Friday 15 July 2011

Make Up Your Damned Minds!

Blonde and fair-skinned Aimee had been taking part in a practice for the upcoming sportsday at Pennard Primary School, near Swansea, South Wales.

Mr and Mrs Bowen said they had raised the issue of sun cream with the school beforehand and were told pupils were not allowed to bring it in with them in case any children had an allergic reaction.
Ahhh, yes. Better that a child should suffer sunburn than another be allergic and suffer a reaction.

Maybe because the one could result in a big payout, while the other… *shrug*…act of god, innit?
Head teacher of Pennard Primary School, Sharon Freeguard, said: 'We follow guidelines issued in 2006 which are for the children to cover up, wear a hat and put cream on before they come to school.

'Parents are welcome at lunch-time to come to school and reapply cream if they feel it is necessary.'
Well, yes, I’m sure parents can take a long lunch-break, drive over to the school, get through the security measures that all schools will have in place these days, and reapply the cream.

I’m sure their employers will be understanding…
Bevis Man, from the British Skin Foundation said: 'When it comes to children, we need to be extra vigilant when it comes to protecting them from the harmful effects of the sun.

'Children should never be allowed to burn in the sun.

'By their very nature, children will spend a huge amount of time playing outdoors, so we need to make sure they don't burn during this time outdoors, whether it's at school playtime or at home in the garden.

'Sunscreen ought to be used to cover the areas that aren't covered by clothing, along with a hat to protect the ears and the back of the neck.'
Yes, we know all this. It’s not us you need to convince.

Of course, if you rely only on the Beeb to filter this issue for you, you end up making a total fool of yourself and blaming the wrong people...

17 comments:

Shinar's Basket Case said...

I thought the reason, or rather the nothing-what-so-ever-to-do-with-fuckin-REASON, for the VERBOT on sun creme at school was that any teacher applying any kind of lotion to the back of a ,say, a child's neck must be a P A E D O P H I L E ?

Come on, touching a child's body...with lotion....rubbing...

I mean...really

Chuckles said...

'None of the above' would, as usual, seem to be the best choice -

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8128781/Middle-class-children-suffering-rickets.html

James Higham said...

This sort of thing beggars reason. No one went on with this bollox a decade and a half ago.

Mike said...

if a child can rub all flavours of shite into its clothes, the walls, each other and their own face can't it use some hyper non alergenic suncream supplied by the school itself? also are not all the parts of said child likely to be exposed to sunlight not parts that would attract any paraniod pedo issue like legs face and arms, back of the neck is important too btw. finaly don't children go into schools taking pens and pencils that could quite easily be used to stab into another fucking childs eyes, so give your child the fucking suncream and sign some disclaimer that ensures that the teachers can be held completely fucking unaccountable for bieng responsible for children.

Mike said...

allergy my arse they're not ingesting it so the worst thats going to happen is a rash. if they did ingest it there are surely plenty of other things lying around that might cause an equal issue as this might in one in six billion, you know like each others shit or gravel.

Mike said...

send your child with suncream you provide and let a teacher be responsible for telling it to rub it on its own legs, arms and face, simples. take the sunblock into storage until needed. in just the same way as my rifle, issued to me at the age of 12, was kept in a range until i used it under supervision and was provided with ammunition as required.

Anonymous said...

You could just close the schools on sunny days.

Oh wait, that won't work. All the useless people who rely on despised teachers for free childcare while they shuffle papers at work and pick their nose as they look out of the office window would be seriously inconvenienced.

My bad. So I say, protect the office workers who get free childcare!

Anonymous said...

When I wuz a kid we wuz too 'ard to need pansy material like suncream. Even the girlies didn't use the muck and we lads wouldn't 'ave known of its existence. 'Coarse the liberal pansies running schools now couldn't have kept us in the places ... zzzz.

Owd Nerk

Mike said...

put them up chimneys or down drains

Anonymous said...

allcoppedout

Born and bred in Australia. Sun cream is for softcocks. Hot = seek shade.

Mind you, most of us get innocuous skin cancers.

Laban said...

Pennard is a lovely place though. If you have to get sunburn there are worse places to get it.

selsey.steve said...

I grew up in Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia respectively)
We'd never heard of sunblock creams etc. We wore long-sleeved shirts whilst playing in any available water and our school uniforms meant that we had to wear broad-brimmed hats.
I'm now over 60 and have still to feel the effects of not wearing the Oh-so-necessary sunblock.
What a load of alarmist nonsense this is.
If the kids had a more natural (i.e. EXPOSURE to nature) up-bringing, none of this nonsense would be talked about.

Hahahah! w/v= bacon!!

Anonymous said...

A bit odd as the anglo saxon (white) set are diminishing in number pro rata the need for sun block is more touted.

KenS said...

Is there a correlation between using sunblock and getting skin cancer? when I were a kid no one used sunblock and no had had heard of skin cancer. Then, gradually, people started smearing stuff over their bodies. And gradually we started hearing of skin cancer.

JuliaM said...

"...any teacher applying any kind of lotion to the back of a ,say, a child's neck must be a P A E D O P H I L E ?"

Yup, but they won't let the kids do it themselves, either!

"'None of the above' would, as usual, seem to be the best choice..."

/facepalm

"This sort of thing beggars reason. No one went on with this bollox a decade and a half ago."

We didn't have a huge state funded system of employees all trying to justify their continued employment then.

"...if they did ingest it there are surely plenty of other things lying around that might cause an equal issue..."

Quite, but the school will have a COSHH sheet for those, so it's covered.

JuliaM said...

"You could just close the schools on sunny days."

Heh! I thought they did, for about 6 weeks every year! :)

"Pennard is a lovely place though. If you have to get sunburn there are worse places to get it."

I hear the worst place to get it is the backs of the knees, as you can't...

Oh. Right.

"If the kids had a more natural (i.e. EXPOSURE to nature) up-bringing, none of this nonsense would be talked about."

Most of the parents would, I suspect, regard the relatively innocuous woods and fields of Pennard as just as dangerous as the Zimbabwean bush...

"Is there a correlation between using sunblock and getting skin cancer? when I were a kid no one used sunblock and no had had heard of skin cancer. "

Perhaps because they died of other things long before they had a chance to develop it?

Mike said...

Is gravel and mud covered by COSHH?