I hope this makes some other old gits smile too.
It's not all my own work I'm afraid, and not all of these things applied to me !
Although I'm still having trouble with girls. . . . . . .
Any suggestions for additions ?
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE
1930’S, 40’S, 50’S, 60’S, AND 70’S !!
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and or drank while they were pregnant.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.
Then, after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in flammable baby cribs covered in brightly coloured lead paint.
We had no child proof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets.
As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no belts, booster seats or air bags. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt but the worms did not live inside us forever. We pulled funny faces but weren’t disfigured for life when the wind changed.
We learnt to ride bikes without stabilisers and spit on our grazes when we fell off. When we’d managed to stay on, we rode around without helmets and on the main roads, not the pavement. As poor teenagers we picked grapes, potatoes or hauled bales of hay to make money, and at the end of the day sat on the tractor or flat bed lorry to go back home. Sometimes, god forbid, we’d hitchhike home.
We drank water from the garden hose, not from a bottle. We shared flat coca cola with four friends from one bottle and, surprisingly, no one actually died.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and lollies made from sugar, but we weren’t overweight from this because we were ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING !!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day.
And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building go-karts from pram wheels and scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out that the brakes didn’t work. After running into the bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, X-boxes, Nintendos, MP3 players, no video games at all, not 150 channels on the TV, No DVD’s, CD’s, laptops, mobile phones. No U-Tube or Chat rooms. . . . . . . . .
WE HAD FRIENDS, and we went outside and found them.
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth, but there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
We made bows and arrows and had sword fights. We threw stones, and, although we were told it might happen, we didn’t put many eyes out.
We rode our bikes or just walked two miles to a friends house and rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them !
We were last in the egg and spoon race, failed to get into the football team, girls wouldn’t go out with us. . . .wouldn’t even kiss us. . . . . but we learnt to deal with the disappointment. Imagine that !
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law and gave us a thick ear into the bargain.
These generations have produced some of the most charismatic risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever ! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL !
Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it ?
Now. . . . . . . . where's my therapist ?
RISK !
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Re: RISK !
Great I can remember doing so many if these things. Never succeeded in making the go cart though
- Tatty
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Re: RISK !
Babysitting babies from when I was about 10 years old - nappies, bottles, pram walking - the lot No one seemed to think I was too young or not responsible enough - mind you I dont remember getting paid
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Mrs H - god
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Re: RISK !
Tatty wrote:[i]Never succeeded in making the go cart though
You never lived
Mind you there really was less traffic in the late 50s / early 60s. Our 'through road' street was used for tennis matches in the road irritatingly interrupted by the occasional car wanting to get by!
- Gnitworp
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Re: RISK !
Trouble is: we have now acquired the technology to:
1) learn that it exists
2) measure it
and we now think we therefore always have to deal with it, especially as we now have the newly-acquired means to do so.
When we had neither, we simply 'got on with it' for better or for worse; often, indeed, for the worse, but very often for the better.
Don't get me wrong; I think we're now a far more just, culturally-rich and caring society, and I don't want to go back, but is it possible to become too caring? (I'm just asking - not dictating), after all, to quote Darwin, evolution (how we came to be) is about 'survival of the fittest'.
1) learn that it exists
2) measure it
and we now think we therefore always have to deal with it, especially as we now have the newly-acquired means to do so.
When we had neither, we simply 'got on with it' for better or for worse; often, indeed, for the worse, but very often for the better.
Don't get me wrong; I think we're now a far more just, culturally-rich and caring society, and I don't want to go back, but is it possible to become too caring? (I'm just asking - not dictating), after all, to quote Darwin, evolution (how we came to be) is about 'survival of the fittest'.
- Gnitworp
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Re: RISK !
Sorry, thought for a moment that this might be a thread about the popular world domination board game and got excited.
However, we do of course have a way of doing whatever we want and still conforming with all the new H&S policies.
We do a risk assessment.
FIrst of all, decide what you want to do.
Secondly think of all the things that might stop you doing it. Give these arbitrary values (a) representing how dangerous they are.
Thirdly pick some other arbitrary value (x) that means the thing is just too risky.
Now pick random probabilities of any of the bad things happening (b) and multiply by the arbitrary values already assigned (a)
If axb > x change one of the values
Carry on as before.
That's what I do anyway.
However, we do of course have a way of doing whatever we want and still conforming with all the new H&S policies.
We do a risk assessment.
FIrst of all, decide what you want to do.
Secondly think of all the things that might stop you doing it. Give these arbitrary values (a) representing how dangerous they are.
Thirdly pick some other arbitrary value (x) that means the thing is just too risky.
Now pick random probabilities of any of the bad things happening (b) and multiply by the arbitrary values already assigned (a)
If axb > x change one of the values
Carry on as before.
That's what I do anyway.
- Jon Brooke
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Re: RISK !
No wonder you always get the controls in the wrong place!
- Gnitworp
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Re: RISK !
Had just done a risk analysis before reading this and it was all low apart from the weather which I can't do yet. Will it freeze and snow the weekend before Christmas! I think the orienteering event is far less risky than riding my scooter. I ended up with the metal brake embedded in my heal and a cut tendon. Mind you all they did was bandage it up no trip to hospital or even the doctor. Those pleasues were saved for cutting the top of my finger of and feeding my finger to a horse. Funny no one suggested putting the horse down or sueing the company that made the chair I caught my finger in.
Diets and fitness are no good if you can't read the map.
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HOCOLITE - addict
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Re: RISK !
