Common Sense vs Health & Safety.
This little snippet is taken from a Telegraph article on H&S vs Common Sense:
For 16 years, Hilaire Purbrick lived in a 7ft cave that he had dug out of rock on his allotment in Brighton. Largely isolated from the outside world and surviving on what he grew on the land, he caused no one any bother. Until, that is, Brighton & Hove City Council stepped in. It had Mr Purbrick's dwelling checked by the fire brigade, which discovered – surprise, surprise – that it did not have enough exits; so an injunction was sought against Mr Purbrick, 45, banning him from entering the cave on the grounds of health and safety.
Mr Purbrick is unquestionably eccentric; he may even have been squatting on land that he does not own, and this was a ruse by the council to get him off it. However, the idea that he cannot live in a cave because it has no fire exits simply defies belief. It is one of those stories that over the years has had us all shaking our heads in bewilderment and asking how, and why, we have become so preposterously risk-averse. As Lord Young of Graffham, the former Tory chairman who has been asked to carry out a review of health and safety laws, says, they have become a joke and a rich source of material for the "you couldn't make it up" school of journalism.
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