This is fanning the flames of nonsense (From Bucks Free Press)

This is fanning the flames of nonsense

6:30pm Saturday 31st December 2011 in Look Who's Talking

AS we enter the year of the London Olympics, I am heartened to read of plans being made to ensure that we come out the other side of the international limelight unscathed.

Scotland Yard has announced that it has anticipated a problem that less caring bodies might have overlooked. Apparently there will be 28 police officers accompanying the Olympic Flame and its assorted bearers on its 70-day journey around the country. Not only will these officers be running alongside the torch, but they will sleep by the flame at night, conjuring up beguiling images of fully uniformed PCs, truncheons in hand pounding the pavements of the UK and then sleeping in shifts at night in lay-bys on the A40.

Clearly compared with their more mundane duties of confronting violent looters or drug-crazed hooligans this element of their duties is considered potentially more onerous and risky.

After they have completed their journey, the officers will be given counselling to help them reintegrate into their more normal activities, like being harangued by the foul-mouthed youths that a judge recently ruled was something they ought to be able to cope with without recourse to the courts. Running alongside a flame however could result in the stalwart officers struggling to get back to reality after being the centre of attention for so long.

Clearly the genius who came up with this plan has failed to register that the flame and its series of temporary carriers are what we will all be looking at briefly as they glide by, not the impassive escorts. Does the army offer counselling, I wonder, to the soldiers who act as royal escorts during the Trooping of the Colour? I somehow doubt it.

This kind of nonsense will only stop when the courts adopt a more robust attitude to damages claims from people who try to blame others for their own mistakes or ignorance. It is fear of the success of these claims that led, for instance, Lincolnshire Police to issue staff with written advice on how to eat their lunch. How else would these police officers have known not to eat out-of-date food or leave their sandwiches in warm cars? And several Government departments have used the services of a company that teaches staff to walk. ‘Heel, ball of the foot and toes – in that order’ apparently! I wonder if they’ve told the flame escorts that?

Welcome to 2012!