north of London in the absence of lifeguards won a victory in the high court against the Corporation [i.e., city] of London, which “had claimed that it risked prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive if it allowed unsupervised dips.” Mr. Justice Stanley Burnton

ruled that the corporation had fallen into legal error and said club members should be able to swim at their own risk. He spoke out in favour of “individual freedom” and against the imposition of “a grey and dull safety regime”, adding that by granting permission to the club the corporation would not be liable to prosecution for breaches of health and safety.

Mary Cane, chair of the Hampstead Heath Winter Swimming Club, said:

“This was a test case with wide implications for all open swimming in England and represents another successful attack by ordinary citizens on the nanny state and the cult of health and safety.”

Ms Cane said that the club was proud to have played its part “in re-establishing an important principle of personal freedom in this country, taken for granted everywhere else, that responsible adults must be free to decide for themselves whether to pursue recreational activities involving an element of risk”.

(Clare Dyer, “Hardy bathers win right to swim unsupervised”, The Guardian, Apr. 27; Joshua Rozenberg, “Pond swimmers win right to take the plunge”, Daily Telegraph, Apr. 27; “Take the plunge” (editorial), Daily Telegraph, Apr. 27).

A new regulatory regime for tobacco?

Fred Smith, the president of the Competititve Enterprise Institute, makes the case against pending federal legislation that would “[p]ut the Food and Drug Administration in charge of regulating tobacco in exchange for a buyout of farming quotas.” The proposed deal would, according to Smith, “strengthen the nanny state at the expense of individual choice, increase black market activity, hurt lower-income consumers, and, perversely, create new health risks for all Americans.” (Fred L. Smith, Jr., “The FDA poses threat to our health, liberty,” Investor’s Business Daily, June 21 (PDF file)).

Quota buyout legislation was passed by the House of Representatives on June 17 as title VII (the “Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act of 2004”) of H.R. 4520, the “American Jobs Creation Act of 2004.” The focus now shifts to the Senate, which is apparently considering the deal outlined by Smith’s op-ed. For more on this, see Will Snell & Kelly Tiller, “Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act of 2004,” U. of Ky. Dept. of Ag. Econ., June 2004 (PDF file); Jasper Womach, “Tobacco Quota Buyout Proposals in the 108th Congress,” Congressional Research Service, updated April 6 (PDF file); Blake Brown & Gary Bullen, “Tobacco Buyout,” N.C. State U. Dept. of Ag. & Resource Economics.