"Killing people at work is getting cheaper!"

I'm going to do that annoying thing of posting the full text of an email on my blog. You need to be thinking about this stuff.

The "Health and Safety" Executive today announced that the average fine for a conviction on a health and safety offence has dropped by 21 percent over the last year.

Commenting on this news - which shows the grubby reality behind the
government's spin about promoting a safer workplace - Mick Holder of the London Hazards Centre said

"This is very bad news indeed. Employers are getting away with killing,
disabling and injuring their workers at the expense of a paltry fine.

"Many cases involving the death of a worker are still heard in the lower,
Magistrates Court, which does not reflect the serious nature of the crime and restricts the fine to a maximum of £20,000. Nothing will change until errant employers face real sanctions such as prison and much higher fines that reflect the seriousness of the crimes."

Tchhh. When will these knee-jerk liberals understand that weeding out the weak in favour of the strong is a good thing? I mean, obviously, if you're desperate enough to be in a job that threatens your life or health, then you're inferior to your employer.

Examples of fines in recent court cases:

* SUPERMARKET chain Asda was fined £4,000 recently after Brian Costin, 42, a warehouse worker was crushed to death at one of its Yorkshire stores in July 2000.

Graham Naden, who trades under the name Roof Build was fined £2,500 and ordered to pay £3,750 compensation to the family of Terence Severs, one of his workers who died after falling off a roof. Huyton magistrates heard that Terence Severs life could have been saved if safety scaffolding which costs just £100 had been used on the job.

Farmer James Thompson was recently fined £7,500 following the death of seasonal worker Sean Dodds, 24, who died when a forklift truck he was driving toppled over at Redhouse Farm, Hepscott, near Morpeth in October 2001.

Information for health and safety activists at www.lhc.org.uk

www.simonjones.org.uk

Sure, to the Guardianistas who worry about this kind of thing, the fines might not seem like a lot. They probably spend that much on pashminas every week! But you have to look at these things in context. What's the point of bankrupting companies or imprisoning decent, honest businessmen, just because they were unlucky enough to have a little accident occur on their premises? You have to ask yourself: how much is the life of one of those sorts worth? It's not like they're real people; why, I bet some of them weren't even homeowners.

If you ask me, the UK has gone safety mad in recent years. The nanny state has far too much power. Don't people realise that financial weath is a clear indication of a person's worth, of their fitness to survive? We don't need more saftey precautions in the workplace, we need fewer! And while we're on it, what's all this namby-pamby nonsense about child labour laws? We need to weed out the undesirables at as young an age as possible. What Britain needs is a rolling programme of realistic safety targets and conscription for any child over the age of seven who flunks their SATs. Your bleeing hearts are diluting the gene pool, people!