The cheese rolls on.
A gorilla lost his head, an American YouTuber risked death and a German man tumbled his way to victory today – in what could only be Gloucestershire’s historic annual cheese-rolling event.
Despite the prissy elf’n’safetee folks trying to curtail it, the cheese is unstoppable.
The Safety Advisory Group said it was willing to help the organisers get the right documentation and insurance in place.
‘We would like to see evidence of safety documentation and risk-assessment processes’ said Tewkesbury Borough Council.
Fuck off. It’s a steep hill, the risks are obvious and people choose, of their own free will, to take that risk. No risk assessment is necessary, let alone documentation. Now wind your necks in and leave them to it.
This tradition, dating back hundreds of years, is essentially a summation of that great British eccentricity that I love about this island and its people. That foreigners feel inclined to take part is all the better. The Safety Advisory Group sum up everything I have come to despise about modern Britain, so it is nice to see that the organisers appear to have completely ignored them. Long may the cheese roll.
Quite. There are times when Health and Safety is a good thing – especially when the innocent or bystanders might get hurt or killed. But if running down hill is risky for an individual, then so is playing rugby, riding a horse, or (ahem) riding a motorcycle.
There’s an informal fallacy ‘secundum quid’ where rules of thumb become absolute propositions… and the collectivist mind revels in making such sweeping generalisations and, of course, enforcing strict compliance whether it is appropriate or not.
The key question is “Is it compulsory to run down that hill chasing that cheese?”.
As the correct answer is “No”, then it’s nobody else’s frigging business if some folk use their free will and choose to participate.
Now crawl back into your interfering hole and let the rest of us get on with our lives.
“We would like to see evidence of safety documentation and risk-assessment processes”
And I would like to see Tewkesbury Borough Council thrown into a lake. Unfortunately, as Mick Jagger so correctly observed all those years ago, you can’t always get what you want.