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This morning I tripped over an orange cone that had been placed in a toilet to prevent me slipping on a recently cleaned floor.  Later in the day, after parking my car in a multi-story, I found a paper notice "Please do not leave rubbish in the stairwell" lying amid the burger wrappers and drinks cans.  Both examples of the law of unintended consequences which made me appreciate this article the more.  

Representing 13,000,000 people in sport, the CCPR (The Central Council of Physical Recreation) have been protesting loudly to the Government that licensing arrangements intended to limit binge drinking in public houses and night clubs should not apply also to bars of non profit sports clubs. The Government have responded by pushing the figures up a further 50%. Many sports club bars face rises in the order of many thousands of percent, those even able to find out at this stage what the rises will be. Sports clubs on tight budgets often depend on their bar takings to top up the finances. In some cases clubs will have to close. Sports clubs largely have members for whom serious drinking is the exact opposite of their interests and offer environments where serious drinking is not welcomed. Some people will be driven out of sports clubs which will now fold and some will move into environments where binge drinking is the norm, especially if licensing hour restrictions are removed. At a time when health issues and excessive drinking are hot topics we see people being pushed out of sport and into less healthy circumstances in the name of reducing binge drinking and making people healthier.

I am currently facing relicensing of my miniflare gun, not that I have been able to get replacement flares for a decade, the German manufacturers having the abandoned the British market after the Home Office made their produce unusable by redesignating it as a firearm with all that implies. This time the police want £40, four photographs and a pile of documentation. Last time, two referees had to fill out long forms about whether I was a fit person to have a firearm and I was supposed to buy a gun cabinet, starting price £40, presumably to use after I had washed the salt off and it had dried out although I am not sure whether I should have had them in the car and kayak as well. The cost price for this plastic handle and six miniflares was £29.95, just to keep a sense of proportion. This device floats and could be fired with one hand, meaning that it was not necessary to let go of the boat, unscrew a cap and pull a chain, using two hands each time a flare was to be fired, or to insert a flare into a pistol tube for firing. The result is that I no longer take the safest flare gun on the market to sea with me when I go out. From the Home Office point of view it is now much harder for me to shoot someone on land with one of these, not that it was easy before, only firing within 15˚ of vertical, perhaps one reason why nobody has been shot with one as far as I am aware. On the other hand, nobody can use one to save life at sea. Lives definitely have been lost because flares have not been carried by paddlers on the sea, the Lyme Bay case being a prime example. Some Home Office official probably thinks the part of the world to which he relates is a safer place.

It seems that some schools have abandoned swimming lessons because they cannot meet the recommended staffing ratios. Have an accident while not following the guidelines and your neck will be in a legal noose. It is better not to have lessons at all if enough staff are not available. So, less children are being taught to swim and more are drowning, a fact. It is inconvenient but we are saving the rare swimming pool accident in which someone could have been held accountable.

What have these three scenarios in common, other than the fact that they happen to be in this week’s batch? In each case, looking at the wider picture produces exactly the opposite outcome from what was claimed in the narrow circumstances for which the rules have been intended. It is also hard to put the blame for the final outcome on the original perpetrator in each case. Instead, the blame is usually piled on the person who has been put at risk.

As I write, exhibitors for the OS Outdoor Show are filling out their annual books of forms. One of these is a risk assessment, listing out all the things which could possibly go wrong and how they will be addressed. Perhaps those who devise regulations should also have to produce risk assessments covering all the outcomes of their rules, both in the immediate circumstances and further away.

Reprinted from The Canoeist Magazine, Feb 2005

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Last modified: February 11, 2006