For my sins I do risk assessments at work occasionally (they're not actually that bad!) - given these are normally for trials away from site, invariably the biggest risk is the driving to get there and back. I'd suggest something pretty similar applies to orienteering events (certainly when I do long duration events I'm well aware that by far the riskiest part even when we have dangling on ropes stuff is the drive home afterwards). It seems that driving is accepted as a perfectly reasonable thing to do in our society - if a sport had that level of risk it would have been banned years ago. Strangely though, when I had life insurance it would pay out for me dying in a car crash, but not for most of the other much less risky things I do (like running over mountains in the middle of the night, doing rope descents in the snow and rain, kayaking down grade 4 rivers and doing 20ft jumps into pools of water).
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Re: RISK !
Unfortunately I always seemed to stop the pram-wheeled go kart with my head, and stitches resulted, but anyhow nobody got sued and apart from a few scars we all lived.
Whilst hanging off the side of a bridge above a river this year, erecting a gate for a slalom, none of us with helmet, harness, or pfds on we all got on to the subject of how none of us would be able to do such a thing at work. Our own risk assessment: "It's risky, so I'm going to make sure I don't fall off..." I know a few people have fallen off other things in other places over the years, spoiling it for the rest of us, but isn't this how all risk assessments used to be done?
It's a good time of year to look at things we consider "safe" in society. Don't think for a second I want to stop these things, but considering all the things we're now not allowed to do, how is it we can have large bonfires which smoke out main roads, and send rocket-propelled sticks in to the sky in built up areas?
And I would agree, being inside a tonne and a half metal box doing 70mph alongside hundreds of other similar metal boxes has got to be the riskiest thing we do in orienteering.
Whilst hanging off the side of a bridge above a river this year, erecting a gate for a slalom, none of us with helmet, harness, or pfds on we all got on to the subject of how none of us would be able to do such a thing at work. Our own risk assessment: "It's risky, so I'm going to make sure I don't fall off..." I know a few people have fallen off other things in other places over the years, spoiling it for the rest of us, but isn't this how all risk assessments used to be done?
It's a good time of year to look at things we consider "safe" in society. Don't think for a second I want to stop these things, but considering all the things we're now not allowed to do, how is it we can have large bonfires which smoke out main roads, and send rocket-propelled sticks in to the sky in built up areas?
And I would agree, being inside a tonne and a half metal box doing 70mph alongside hundreds of other similar metal boxes has got to be the riskiest thing we do in orienteering.
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FatBoy - addict
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Re: RISK !
Having seen rather a lot of knees and elbows belonging to 7 and 8 year old children over the past year, I began to formulate an idea - compliments for those with scabs / scars, investigations of those with no obvious marks - they can't be doing enough interesting things if they haven't fallen over much!
- Copepod
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Re: RISK !
It's always boring when too many people agree, so ....I grew up in the 60s and early 70s, and if only it was really like that! Perhaps we all just want the things for our kids which we didn't have.
Children today have opportunities, and teenagers have freedoms, that I could only have dreamed of. Why, they can even do exciting things like orienteering on Sundays.
As for 'These generations have produced some of the most charismatic risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever !' - to quote Tim Moore - I'm sorry, but what the parted buttocks is that all about? You could just as well say these generations caused the 3-day week, 3m+ unemployed, race riots, football hooligans ...
A generation who go on gap years to far-flung parts of the world, take up extreme sports, borrow large amounts of money, are more likely to set up their own businesses - are they really more risk-averse?
Travelling by car more risky than dangling off ropes? I guess insurance statistics don't lie. Whatever, your car journey was more risky in the 1960s - 1964: 240 deaths per 100m vehicle km in the UK, 2005: 55 deaths per 100m vehicle km.
On the other hand - we didn't have Personal Injury Lawyers
Children today have opportunities, and teenagers have freedoms, that I could only have dreamed of. Why, they can even do exciting things like orienteering on Sundays.
As for 'These generations have produced some of the most charismatic risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever !' - to quote Tim Moore - I'm sorry, but what the parted buttocks is that all about? You could just as well say these generations caused the 3-day week, 3m+ unemployed, race riots, football hooligans ...
A generation who go on gap years to far-flung parts of the world, take up extreme sports, borrow large amounts of money, are more likely to set up their own businesses - are they really more risk-averse?
Travelling by car more risky than dangling off ropes? I guess insurance statistics don't lie. Whatever, your car journey was more risky in the 1960s - 1964: 240 deaths per 100m vehicle km in the UK, 2005: 55 deaths per 100m vehicle km.
On the other hand - we didn't have Personal Injury Lawyers
- PKJ
- orange
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Re: RISK !
Lets not start quoting stats at each other!
But just to put that one in context, do we by any chance do more than 5 times as many miles as we did in the 1960s?
Are we prepared to travel more than 5 times as far to an event as we would have then? If the answer is yes then there's still the same chance of a fatal RTA on the way.
But just to put that one in context, do we by any chance do more than 5 times as many miles as we did in the 1960s?
Are we prepared to travel more than 5 times as far to an event as we would have then? If the answer is yes then there's still the same chance of a fatal RTA on the way.
- Jon Brooke
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Re: RISK !
I don't know about you, Jon, but I'm certainly prepared to travel much more than 5 times as far to an event as I was in the 1960s.
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Re: RISK !
In the 1960's I'd have been on my trike or scooter So I reckon the end of the road would have been a reasonable distance before Mum caught me
Diets and fitness are no good if you can't read the map.
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