Skip to content

Employers should be fined if they create unhealthy workplaces, as part of Wes Streeting’s plan to get unemployed people fit to work, according to a leading thinktank.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said employers that fail to provide a healthier work environment for their staff, such as subsidised nutritious food, should face regulatory action, including fines and public censure.

If they’re already healthy enough to go to the works canteen then they’re already healthy enough, right?

19 thoughts on “Cretins”

  1. Just image all the legal cases as people fall over themselves (no pup intended) to come up with “unhealthy” things at work. Laser printers, WiFi, the glue that holds down the carpet tiles, chairs, air con draughts are all examples of “health” issues raised by people I know.
    Yet another potential gold mine for the legal industry, well two gold mines as they get to represent both sides.

  2. To be fair andyf, I recently did the coshh assessment for laser toner at work.
    Not pleasant stuff.
    Wash your hands if it gets on you and don’t eat it.

    And a bad chair can cause back pain.

    The rest are fairly spurious though.

  3. Who needs to be told not to suck spilt toner off your fingers, Chernyy?

    Any product of the state indoctrination factories since Shirley Williams destroyed the school system?

  4. You’d be surprised, Julia.
    There’s some incredibly daft people out there. And plenty of just ignorant ones as well.

    I assume the toner-finger-sucking people are the same ones that are the reason I bought some shoelaces and the packet said “Not for eating” on it. The only warning on the packet and oddly specific that implies somebody tried at one point.

  5. I very rarely get any kind of cold and don’t ever remember having Flu, but when I returned to work a year ago on a short term contract I had a succession of coughs, sniffles, sore throats etc. Finished the contract and back to normal…..

    I always used to think that all the shit being breathed out by the staff went up into the air con, mutated and came down even more virulent and nasty.

    Also, I saw a very interesting vid on YouTube (by an extremely nice to look at Australian lady) which challenged the idea that stuff like the flu is spread by breathing it onto those nearby:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzGxKTzuDv0

    p.s. Regarding the subject of this post, when did the concept of personal accountability shuffle off this mortal coil?

  6. Subsidised nutritious food? Good luck to all those small businesses trying to understand the HMRC rules for when supplying food to employees counts as a taxable benefit.

  7. So cue all works canteens being closed and people told ‘Bring your own food’. If providing people with pie and chips at work is going to bring a sh*tload of bureaucratic crap on your head then just stop doing it. Or just install 2 vending machines, one with the usual crisps and sweets in, and one with ‘healthy’ stuff. Of course the healthy one will need emptying of all the items gone past their sell by date on a regular basis, but thats the problem of the vending machine company.

  8. @CD: ‘shoelaces and the packet said “Not for eating” on it.’

    Probably it’s aimed at people who loved eating liquorice shoelaces when they were children. Jolly good, weren’t they?

  9. “Or just install 2 vending machines, one with the usual crisps and sweets in, and one with ‘healthy’ stuff. Of course the healthy one will need emptying of all the items gone past their sell by date on a regular basis, but that’s the problem of the vending machine company.”

    The next course will be banning the one with the crisps and sweets. Followed by the vending machine company pulling all of their machines.

    This is what happened at my workplace anyway.

  10. @Chernyy

    Did you never try to lace your shoes with strips of liquorice? I certainly did… easy mistake to make.

  11. @Norman and PiP

    While licorice (and other flavour) shoelaces can be a tasty sweet, and the thought of tying ones shoes with them seems like something of a lark, even as a child I would never have thought to try eating a pair of actual shoelaces.

    Then again, I successfully made it to adulthood. Maybe there’s a horde of unfortunate children in the past who would have done had they not tried to eat a bootlace…

  12. Related and following a story from a week or so ago:
    I remember as a smalI child, seeing specialised shops that sold nothing but fruit and veg. Really, nothing but.
    Swedes, potato’s, carrots, disgusting green stuff that I refused to eat, apples, oranges (small ones are more juicy fnar, fnar), tangerines even – but only at Christmas.

    Nowadays, it’s impossible to get any kind of fruit or veg – you just never see any shops selling it, so it is obviously a great idea from HMG to try to get fish and chip shops to sell fruit……

  13. Chernyy Drakon – you escaped the fate of Henry King…

    The chief defect of Henry King
    Was chewing little bits of string.
    At last he swallowed some which tied
    Itself in ugly Knots inside.
    Physicians of the Utmost Fame
    Were called at once; but when they came
    They answered, as they took their Fees,
    “There is no cure for this Disease.
    Henry will very soon be dead.”
    His parents stood about his Bed
    Lamenting his Untimely Death,
    When Henry with his Latest Breath,
    Cried: “Oh, my Friends, be warned by me
    That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch and Tea
    Are all the Human Frame requires…”
    With that the Wretched Child expires.

    Hilaire Belloc

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *