Friday 17 July 2009

Modern Nursery Rhymes: Today’s The Day The Teddy Bears…

…cough up £ 70 insurance for their picnic:
There can be few things more sedate than a picnic.

But a council says they are so fraught with danger that organisers must take out insurance - of £5million.
It seems someone had an idea to hold a picnic on council land.
Ian Blackwell was stunned when he received the ultimatum from Totnes Town Council, in Devon, after organising a picnic for the local community.
He did this in response to The Eden Project's ‘The Big Lunch’ concept, which is pushing the touchy-feely ‘have lunch with your street’ concept in order to ‘bring communities together’.

Harmless fun, you’d think.

But they reckoned without the local council:
The council claimed that as the organiser, Mr Blackwell would be responsible for any accidents or injuries and needed 'public liability insurance cover'.

The 63-year-old businessman said: 'And yet if we had a birthday party in the park and invited friends and family along, we're apparently not responsible for their actions.'
Very odd…
He rang up for a quote - but couldn't get one because the insurance company didn't see his picnic as a risk.

'They couldn't understand why people would want to insure a picnic,' he added.
That’s because they don’t work for a council…

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha! wait until mr. Blackwell gets handed the, inevitable, sheaf of risk assessments forms to fill in.

Sue said...

What a bunch of little hitlers!

I'd have called an "unbirthday party"...

Oldrightie said...

When will this nightmare jobsworth culture ever end?

JuliaM said...

"..handed the, inevitable, sheaf of risk assessments forms to fill in..."

Oh, undoubtedly! There's a nice risk-free job for the council.

"When will this nightmare jobsworth culture ever end?"

When a lot more people start standing up (as did Phillip Pullman recently) and saying 'No! We're not going to take it lying down any more'...