Health and safety regulations? Don't make me laugh..

A FEW months ago I had an e-mail from someone in Surrey complaining about being a member of more than one club, and having to pay two lots of extra subscriptions.

In the majority of clubs now, it is no longer the case that someone goes around at the AGM shaking a tin to extract your county subs. Instead, they are automatically paid for you by the club, along with your subscriptions to ELGA and the LGU, and the total is added to your annual club subscription.

I suspect I’m not alone in letting it all pass by me largely unaware. In fact, I was prompted to look at my own invoice, (which, as usual, was filed away until the last moment I could get away without paying it before the curt reminder letter arrived) and just saw that the other invoices had been added to my subs. But it didn’t say how much I had been charged.
My Surrey informant revealed that £4 is deducted for membership of the County, £7.50 for ELGA and £2.50 for the LGU.

I have to agree, it does seem a little unfair if you have to pay twice to every organisation just because you play at more than one club, and common sense would dictate to me that one set of payments could be dropped. However, when has common sense ever been applied in the world of golf?

Actually, I think it is more appropriate to assume that common sense is rarely used these days because we are never allowed to use any. Health and safety have well and truly seen to that. In the good old days, you wouldn’t admit to tripping over an uneven pavement, since it would simply earn you a clip round the ear for not looking where you were going, and scuffing your shoes.

Any fool knows a cup of coffee is hot, so if you spill it on yourself, it’s your own stupid fault. If you slip on a chip on the floor of the canteen, it serves you right for not paying attention. Don’t go running off to the lawyers, and don’t go treating me like an idiot by warning me that hot coffee may be hot, or that a nut bar may contain traces of nuts!

Thus, you can just imagine my reaction when I was sent the latest Srixon driver to test, and the following warning was attached to the grip: ‘FOR YOUR SAFETY. A golf club can be dangerous if not properly used and you should not use it for any purpose other than golf. Make sure that you swing a club only in an area cleared of people, and also make sure that your club will not hit trees, posts, ropes or any other impediments when you swing. Check your golf club before you use it to make sure that it is not cracked or broken because a broken shaft may cause injury…‘

Oh my word! They could not have picked a worse person to send that to. I despise political correctness, health and safety and human rights (since they only apply to criminals) with a passion.

When I got to the part warning me that a broken shaft may cause injury, I wanted to snap the shaft over my knee and go and cause some serious injury to the person who wrote it. Without going into too much detail, he/she might have been reluctant to sit down for a while afterwards!

That actually reminds me of a saying by Stephen Baker, “A professional will tell you the amount of flex you need in the shaft of your club. The more the flex, the more strength you will need to break the thing over your knees!” But I digress.

I also read about someone saying that if the situation gets any more ridiculous, before we know it the PC brigade will be campaigning to have unbreakable glass in all the fire alarms! And I have a lot of sympathy for their view and their frustration with the way things are going.

If you are so much of a half wit to consider swinging a golf club in the middle of a group of people, or impaling someone with a broken shaft, you wouldn’t be on a golf course anyway. You would either be locked up already, dreaming up more ways to claim compensation for infringing your human rights by curtailing your unassailable right to inflict GBH on someone with a club, or you would be in an office somewhere dreaming up more ways to take the fun out of golf!

That isn’t to say that the criminally minded aren’t out on the courses as well. A number of years ago playing at Walsall, I was warned to watch my ball carefully on a particular hole because boys would shoot out and pinch them. With my boundless store of golfing trivia, I can inform you that in 1637, a boy was hanged in Scotland for stealing golf balls.

Had a similar fate befallen me at Walsall, I would have been at the head of the queue campaigning to bring back hanging. Knowing my luck, he would already have had his ASBO overturned because his no win, no fee lawyers had pleaded he was suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder, so he would have been awarded a free holiday instead to go and try out all his stock of golf balls in the sun.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with hanging, public floggings or even a little hanging drawing and quartering. After all, it never did Guy Fawkes any harm. For one teensy weensy error of judgement, over four hundred years later, nearly every house in the country still throws a fireworks party for him each year. How many Big Brother or X Factor contestants will be able to say the same?

Just as long as they don’t bring in golfing ASBOs. I don’t think the tag would go very well with my roll top socks in summer!