Have you seen the latest piece of EU legislation (DT today) that will hit us soon. This is the EU Physical Agents (Vibration) Directive and it seeks to impose time limits on the numbers of hours driving or operating vibrating machinery.
It concerns, mainly, lorry drivers and farmers and might result in, for example:
Lorry drivers being restricted to 6 hours driving per day.
Tractor drivers being restricted to between 6 and 8 hours driving per day. This is double the original proposal, resulting from objections by the NFU. Farmers have also been given 5 years extension to convert existing machinery to comply with the new directive.
Other affected activities would be: chainsaws (1.5 hours use per day); dumper truck driving (2 hours per day); road drill (47 minutes per day).
Apparently, the limits were agreed in Brussels yesterday and will be published this summer. The directive now has to be rubber stamped by the European Parliament and the EU's Concil of ministers. The UK Government will then have 3 years to implement the regulations.
All the above apprently stems from a desire to protect workers from lower back injury, and uses some arcane formula to measure "whole body vibration".
Did I miss a few weeks, or has April 1st come early?
Ian
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We may scoff and indeed there is a tendency to exaggerate within Brussels, it seems. But my uncle suffered from a lower back injury which the tribunial, his lawyer, doctor and many other involved professionals all put down to excessive us of 'whole body vibration' and he was duly awarded compensation after many years of service for his local council and beasue he simply cannot work now, he can hardly even walk.
So if you want to go and operate a road drill for 6hrs a day, plus very persuasuve overtime (of the do it or get fired sort) then go ahead, there are many people who are simply told by their boses to get on with it and tough luck if ten yrs down the line you are up in hospital with a buggered back! Wokers have sod all protection in Britain as it is and even when it does exits the emploer ignores it. I am sick of people being used as commodities from which to extract maximum profit just so some fat manager can get a larger pension plan.
it seems that field marshal blair is totally unwilling to protect workers, so it is good in a sense that it comes from Brussels. Who else is going to help them?
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I do not compare sitting in a modern tractor for 8 hours, with air-conditioning, tuned, sprung seat, power steering etc. to using a road drill, which may indeed lead to problems, "vibration white finger" being one.
However the folks who wish to ban every activity on health or environmental grounds are the same ones who give £700 million per year in subsidies to Greek tobacco growers.
Tobacco is known to kill at least 120,000 per year in UK alone and yet speeding drivers are said to kill 7.3% of the 3243 road deaths in UK ....250 ish.
Drivers are persecuted, tobacco growers are financially rewarded
Any common sense in that?
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We soon won't be able to get out of bed without some piece of legislation telling us how to do it!
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The 47 minutes/day for road drilling is remarkably precise. It would be interesting to see how that odd-looking figure was arrived at, and why 1 extra minute of work would be conducive to a banned back.
I look forward to the day when the EU legislators have run out of interfering with other people's jobs and look at their own. Then we may see that sitting on one's bum for more than 3 hours/day is also bad for the health, and so office hours will have to be drastically shortened.
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or you could take their chairs away from them.
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The 47 minutes/day for road drilling is remarkably precise. It would be interesting to see how that odd-looking figure was arrived at, and why 1 extra minute of work would be conducive to a banned back.
I look forward to the day when the EU legislators have run out of interfering with other people's jobs and look at their own. Then we may see that sitting on one's bum for more than 3 hours/day is also bad for the health, and so office hours will have to be drastically shortened.
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6 hours a day of tractor driving? I can really see that being enforced by the poor @!#$ farmers who have really had enough this last 12 months. I apologise for the language but this sort of thing makes me very mad. These people have NO idea about this - They have unelectedly got into this nice job where they no doubt get free housing and all manner of other benefits and then think they have the right to say people cannot do certain types of manual labour for more than a certain length of time - I imagine all these people have "fairy soft" hands having never had to do anything more dirty than wash their Merc.
