This is health and safety gone mad
ANOTHER week, another health and safety loony tune and another one of the good guys bites the dust.
Step forward newly sacked station master Ian Faletto. Ian’s not just any station master, he’s an award-winning one, picking up a string of gongs year after year for managing Britain’s officially recognised Best Small Railway Station.
Single-handedly (and working unpaid overtime) he polished brass fittings, planted trees and spent his own wages
buying flowers, sweets and magazines for commuters using tiny Lymington Halt in Hants.
They naturally enough think the world of him.
The other day this throwback to an earlier, more conscientious age spotted a shopping trolley had been thrown on the tracks.
Horrified, he rang through to his superiors, asked them to switch off the electricity and went out and recovered the trolley – plus some assorted rubbish.
There was no danger; the next train wasn’t due for at least half an hour. But later that week his area manager suspended Ian for breaching health and safety rules.
“But I was trying to prevent an accident!” an astonished Ian protested. He might as well have saved his breath. The suits at South West Trains subsequently sacked him for “gross misconduct”.
Yup, that’s right. An experienced station master who takes decisive action to avoid a possible train crash is, according to the health and safety police, committing gross misconduct.
There’s a campaign to have him reinstated but don’t hold your breath. Those clowns wouldn’t recognise a piece of
quick-thinking and initiative if it bit them on the bum.