Health and Safety gone mad.

[skyhuck]

Not very "handy" for a "handy man".

[ukminch]

It doesnt actually say his employer asked him to do it, it says 'he was asked'. The owner of the hotel (presumably his employer) said she was away and would have had tree surgeons in to do it, and he says he should have tied his ladder to the trunk not the branch. It could have been the other gardener who asked him to help. We dont know.

 

TBH i reckon the judge should have told him where to go, and to stop wasting taxpayers money.

 

I can't see how the taxpayer would have paid for this, the fine and cost would be there to pay the council and court costs???

 

Yep he was stupid in doing it, I certainly wouldn't have done so. The hotel owner will always say after the case I would have, I wonder how many times in the past they have had tree surgeons in - Like I said we don't know the full story, hopefully the court did. I also know that people that age struggle to get employment, so he may have felt pressured to perform to keep the job

 

By the gardener asking him to help, it would be implied that there is a hierarchy and the gardener effectively became his supervisor, and accordingly will be acting under instruction from the owner. Therefore there must have been a breakdown in communication/negligence on the part of the hotel, hence the fine and compensation.

 

On the whole I am against no win no fee type claims but this one seems to be a chain of events that had several links to stop the accident. If it had been the gardener on his own I'd probably have less sympathy as he should have the knowledge to carry out/arrange for the task to be carried out safely.

 

R

[bareroots]

If you walk out into the wilderness and can't survive you don't deserve to come back.

 

If you climb a ladder and can't climb back down it...

 

self responsibility. get on with it. enough rights with out responsibilty.

 

The Darwin Awards have a place.

[ukminch]

Thats the point though, it wasn't self responsibility he was asked to do something that was foolhardy and dangerous. He'd not long been in the job, is at the age where you're prone to making mistakes, yet felt the need to perform.

 

If it had been me that had done it I would fully expect to be told, your own stupid fault.

 

R

[Rupe]

The other end of the scale would be to say that at, if at any point the employers thought the he was stupid, or millitant, then they should/could of sacked him before this event occurred.

 

I'm all for workers being compensated, but I'm also all for workers being sacked if they hint at the fact that thay might need compensation.

[ukminch]

Definitely, as I said we don't know the full facts but hopefully can learn from it either as an employee or employer

 

R

[Mesterh]

Its all because we have allowed stupid people to live and breed.

 

The future is full of thick idiots with 10 kids, mark my words.

[Tom D]

Nothing surprises me given our compensation culture these days, however there is more than a touch of hipocricy here: How many threads are there on here moaning about "handy men and gardeners" doing tree surgeons work.

Now we're all taking the side of the hotel (who cut corners and used their handy man to do tree work) against the courts.

 

£2015 is a lot to get a tree cut, maybe next time they will employ a pro.

Either we have a free for all and let anyone do the job and accept the bad workmanship that will result or we allow the H&S to do their job and prosecute the cowboys, thus sending more work in the direction of us pro's.

 

 

 

I'm genuinely not sure where I stand on this, but you can't have both.