Cultivating wimps

I can’t help but think that we are well overdue for a very long awaited re-adjustment in the way we deal with individual responsibility in society. For decades we have been moving inexorably down a path, initiated by Grey People, of subjugating everything “individual” in favour of the common good, the group, the community, the disadvantaged, the minority, our cultural and personal safety and health, our environmental responsibility and our mental welfare. What we have sacrificed in the process (or would sacrifice if the Grey People had their way), is leadership, competition, individual responsibility and risk taking.

We did, however, badly need the culture change that “political correctness” – (call it what you will) –brought for us. Those of us inhabiting the middle ground socially and politically were generally approving of the fact that cheats, bullies, bigots and zealots got themselves placed at a fair and reasonable distance from their selfish goals and ambitions now and then. We even took some vicarious pleasure in watching as minorities gained political representation and mixed it up with the elites, as “para-olympians” crossed the finishing line on wheelchairs, as women were given better protection under the law and rightfully occupied positions of power and influence, as children were given freedom of expression and validation, as unscrupulous employers were held to account for exploiting people and the environment.

Unease sets in

Then, we started to feel a little uneasy:

How about a little risk in our lives?

Lily livered bureaucrats

More in the ongoing and entertaining developments in the UK health and safety arena, where there is a refreshing campaign by safety authorities, politicians and lately, the insurance industry, to counter silly “jobsworths” who give health and safety a bad name.

Lily-livered bureaucrats have been hiding behind “health and safety” to avoid personal responsibility or the effort of thinking constructively. In a nutshell, stories about banning conkers and ice slides in playgrounds, Santas having to wear seatbelts on their floats, science lessons being dumbed down, councils banning hanging baskets, are not due to the HSE (DoL equivalent), or insurance companies, but to urban myths or silly bureaucrats who are too stupid or scared to make intelligent risk based decisions.

In January this year, PM Gordon Brown promised to fight this “nanny state” culture. He has set up the Risk and Regulation Advisory Council, and one of its first tasks will be to examine "systemic risk aversion".