Nanny state madness strikes again.

[legendaryone]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/here ... 403886.stm

[Shirley]

Unbelievable!!!! I don't suppose they could just allow someone to PICK the pears?? Noooooo that would be far too dangerous... grrr doh...

[legendaryone]

I don't suppose they could just allow someone to PICK the pears??

And risk someone strain themselves and pull a muscle ??

[Shirley]

True... or they might get a splinter or some pear juice might drip into their eyes...

or a mutant pear might eat the person doing the picking...

how stupid it all is :)

[Wombat]

I like the mutant pear idea!

[Andy Hamilton]

If this was nearer and not 50 or so miles away I would be up there picking them. Surely it is cheaper to pick them or offer them to other to pick at their own risk.

[2steps]

totally crazy whata bout when conkers start falling? will they be reguarded as dangerous too? I was thinking about another example of this yesterday. After dinner my daughter was watching the cbbc channel on tv, which it seems has a bed time hour and then tells you child it's time for bed now, of you go so now you don't even have to worry about routines and bedtimes as the tv can do it all for you!

[Chickpea]

I used to work in a place where the car park was under a row of horse chestnut trees and I did worry about them dropping through my windscreen in the autumn.

I do like the cbeebies bedtime hour though. We built it in to our bedtime routine - pyjamas on, then they could watch the bedtime hour which was always slow-paced calming programmes, then it'd be brush teeth, story and lights out. I liked it better when there was only about an hour of kids TV on each day, so you might aswell go outdoors to play because it was better than watching Pebble Mill or The Sullivans or Crown Court or whatever dreadful daytime grown-ups TV was on.

[Andy Hamilton]

You describe my childhood chickpea, although I think I used to watch Pebble mill at 1 and that rubbish australian soap. - all depended whos house I was around after school. If it was my grandads then it would be horse racing and that used to get me up and doing stuff. I never understood why he got so exicited watching it when he said he only would bet 5p at a time, hmmm.

[2steps]

yes, bedtime hour is good if used correctly like most things but it gives me an uneasy feeling that people won't. we never used to watch tv much as children and don't let my two sit there for hours as I want them doing other things and I do think some programmes really aren't approriate even if there mean tto be for children! I read somewhere recently that your brain is more active while sleeping than when watching tv which, if true is a scary thought.

I got hit on the head by a conker once and they do hurt but how often does it really happen? and if children can't get the conkers they can't hav ethe fun of them either. min dyou my sons old school banned them incase someone got hurt. It's good to worry about safety but really it does go to far sometimes and it annoys me that the school gets blamed when it's not there fault

[Chickpea]

When I was a kid conkers were banned in the school playground but we used to play them on the way home instead. I don't think banning conkers is anything new and I don't think it's really a threat to the tradition. Playstations and Xboxes are more of a threat. And black canker.

I agree with you about "kids" tv programmes often not being appropriate. But I'm even more worried about the adverts. I don't want my kids learning that only branded goods are worth having, or that they won't be happy until they buy the latest whatever-it-is, or that's it's OK to get into debt because you can still get a car or a loan if you've a bad credit history and anyway you can get out of debt again in "just three easy steps", or if you fall over you should sue someone, or, oh, stop me now before I start frothing at the mouth. Adverts are evil. Never mind sex and violence, I'd like to see all TV ads banned before the watershed.

[2steps]

god yeah and there are loads of credit and other money type adverts on during childrens tv. I don't like food adverts either as too often they are for unhealthy foods.

[shiney]

The world is going mad! Dangerous, killer pears. The compensation nation!

For goodness sake.

[mrsflibble]

don't pick pears, next it'll be don't pick blackberries cos you might get scratched and then you'll get soil in the scratch, it'll get infected, turn gangrenous, and then your hand will drop off.....

[Shirley]

I guess we were dicing with death today then when we were picking elderberries and sloes... the elderberries might have juiced us in the eye and we may have pricked ourselves on the blackthorn!!

Fortunately that didn't happen and we've got masses of fruit instead... :)