Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Fire!


The nick is having a mad drive on health and safety, the Fire Officer working himself to the bone to piss us off.
The latest rule is that we must remove the draught-proofing we improvise around our cell doors. As these doors have a gap approaching half an inch all around, and our windows are ancient and ill fitting, this draught proofing is not just a crazy affectation.
And - tell me if I'm wrong here - if there was a fire on either side of the door, isn't preventing either smoke or oxygen moving a good thing? Just a thought.

15 comments:

  1. You're not wrong, but this has to be balanced with the need and comfort of having air circulation. Stale and static air can make you feel sluggish. It might not be such a bad thing with the warmer weather coming along to have more air circulation. All the best x

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  2. Did anyone give a reason as to why the draught proofing is a fire hazard or is that too much to ask that someone might explain something!?

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  3. The illogic I read about on here is unbelievable, perhaps you could point out the draughts are a health and safety hazard?

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  4. These 'awareness' officers, need something to be aware of, so as to justify their wages. If it doesn't exist, they have to invent it.

    Create officers for health and safety, you end up with 'problems' of health and safety; likewise fire awareness generates hazard neurosis, which becomes the function of said officers. If we paid for rape awareness officers, guess what we'd be knee deep in... oh wait, we do pay for them, and we are knee deep in rapists.

    I wonder what will happen if we judged police performance on the number of arrests they make?

    Welcome to 'Cool Britannia' folks.

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  5. @ Jimmy Giro

    I couldnt agree more!!
    Thought judging by some of the comments you have made previously I may be vilified for saying so!!
    Oh well, :-)

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  6. The police get a kick out of arresting people, and of course they keep the stats. The more arrests they make = greater chance of promotion

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  7. @ Giro: "If we paid for rape awareness officers, guess what we'd be knee deep in... oh wait, we do pay for them, and we are knee deep in rapists."

    I wonder how true that is, given that 90% of rape cases taken to court do not result in conviction, let alone the numbers that go by unreported.

    What bizarre logic you have Jimmy

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  8. Given that advice when trapped in a fire is to stuff towels under gaps in doors, surely you can claim for draft excluder is a pre-emptive fire control move on the basis that with the cell door locked you are automatically trapped in the event of a fire?

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  9. In fact, how does fire safety deal with the fact that you are automatically trapped in a room should a major fire spread through the building?

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  10. Sorry for the triple post, but @ Anon 11:13am, that statistic is somewhat misleading. The conviction rate for those rapes that end up in court is ~50%, about the same for murder and other serious offences. The fact is that most cases do not make it to court for lack of evidence or witnesses pulling out.

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  11. Ben has made it onto the longlist for the 2011 Orwell blog prize...Fantastic and well done!

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  12. Re:- Ben's blog on the longlist for the 2011 Orwell blog prize; that is wonderful news Ben, hope it can go further, fingers crossed x

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  13. All modern fire doors have gaps between the door and the frame. When there is a fire the door expands and the gap allows the expansion to create a tight fit and does not wedge closed.

    Have a flush door and there is a fire, the door jams.....

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  14. Yaaaay........Go Ben. So pleased about the Orwell.

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