The following has been supplied by the TUC:
If you want facts served
along with your news and you are a Daily Mail reader, you'll have been left
sadly wanting over the last few days. A headline on 13 April condemned the
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after its
Myth Busters Challenge Panel 'failed to come to a decision on the seagull in
the pond case'. But HSE's panel had no need to respond to the Daily Mail's
complaint, because a fire brigade's refusal to rescue a seagull had nothing to
do with either HSE or workplace health and safety. HSE chair Judith Hackitt said the watchdog preferred to make decisions on
the basis of facts, not 'hearsay', adding 'it is clear that it was not about
health and safety at all.' A London Fire Brigade (LFB) spokesperson confirmed: 'The RSPCA called us out as an emergency. Our
firefighters rushed to the scene only to realise they'd been called out to a
seagull with a plastic bag round its leg which was swimming around quite
happily and wasn't in any distress. This clearly wasn't an emergency so the
firefighters left it to a local animal rescue charity to deal with and swiftly
left the scene.' LFB added: 'Often, by the time our firefighters arrive
at an incident, someone has waded in to try and rescue an animal only to get
into danger themselves, so we send enough crews to deal with whatever we may
find. The safety of the public and our firefighters is always our priority.'
This failure of the Daily Mail to concern itself with the facts came hot on the
heels of the paper's 9 April exclusive about a supposed ban on high heels for
hairdressers 'under nanny state proposals being drawn up in Brussels.' The
story was quickly kicked into touch by the TUC when it revealed employment minister Chris Grayling planned to use this
as ill-founded 'evidence' to ridicule health and safety in an 18 April speech
to the Policy Exchange. The minister had earlier told the Daily Mail: 'This
kind of stupidity has to stop. It makes no sense and I will do everything I can
to stop it.' In fact, the European Commission has no intention to regulate on
high heels and the paper's claims are completely unfounded. TUC said rather than check the facts, the Daily Mail and the minister had
lent damaging credibility to baseless claims in a scaremongering press release
from the National Hairdressers' Federation, an industry lobby group.
