Yesterday, a human interest news story was kicking around the airwaves in Britain. Essentially, a couple of interested "experts" were saying that tackling should be banned when boys or girls are playing rugby at school.
Indeed, tackling during school rugby matches or practice sessions can certainly result in injury. Every year a handful of schoolchildren incur serious injuries whilst playing rugby - injuries that might even put them in hospital or worse still, in wheelchairs. I guess I was just plain lucky. I played rugby regularly between the ages of eleven and eighteen and never suffered a single injury worth mentioning in all that time. I loved rugby - the exercise, the camaraderie, the strategy and the weekly battle to beat the opposition. In my humble opinion, if you took tackling out of rugby it wouldn't be rugby - it would be something else.
Wouldn't it be great if we could eliminate all danger from the lives we live? Reduce the possibility of accident to a bare minimum. To complement the appeal to ban tackling in school rugby, I have come up with the following five proposals:-
1) All staircases to be made from foam rubber so that if people fall, the possibility of injury will be massively reduced. Where feasible, a pit filled with foam rubber blocks should be placed at the bottom of every staircase.
2) The eating of fish should be banned as fish contains small bones that may cause choking and possibly death. In my experience even filleted fish can contain stray bones so filleted fish ought to be included in the ban.
3) Dog ownership should no longer be allowed as every year thousands of people are admitted to hospitals following dog attacks. There isn't a year that passes by without a few people being killed by dogs. This has to stop. To fill the void dog owners can have cats or hamsters instead.
4) In winter when it's icy outside, it should be illegal for senior citizens to step outside their front doors. They must stay safe inside because icy pavements (not sidewalks) cause so many injuries and broken bones each winter. Statistics show that old people are significantly more vulnerable than younger folk.
5) On our nation's roads a speed limit of 15mph should be instituted right across the country - on urban, suburban and rural roads as well as motorways. This will almost eliminate road traffic accidents and thereby pave the way for an astonishing fall in the number of road deaths we see each year.
Have you got any other safety proposals you would like to bring to the table?
I think cyclists and motorcyclists should be encased by padded cages with some kind of seat belt to keep them in place for when they crash, and crash they will.
ReplyDeleteAnother, you will need to seek bank manager approval to buy anything that costs more that a couple of hundred of your currency if you are going to put it on your credit card.
Sensible ideas Andrew. We are on the same wavelength sir.
DeleteMy young son-in-law played his first season of rugby this year and finished it prematurely with a dislocated hip. He will recover but it's been a significant injury.
ReplyDeleteChiropractic treatment should be outlawed because it's risk of causing injury is so low as to be almost negligible but it freaks people out and doctors don't like the idea. Or maybe we should just put everyone in straitjackets so the freaking out doesn't cause injury.
Maybe not straitjackets. Perhaps those big padded sumo wrestler suits.
DeleteCats should be kept in cages!. Or be pure white!. I,m forever tripping over fur ball Molly. Sure she finds it a game middle of night lying in wait outside bathroom door, need to do a bit of a dance to avoid squashing her.
ReplyDeleteThe Cat Dance could take off as a new disco craze Kirrie! Why not film yourself doing it and stick it on YouTube?
DeleteActually, I wonder if people die from allergic reactions to cats? I think if we're banning dogs, we should ban cats too.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, it IS interesting to me (coming from America, where the wearing of helmets is mandatory for football) that rugby players don't wear helmets. Rather than banning tackling, wouldn't it make sense to have players wear helmets? It wouldn't eliminate all injury, obviously, but it might eliminate some very serious ones. (Though I have no statistics about how many rugby injuries are head injuries...)
Hey, what have you got against cats man? As for helmets in rugby, I don't think so - but perhaps scrum caps should be mandatory. However, what would life be like without risk?
DeleteWell, I'm not supporting number 3!
ReplyDeleteYou could have a golden hamster called Hammy and walk him down to the shops on a tiny lead. It would be rather like having a dog.
DeleteIt should be illegal to open windows above ground floor level. If you lean too far out, for example, to get a better view of Mrs Scroggit sunbathing in the nude in her garden, you could have a nasty fall. Worse still, you could land on Mrs Scroggit!
ReplyDeleteAll this PC stuff about safety is mad. Kids cannot even play with conkers any more. It's a crazy world we live in now.
