Online Sun Article (http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2003030569,00.html)

Now I know the Euros of completely lost it! What, is there a department of playground safety in European countries? There has got to be more important things that the leadership of the EU could be spending their time on.

Hmmm... It's almost as bad as the cucumber directive. They decided that "the curve of a cucumber must not exceed 10 per cent of its total length if it is for export". Yep, the days before we got that rule were truly hellish, with all them crooked vegetables running loose. (I wonder if they can even spell the word 'moron'?)

Since when do we have an "Department of playground safety", oh and yes, the idiots in Brussels and Strasburg are corrupt bureaucrates :mad:

But erm, Americans elected Bush, own BMG´s for home defence :rolleyes: why not RPG´s?? and have legalized corruption :p

[ January 23, 2003, 16:47: Message edited by: Morgoth ]

Is this a prank? I'd like to see something from a RELIABLE news source.

Excuse me, but I do take this seriously. There are set dirctives for playground safety, and THEY ARE IMPORTANT! These standards and directives are there to ensure the safety of the children! So that the kids won't, say, get their heads stuck between the pipes of one of those climbing thingies and choke, or fall down because something fails and break their arm, or something else as disasterous!

You think it is foolish and unimportant to set directives that ensure that playgrouds are safe for kids to play in? Think about it for a minute. Sure, those swings mentioned in the article are safe and have not injured anyone, but there probably are hundreds of unsafe swings out there...

Those regulations are made to keep kids safe. Just like they inspect toys to ensure that kids won't get hurt.

I don't like EU, by the way. It's just that SOMEONE has to make those safety regulations... if not them, then the goverments.

(Getting down from te soap box now)

[ January 24, 2003, 13:16: Message edited by: Arabwel ]

Well said Arabwel. It's just like when playgrounds used to have concrete floors. They changed them to wood chips because kids were falling and hurting themselves. And did you know that roundabouts were banned because a kid fell off one and fractured his skull??

It seems to be one more of the EU myths created by British nwewspapers, like "No more Caerphilly Cheese in Caerphilly, says Brussels". In this site (http://www.cec.org.uk/press/myths/index.htm) you can find lot of myths similar to this one.

I was looking for that the other day BOC, thanks for the link.

On topic, some safety guidelines are indeed required when it comes to places where children play, to a degree unsupervised. That's just common sense, I have to agree.

I'm inclined to believe that these days the UK government already set rules for a lot of things long before any sort of imposed ruling comes out of the EU, but the papers only pick it up when these rules are "enforced" by the big bad Europe.

Too many Europhobe newspapers here in my opinion.

This reminds me of an incident in a park about four houses from where I live. About seven years ago, this park had a tire swing in it. There were warning signs. Everywhere. Then, one day, some teenage girls come and decided to go on with thier legs sticking out. Not very surprisingly, one of them is now in a wheelchair for life. They removed the tire swing, and put in some normal ones.

Now, I'm not saying that this is the same, but still. It doesn't matter how much you warn the general public, somebody is going to get hurt.

Are you kidding me, I sure wish I had something like that. Then I would know for sure that all those distance jumping contests that I won would have been won under some regulation rules, now that would be some proper bragging rights.
C'mon getting hurt while running out of control at a playground, like trying not to be IT and slamming face first into a metal pole that materialized out of thin air, is what being a kid is all about. It also shows you who you want on your team to play Red Rover. The one who after gaining conciousness starts crying, or the one who laughs madly and is not IT.

A lot of safety standards are promulgated by independent (i.e., non-government) organizations, the adopted as gospel by the regulators. Take building construction - there's a group on the US west coast that set itself up as an authority, and many municipalities are adopting their standards instead of trying to come up with their own. I wish I could remember their acronym.

For another example, take bicycle helmets. ANSI and Snell simply set guidelines for what makes an effective helmet. They have no authority to force any manufacturer to abide by them, but most do anyway. The marketplace has demanded it.

If the EU is going out and developing its own new set of standards, that IS a waste of time. However, setting regulations to adopt existing standards is more like basic CYA government meddling. Sounds to me like this playground simply got caught in the wrong enforcement place at the wrong time.

Makes perfect sense. This was the scapegoat PlayGround. Make an example out of that one to teach all the other swing-sets a lesson, except it won't stop there, ohh nooo.

The slides will be next, they look too tall, someone could fall and break an appendage.
Those monkey bars don't look safe, someone could fall and break an appendage.
What about those swings, someone could fall an... already covered that. Oh I know Those fields are dangerous a kid could trip and break a arm, and a leg, and be struck by lightning. Or not.

I have to disagree with all the constant limits and regulations concerning safety. Accidents as such are almost inevitable. They are a part of the world and you cannot avoid them.

And the more rules and bans are set, the less fun you have, basically. We mustn't forget that the world is and always will be a dangerous place. So why limit our childhood fun? To reduce the number of accidents by 1?

Give it a break.