Paul, mate, it's OK. I genuinely laughed when reading that - in a good humoured way.
I know you're bound by corporate etiquette - a yolk I cast off many years ago and much the happier for it - I was never much for sugar coating anyway.
Despite having spread my wings and freed myself from toeing the party line, the corporate speak thesaurus is still on the shelf and often referred to.
Never in the history of humankind has a sentence or a dialogue ever opened with the phrase "respectfully" which didn't actually mean "right you cvnt , you're talking bullox, you're full of shite and I'm gonna set you right."
It's just the way it is.... 😂 The effort is appreciated but the actual meaning is well known - and I don't mind at all.
I'd agree though, it probably is a damning statement - but also it is as accurate and succinct a way of expressing my personal feeling on the subject as came to mind at the time.
It's become de rigueur to challenge a position by asking for an evidenced based rationale - in many cases, rightly so.
In this case it is like asking me to prove something that I don't believe has happened - impossible.
What is possible is to reference the literally 1000s of adverse comments across numerous similar threads, predominantly from experienced and professional practitioners, which present a fairly unified criticism of the HSE driven imposition of what generally appears to be an illogical retro-step.
It should however be possible to evidence the arb industry accident based analysis which provides the unequivocal data to support this fundamental policy / training / practice change. I'm not sure we even have the means to collect the accurate data let alone analyse it in such a way as to derive credible need for activity changes.
You can't beat a bit of illogical bandwagoning 😂. Just ask Boris!
I recall quite clearly the AAAC workshop all those years ago in the depths of Cornwall - you quite clearly articulated the AA position that MEWP should be default and climbing only where MEWP physically couldn't be brought to site. Cost nor time nor inconvenience were valid reasons for not MEWPing and climbing was only acceptable in the risk hierarchy where MEWP was not possible due to access etc.
I got the point of that but I always felt it lacked a 'real world' (domestic arb) credibility.
Then we had that dreadful incident where the MEWP was firmly ensconced in the RA (it was in a park or something - can't rightly remember) and the blind obedience to pre-established RA procedure actually resulted in the site conditions not being properly considered, the MEWP was set up incorrectly and over it went. I can't rightly remember the exact details but it struck me then that the weak point was neither the system nor the equipment but rather the operators willingness to just follow laid down procedure rather than actually DO a dynamic assessment. That remains my personal concern for 'systems' to be given greater priority than proper checks, operator knowledge and experience.
All that said, I'd love a tracked MEWP and have been saving accordingly - but that is mostly because I'm old and increasingly idle 😂