Who would really want to stop a 79 year old female pensioner from doing a bit of gardening?
On the face of it, nobody in their right mind.
In the UK this week, yards of tabloid inches have been expended with heat and outrage at the mere thought that someone might stop June Turnbull from Wiltshire pursuing her hobby, and making her village of Urchfont look more beautiful at the same time. She has appeared in prime-time chat shows, looking decorative and saintly, where everyone appears to be on her side and have assured her that the world is gone mad. (I thought Adrian Childs on The One Show was unusually sycophantic.) And as the bandwagon has rolled on, I have found myself getting more and more annoyed, convinced that she, and they are mad, and that I need to tell them so. (If you can’t be self-righteously opinionated in your own blog, where can you be?)
On the face of it June has an unassailable case. As a young mother she developed polio and took up gardening as a way of making herself exercise and get out of the house. In her later years June decided to help brighten up her village by voluntarily tending a flowerbed at a traffic junction. Every year she pays hundreds of pounds out of her pension to buy flowers and compost, gives her labour of love, and occasionally, as a result, helps her community win the best kept village in Wiltshire award. She is keeping herself fit. She is contributing to the community. She is an adult making adult choices about what she does with her time and money.
You can imagine the outcry when a Highways Inspector from Wiltshire County Council spotted her at work and asked the Parish Council if it had the necessary Section 96 Safety Licence. He informed the Parish Council that it had health and safety responsibility for volunteers on county land. Mrs Turnbull has now been informed that she can only carry on doing her voluntary work if she wears a flourescent jacket, puts up three traffic warning signs (there are three roads approaching the junction with the flowerbed), and has a lookout to provide further checks.
June and her following have been incensed. Her two main arguments seem to be: it is my life and I can put it at risk if I want to; I am helping the community. But everybody seems to be missing the point. She doesn’t have the right to pursue a path of action if it potentially jeopardizes others. If she were killed, her community (via the Parish Council) would face thousands of pounds in fines and legal costs because of their culpable and reckless behaviour of allowing her to be reckless with her own life and potentially that of others too.
I have an office near a factory where there are forklift trucks and dangerous machines. It is a potentially dangerous environment where people wear safety equipment, where safe procedures are followed, and where only trained personnel are allowed to operate the machines. Image the response I would get if I approached the owner and said: “I want to keep fit, and I want to help you. So I have decided that I will do the following - I will bike round the factory floor each day with a broom sweeping up. I will do it as a volunteer. That will benefit both of us.”
Even if I were prepared to wear safety equipment, and even if I were prepared to accept responsibility for my risking of life and limbs, no employer in their right mind would contemplate accepting my generous offer. Some people need protecting, not only from themselves, but also from the potential damage they could do to others.
