Health and Safety: Wasting your time or saving your life?

On my drive into work this morning I listened to Five Live Breakfast Your Call which was on whether health and safety had gone too far.  The timing of the phone in was fitting as on the news tonight was a report on Tate Modern who have stopped visitors walking on an interactive exhibit of 100 million porcelain "sunflower seeds" for fear that it'll cause dust that visitors to breath in.

Now you would of thought that the Artist and the Tate would of assessed before hand the likely hold of the dust problem happening and looking into ways to avoid not allow visitors to interact with the installation.  Few years ago the Tate had another installation known as The Crack, in which a number of visitors fell into, this didn't result in the Tate altering how the visitors interacted, they assessed the risks and had people in place to warn of risks but didn't stop visitors interacting as they wishes.  

Why not let visitors make the choice for them self with the sunflower seeds.

Sainsbury's Supermarket & Sport Village plans

Nearly a month has passed since I went to view the plans Sainsburys had for Kendal Cricket Club's current ground.  Looking at the plans I was more disappointed as the lack of consideration for how to deal with increased traffic that the development would create to an area that already has a big effect on Kendal's traffic.

Looking at the plans they want to add a set of traffic lights on Shap Road - yes more sets of lights for Kendal.  It reminds me of Tesco at Carnforth which has a similar set of traffic lights on a busy A6 road, try to go through it once and you'll know to avoid the area next time round.  For Kendal it'll be even worst as we also have the Appleby Rd junction, usually you can filter of Shap Rd but I can see this set of lights creating a new bottle neck for traffic coming from town.  

Also as this end of town in the coming years we will getting more traffic, today I found out that the group that own Kendal Auction Mart will in the next two weeks announce formally plans to build a new auction mart on a 24 acre site near the M6 junction 36 between Moss End Lane business park and the Lancaster Canal.  As part of the deal (subject to planning permission) the land on Appleby Rd will be given over to the developer for house builds in return for some land at the new site and the developer also building the new auction mart. The developer plans to submit planning applications for both sites in early 2011.  The original application for a new auction mart was turned down and the developer withdrew the housing application I assume as a result of the turning down of the mart application.

Getting back on topic above is an drawing on the proposed store, looks like a clone of national stores, doesn't look like it's been adapted to take account of the buildings in Kendal

The Sports Village doesn't appeal to me, It struck me that all the facilities are mainly aimed at the cricket club rather than across all sports on the site, which indicates that the design is intended to persuade Kendal Cricket Club to move rather than for the good of the local sporting community.  The site is on a flood plain, locals know how much water hit the site every couple of years (becoming more frequent), this drags dead bury on to the site that needs cleaning up.  There have been a couple of letters in the Gazette relating to flooding in this area, one putting over the point for the flood problems and another countering the flooding issue point mentions something I wasn't aware of.  In the consultation document it implies that the site will be flood protected which I took to be fully protected, turns out only the cricket ground and some of the pitches will get the flood protection.  The majority of the site with just get drainage, a clean up will still be needed when it floods.

I'm disappointed that the village doesn't capture for any popular outdoor activities, walking, mountain biking, climbing etc...  Nearby is Kendal's climbing centre, it would of been good to have some small boulders for boulder climbing on.

Lastly I found this 1898 of Kendal with the Cricket ground labeled - start of 110 years of cricket history.