Wonderful, eh?
The emergency services are being told not to attempt to save drowning people because of health and safety restrictions, it has emerged.
Amid a growing row over the failure of two police support officers to try to save a boy from drowning, both the police and the fire service disclosed this weekend that their frontline staff are instructed not to enter the water in case they put themselves in danger.
Are they the emergency services? Is someone drowning an emergency?
Good grief, what is anyone supposed to do? Call the RNLI out to a pond in Wigan?
Update. And an extremely interesting little note on PCSOs from Peter Risdon. Apparently so many of them are bent that there\’s no time left to investigate real corrupt coppers.
The problem is when someone goes in and saves another, we’ll hear them saying things like “though we are glad everything turned out okay, we recommend that members of the public do not attempt rescues such as this and leave it to the emergency services”. We see it with regards to dealing with criminals, the net effect being society is utterly dependent on the police and criminals can increase in proportion to this dependence. We’ll see it with accidents, furthering the level of this dependence, in precisely the circumstances where immediate action is often crucial.
Where credit is due:
“David Blunkett – who introduced CSOs – said that ‘as human beings’ they should have gone into the water to try to find 10-year-old Jordon Lyon.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7008077.stm
The story of the two PCSOs and the drowning boy is a metaphor for our times. We have allowed our personal and collective morality to be eviscerated and our internal controls and obligations to be handed over to the state. Only laws and regulations now apparently control what we do – and are allowed to do. If a box has not been ticked, or the right training, given then common humanity, decency and duty are set aside and count as nothing; we stand as empty shells.
James, a terrible truth beautifully put.
If only David Blunkett had dived in the river himself…
I’m sceptical about the Freeborn John piece, as well – it sounds like more of the not-altogether-reality-based anti-CSO bile that the Police Federation has been leaking ever since the plastic coppers were introduced.
“If only David Blunkett had dived in the river himself…”
I hold no brief for David Blunkett as a politician, but wishing a blind man a death by drowning is quite the sickest comment ever made by you.
Mind you, you do have a stiff record to beat with regards to sick comments, don’t you…?
OK, if you find someone in difficulties, in the water or elsewhere, ask him if he is a PCSO. If he answers Yes, leave him: you are not trained.
Otherwise do your best. It is all that can be asked of you.
[I hold no brief for David Blunkett as a politician, but wishing a blind man a death by drowning is quite the sickest comment ever made by you. ]
David Blunkett did in fact say that if he had been there he would have jumped into the water, so this attempt at high-minded moral shaming has rather embarrassingly gone off at half-cock.
“David Blunkett did in fact say that if he had been there he would have jumped into the water, so this attempt at high-minded moral shaming has rather embarrassingly gone off at half-cock.”
Yes, I was aware of David Blunkett’s comments, but they have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the point I was making, so your attempt to throw chaff in support of your ideological compatriot has proven (once again) to be useless….
Of course, I wonder if it is even possible for someone of ‘john b’s’ internet reputation to feel shame.