What a shower!

A North Yorkshire junior football club is not letting players use its showers because of child protection concerns. Ripon City Panthers said it did not want to run the risk of photographs of children being taken which could end up on the internet. (BBC News Report)

No particular problem with the headline which talks about ‘child protection concerns’ however, when you actually read the article Pete Coleman, the club’s voluntary recruitment officer, said: “It is a shame in one respect, but it is health and safety, child protection. You have got to be on the ball all the time.” This is where I take issue with the report…

The story has nothing to do with ‘Health & Safety’ issues (unless you consider the mucky little cherubs going home filthy after the match) but it has everything to do with ‘child protection. Once again the media report on something in such a way that the public get a misconception about Health & Safety.

That said, the story is probably more to do with protecting club officials from any potential sex offender investigation, after one of the kids has snapped his mate with a mobile phone and posted it on YouTube or Facebook!

Feckin’Seagulls

Beware!

I woke this morning and thought I’d been teleported during the night to some peaceful and picturesque relaxing coastal retreat… The squawk of seagulls drifted through the window so loudly that I fealt like an extra in the famous Alfred Hitchcock film and hastily squinted out of the window, just to confirm I hadn’t been kidnapped in my sleep!  

Seagulls so far in land? Perhaps gulls enjoy a trip inland on their day off, just like humans who like to go to the coast on a weekend? We go for the sound of the sea, the fresh air, fish & chips and a ‘kiss me quick hat’ and the gulls? They come in land and gorge themselves on the easy pickings on every street corner in the town!  

Discarded half-eaten pizza (still in the box), kebab meat that has been dropped by some intoxicated tosser wobbling his way loudly home the night before and, the ubiquitous trail of chips or rice leading from most fast food outlets.  

At the speed the local authority actually cleans the streets, the gulls don’t have worry about rushing to have a special day out to get their freebies. Any bloody day of the week is likely to prove fruitful for them!

Who’s Job is it?

North Yorkshire Police

ANPR helps police trap travelling criminals – Two men were arrested on the A1 near Richmond on Sunday 28 March after a car they were travelling in triggered an ANPR camera. (NYP Press Release)

I don’t think anyone would dispute the fact that; ANPR is a great bit of technology in the modern day police armoury of tools to fight crime. That said, when you actually read the story, it seems a little rich that NYP is trying to take credit for something that was most likely a Durham job?

It is however effective youse of media resources by the press office in an attempt to offset recent bad press about IPCC investigations into senior officers!