Loony labelling is loopy nannyism
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WHEN I think about it now, I can’t believe that I was subjected to a potentially lethal situation without any warning. Had I not survived to tell the tale, you might have been faced by a large blank space in your Press and Journal this morning where my column usually resides. Believe me, it was really dangerous. One false move and I could have ended up looking like Al Jolson, although lacking his frizzy hair, obviously. Nothing will restore the cute curly locks of my childhood now, sadly.
Soon, I hope to prevent other people from facing a similar fate by launching a campaign to make it illegal for anyone to manufacture, fit or use equipment of this nature without it bearing a prominent warning label in red-painted capital letters. The message will read: “Warning – if you stick your fingers into this 240-volt mains electric socket, you risk being fried like an overcooked bacon rasher”.
There, that should ensure no one ever uses a domestic socket without being reminded what might happen if they stick their digits into it instead of the plug.
I had no intention of doing so, of course. I never would, having been warned properly about such things when I was a child. We don’t label electric sockets routinely, nor should we, but I have a growing fear that it is coming.
The more that the elfin safety zealots get into bed with the PC pussyfooters, the more we risk dumbing down personal responsibility and losing our ability to apply simple commonsense to everyday situations.
The pathetic mantra “no one told me what might happen” is the creed by which outrageous compensation claims are fought through the courts for avoidable incidents that should never have happened had the victim used even half a brain.
Manufacturers now go to incredible lengths to protect themselves by telling us what should be self-evident. The result is loony labelling. There is the celebrated peanuts packet that instructed “Open packet. Eat contents”, and another that said “may contain nuts”.
OK, so that was in the US, where anything daft is possible, but there are many examples.
A bar of soap suggested “use like regular soap”, while the label on a frozen TV dinner said “serving suggestion – defrost”.
I laughed at the label that said “do not hold other end of chainsaw” and the warning that stated “may cause drowsiness” on a packet of sleeping pills. A domestic-appliance manufacturer warned “do not iron clothes on body” on one of its irons while a high-street chemist played safe on a packet of children’s cough medicine by stating “do not drive car or operate machinery”.
If you see a drowsy, peanut-eating, chainsaw-wielding, toddler driving a car on the main road, do please tell someone.
With the festive season approaching like a runaway train, take heart at the Christmas lights that were advertised as being “for outdoor or indoor use only”. If you think of any other uses, best keep your thoughts to yourself.
The Scotch whisky industry is the latest to be suckered into complying with this annoying nannyism. It announced last week that a responsible drinking message is soon to be printed on its advertising and point-of-sale materials.
At last, someone is going to warn me that if I drink too much whisky in a day, a week or a lifetime I will collapse in a drunken stupor, perhaps permanently. Well knock me down with a half-filled quaich. You learn something new every day.
Good job I will now be well warned of the consequences of tucking into my Hogmanay bottle next month. Methinks this is making a crisis out of a dram.
Despite the onslaught of stupid signs that assume customers are as bright as a whelk with learning difficulties, one real-life dummy is threatened with destruction by the ubiquitous elfin safety brigade.
Calum Angus has stood outside a butcher’s shop at Ullapool for more years than I can remember. He’s a 7ft caricature of a cheery butcher, complete with stripey apron, and brings a smile to the faces of visitors and locals alike, including me.
Those who would have us all wrapped in suffocating cotton wool aren’t smiling, though. Scotland Transerv says the jolly butcher is a public danger and detrimental to road safety. Bullocks, I say. I want Calum Angus to be reprieved with the other so-called “footpath obstructions” that make the village a cheery place and not the grey, dull, lifeless, homogenous, boring, comatose community that cheerless bureaucrats would prefer us to inhabit.
Perhaps those who are increasingly treating us like dummies should each receive a very special chair. They’re available in the US, apparently. When they take delivery of their new electric chair, I am more than willing to show them, warning notice or not, how to plug it in.
