Santa and his elves must wear seatbelts for Christchurch’s Christmas parade following new health and safety advice – a move labelled by some city councillors as “woke nonsense” and “over the top”.
Christchurch’s Christmas Show Parade director Jason Reekers said an audit of the parade’s floats recommended installing seatbelts on some of them.
This included Santa in his sleigh and the elves, Reekers confirmed. Other floats have also had safety bars installed.
Reekers said there was an “extremely low” safety risk but said no one had fallen off a float in the 75 years the parade has been running.
“With today’s health and safety rules and with WorkSafe the way they are, once we’ve had something brought to our attention, if we don’t show that we’ve done mitigation, then we’ll be held liable.
“So, we kind of get put between a rock and a hard place.”
This is the consequence of a safety at all costs mantra.
It is inane that a float which moves at 5 km/hr needs seatbelts. Are they worried one of the fake reindeer will panic and storm off?
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
3 comments:
Common sense doesn’t seem to be very common, anymore.
There is Health & Safety and there is CYA (Cover yer Arse)
I wonder how long it will be before safety belts on toilet seats are mandatory?
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