Here's the full story from this week's BBC News. It involves a goth called Dani Graves (real name? not sure - good name for a goth though, you have to admit) who on occasion and with consent chooses to escort his "Goth Fiance" (great name for a band) Tasha Maltby around their "lovely" (not) hometown of Dewsbury .... on a dog lead. Her parents must be so proud. The practice, we assume, gets the desired effect of getting them noticed and maybe raising a few hackles on the "squares" of middle Dewsbury (right on!)
Apart from increasing the already significant risk of getting them beaten up by skin heads, casuals, or other such lunatics, it has recently caused them additional minor inconvenience as they have been excluded by the Arriva bus company from using their public transport. Seems that one bus driver in particular initially implemented the "ban" and Arriva, possibly without fully thinking things through, have decided to support his stance - on health & safety grounds. Apparently they consider the risk that a fellow traveller will be garroted by the dog lead, should the bus brake sharply and unexpectedly, to be unacceptably high. Could this stance have something to do with the fact that Arriva have recently started using "Mr Bean" episodes as risk assessment training videos?
There's a point to be made in all this though. Occupational Health & Safety is a serious discipline. Its aim is to protect the health and well being of workers and the general public alike. It has a noble cause, you could say. However it fundamentally relies on a sensible approach to the assessment of risk and nonsense like this does nothing to help the noble cause. Frankly what appears to have happened here is that the bus driver has taken a dislike to the attention-seeking, stupid, but perfectly legal, behaviour of these two articles and decided to unilaterally ban them from any bus he drives. The bus company has failed to think things through as the story plopped suddenly into the public eye and, in a desperate attempt to justify its rash, and potentially otherwise unjustifiable decision, has pulled out the old "health & safety" card and opened up the discipline to yet more misunderstanding and ridicule. In the process they have made things ever so slightly more difficult in the future for the rest of us OHS practitioners. Check out this link for more on a theme
Arriva is a big company and will have a health & safety unit of considerable size and, you'd think, qualification and experience. In our humble opinion, they should know better. The people below, may not, but that's the public for you. Here's a photo of the "Dewsbury Two" - relax girls, he's taken
If we may make one final practical observation, it would seem that in this photograph, the two young lovebirds have dressed expecting two quite different weather patterns