To be truthful, I wouldn't mind falling on Mrs Scroggit as long as Mr Scroggit is out at his pottery class.
DeleteYeah. I remember all that stuff about banning conkers. Crazy! What about skipping with skipping ropes? That's very dangerous!
i think we could give gainful employment for many if all electric cars had to have a flag waver walk in front of them. But then again they would run over the flag waver because he couldnt hear the virtuous souls driving the wretched things . Or maybe two pushers for every electric car looking for fuel or an electric charging point in Lincolnshire?
ReplyDeleteDo they have electricity in Lincolnshire? I thought it was still candles, oil lamps and black-leaded kitchen ranges over there.
DeleteOur council has just announced that dog walkers will be fined if the dog warden finds out an owner hasnt got a plastic poop bag on them...what are they going to do? Search me
ReplyDeleteWill linen or paper poop bags be allowed? Perhaps all dogs should be required to wear disposable nappies when being taken out for walks.
DeleteCows want banning, as they frighten harmless hikers into jumping over barbed wire and struggle along overgrown fields instead of using the public path leading right across the pasture. I could have ripped my capri pants jumping over that wire, or sprained my ankle on the other side, had I not landed so gracefully!
ReplyDeleteI wish this incident had been filmed for YouTube! It would have gone viral!
DeleteI can understand the concern with the amount of medical information coming to light about CTE - brain injury caused by repeated blows to the head. Isn't rugby like football in that respect? (and without helmets, yet)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.livescience.com/50163-football-cte-brain-disease-risk.html
Personally, I don't think any sport is worth the risk to youngsters' heads and futures.
But (sigh) in the interest of joining the mental challenge put before us here, I would say ban all pencils because they are pointy. Make everyone do crossword puzzles in ballpoint pen. Make children do their letters in crayon only. And never, ever let teenagers carry them around - they are next thing to a knife, are they not?
Golf balls cause a lot of serious injuries each year and so do cricket balls. Riding bicycles is also dangerous - with or without helmets. Pointy pencils are notorious for causing serious eye injuries so I applaud your suggestion.
DeleteNot any as crazy as these. I would go nuts on the 15 mph thing. Then it would be dangerous to have a nut on the road
ReplyDeleteThe nut on the road might be eaten by a squirrel.
DeleteAll the political-correctness, and "umbrella" rules about this that and whatever else...like some clowns here in Aus are trying to ban swings at playgrounds...is a load of crap!
ReplyDeleteSlides and roundabouts can also be fatal.
DeleteAllowing cats to wonder about outside at night should be banned as swerving to avoid killing them on the road can cause one to swerve into the path of another road user. Although not swerving does serve a purpose I suppose.
ReplyDeleteThis wicked comment has been forwarded to The Cats Protection League in Gillingham.
DeleteI think that you'll find that there are now proposals to licence cats in the same way as dogs are in order that their owners are answerable for cats being a hazard on the road.
ReplyDeleteI understand that the proposals have been forwarded by a fellow called Victor Meldrew who works as a volunteer warden at Elmley Nature Reserve in Kent.
DeleteWrong on both counts - wrong name and I'm a Volunteer on The Swale NNR
ReplyDeleteI am shocked Derek. You seem to be implying that I was referring to you as a Victor Meldrew-type character! I would never rib you in this way sir!
DeleteStop my husband trying out 'new' recipes.
ReplyDeleteI heard is arsenic sponge pudding was especially good for troublesome spouses.
DeletePS, as a cat lover I never serve 'leftovers' to cats.
ReplyDeleteNot even best fillet steak?
DeleteBan humans, I say...they're the most dangerous of all!
ReplyDeleteYou mean - no more reproduction? No more sex?
DeleteWhoever has left over fillet steak
ReplyDeleteHow many boys and girls play rugby? 5%? I didn't play for more than a term and I went to a rugby playing Grammar school. On the other hand, how many young people drink alcohol? Something that definitely increases your chances of injury, fights, falling over and breaking something, not to mention sexual assault, crashing your car .... Let's not even start on the use of illicit substances. The health and safety brigade need to take a long hard look at the numbers of what really causes harm to young people.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't mention Toxacara Canis or Cati.
ReplyDelete