I'm Back (and a rant about rules)

Sorry folks to have been away so long, went down with a nasty dose of flu that just wouldn't go away and haven't had the energy to pick myself up off the floor. Nothing to do with swine flu or anything sufficiently exotic for us all to get excited about pandemics........ I'll leave that kind of rubbish to the gov't, maybe they should have called it torreodor flu 'cos then I could make all the jokes about bullshit etc.

Anyhow, I wanted to say how much I appreciate reading Ken Frost's Blog "Nanny Knows Best", I do truly think he 'gets it'.

In work I have been quietly arguing with people about all the health and safety rules, I really do think that introducing rules to cover everything we do actually makes our workplace more dangerous, I have noticed that people are just following 'the rules' and not thinking for themselves - it comes as a complete surprise then when they have an accident because 'they followed all the rules'. Unfortunately the usual response is to introduce more rules - doh!!!

Recently I got thinking (aha, now I know where the headache came from), and realised that this over prescription of rules is actually at the heart of many of the problems troubling our society - people have stopped thinking for themselves, they no longer consider whether what they are doing is right or wrong, they only want to know whether there is a rule that says they can't - if there is no rule then it must be OK!!!!!!

This thinking is highlighted by the recent claims of so many MPs - they didn't do anything wrong when they made their expenses claims - they didn't break any rules.

Maybe I'm being simplistic here, but I always believed that MPs had an obligation to be honest and ethical, Surely they shouldn't need 'rules' to tell them that it is not right to claim for mortages you don't even have, for expensive 'duck islands', for moat cleaning, for multiple second homes, for porno films etc etc etc.

Just WHAT do they think they are doing? I always understood that expenses were there to reimburse you for money you spent in carrying out your duties, not perks to be exploited to the maximum!

My dad always said "rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools", I think he had a damn good point and it's about time that this collection of fools did the honourable thing and resigned en mass in order to give us the opportunity to either believe their claims to behave ethically in the future or to replace them with somebody we think we can trust.

Please read Ken's blog on the matter at http://nannyknowsbest.blogspot.com/2009/05/system.html