So how do the farmers complete silaging (for all the farm lads out there! A 12 odd hour day solid on the tractor for those who don't know) with their workers not allowed to drive more than 6 hours? Do they cause offence to their current employees as they tell them to take a hike halfway through the day to let some temp help have a go so they don't get sued?
All of this smarts of unionism and and intense amount of effort to ensure as little work is done by the masses as usual. I'd really like to drag these sods out of the EU and make them run a business by their own methods - see how they like it!
Rant over and out...Sorry everyone.
Dan
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Well said Dan. They live in cuckoo land.
Or perhaps it is a deliberate attempt to wreck the UK economy.
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Will this be applied to ALL vibrating equipment?
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I really don't know, Derek. Like all EU directives, the detail is in the fine print and I haven't personally seen the wording of the draft. I'll e-mail a colleague who used to work for me (he's an EHS Manager) and see what's about on the advanced info he gets.
Ian
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Sorry Ian, I was being flippant. Jonathan got the point, though.
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Sorry Ian, I was being flippant, to say nothing of smutty. Jonathan got the point, though.
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47 minutes a day! I can see the oldest profession's union getting upset about this!
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Derek,
Three hours?
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It is enforced. When legionella first occurred for instance consultants went into a frenzy of delight designing equipment which was legionella free and issuing standards of design and installation which cost a mint.
The Government took these on board and issued edicts to Government buildings and establishment for this to be carried out.
In the one I worked in half a million was given to me to carry out this work. This entailed ripping out huge amounts of perfectly sound equipment and re-installing the approved type. We were horrified as we dumped perfectly good equipment for no reason other than it was an excuse to make money for someone. I have seen this happen several times, Storage racking was another one and miles of it was dumped into skips.
Common sense goes out of the window when your'e spending someone else's money.
alvin
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The Council of Ministers does not just "rubber stamp" proposals made by the Commission. If the Council of Ministers doesn't want to ratify a proposal, it doesn't.
The great long list of EU derived regulations that gets published in certain sections of the British media is more often than not a list of proposals from the Commission, the majority of which won't get past the legislative process.
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exactly:
>The great long list of EU derived regulations that gets published in certain >sections of the British media is more often than not a list of proposals from >the Commission, the majority of which won't get past the legislative process.
much of these stories that appear in the "quality dailys" are proposals. A classic example is the 'meat in British Bangers legislation', a prime example of Sun "top quality" media reporting whereby Europe is going to steal our priced bangers becasue they don't contain nuf meat, govner!
Really, don't worry about European legislation, we are far too independently minded for anyone to take it seriously enoguh to actually enforce it at grass-roots level, particularly if it concerns employment rights and conditions.
and p.s i read the Sun everyday, so no slagging it off, alright!
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Martin
No enforcement? Like pounds and ounces?
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Keep the pound, i'll say. My local highstreet is a cri-de-cour what with 'Pound-saver', 'Pound-stretcher', 'Pound-Winner', 'Pound-land'...
And what's more, Even Richard Branson is going Euro crazy, whatever next!
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47 minutes a day. That means that the average minor roadworks which currently takes 6 - 12 months will then take 6 - 12 years. And who's going to check on the Pykey road gang when they're using compactors to prepare the foundations for someone's block paved drive during the rest of their working day? The only thing to do with EC legislation like this what the rest of the EC does. A few weeks ago, as we landed at Charles de Gaul, Paris, I happened to look out of the window and observe a totally unpaved scrapyard. The Eurocrats have decreed that all scrapyards in Europe have to be paved. In Spain, they simply ignore it. But in France the brothers of the very Eurocrats who imposed the directive stick their fingers up at it where everyone landing at Paris can see.
HJ
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Good point HJ, and one of the key differences between us and the rest of Europe is that they will ignore what they percieve to be bad legislation, whereas we have turned enforcement into an art form.
BTW - British beef is legal, but will the French import it? Only those with less than 3 brain cells need think about this.
Ian
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I look forward to buying loads of cheap building equipment at auction dumped by firms because it does not meet new EEC standards!
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Ian Cook,
Do the brain cells have to be free of BSE?
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