I would have loved to work with Fred on the chimneys, I have absolutely no interest now as the health and safety and paperwork that would be involved aren't worth the effort. I used to love climbing sports pitch lights to do repairs, climb on up, attach linemans belt at the top so you had both hands free, no harness or any of that. Not allowed to do that now...
Working on another site where everything was banned, step ladders, hop-ups, orange high viz jackets, you name it it was banned. Had to first fix using these useless podium things, wobbling about on their wheels, too wide to get where you needed so you had to overreach. We were told we had to use the chain that went across the top of the steps to stop us falling out, a nightmare when you only want to wack some clips in and move on. I forgot the chain was there, stepped back, and because the chain was so low it ended up tripping me backwards and I fell off the thing. An accident that wouldn't have happened had h+s kept their nose out and I had been using a step ladder.
On the same site 2 of us nearly fell down a stairway thanks to a 'safety' barrier. The barrier was heavy and constructed like a hurdle out of scaffold poles, the one on the floor we were working on had not been fixed. We were looking into the stairway for cable runs when we leaned on the barrier it tipped. Fortunately we were able to grab it, if it had tipped forward the base of the barrier would have hit us from behind and knocked us both down the open stairway. If the barrier was not there, we would not have been in a position to fall.
I have really good eye/face and hearing protectors, but the larger size means I can't wear them with a hard hat. Not being allowed to remove your hat indoors, I was forced to risk damage to my hearing and sight by wearing less protective eye and ear covers just to tick a bloody box. Fortunately all the work we are doing at the moment allows us to follow the guidelines of the HSE rather than some ----er in a site cabin, and use PPE that is appropriate for the task being carried out.
He even forced the BT chap to wire his DPs and phone points wearing building gloves...
On a similar health and safety mad site, one bloke cut his fingers off with a circular saw, and another fell out of a window and died. I stood back and watched the blokes working, and you can see they were so used to everything being super safe that when there was an unexpected hazard they were completely oblivious to the danger.
One lot of sites had none of that, but everyone working there was aware and acted accordingly. No accidents, no near misses.
