Strawberry fields forever (
Read the full story)
A
story in the Sun today (click the headline to read) tells of a pick
your own strawberry farm that is closing due to health and safety
concerns. I have got to say that I have never really felt threatened or
in danger being in a strawberry field ... I have felt sick though due
to a slight over indulgence on the way around, and of course there
wasn’t any signs warning me that if I ate somewhere in the region of
three hundredweight of strawberries it may make me ill ... perhaps I
should sue? Apparently a strawberry field is no longer a strawberry
field “it is a strawberry factory”. A factory! My version of a factory
is a big dirty building full of greasy machinery and lots of noise
chucking out goods that are put on lorries and whizzed off to far flung
places. So this is somewhat at odds to a field in the countryside with
birds twittering and rabbits bounding around.
What about this then
say the health and safety morons, if we call it a factory we need to
apply some rules: first of all we need handrails along each of the rows
of strawberries and to make it absolutely clear where the corridors are
some wooden walkways please (please doesn’t mean please of course). We
need to have bridges across the rows so that people can easily get
across to escape in case of fire. Potholes created by above rabbits
should be filled in and dangerous bumps caused by menacing moles need
to be flattened, inspections on an hourly basis please. The result of
this is that the farmer has basically said bugger off and closed the
place down.
Questions: Do you think the farmer has been reckless
and putting his customers at risk in the past, or do you think that the
health and safety experts need to be put up against a wall? Answers
below please.