The School Run

More and more children are driven to school every day, currently accounting for around one-quarter of all car journeys by under 16 year olds.

The main reasons for this trend include increased road traffic, widespread ownership of cars, fragmentation of bus services and the increased relative cost of bus travel (Travelwise, 2002).

Travelling to school by car has many negative consequences. It is estimated that at peak rush-hour, over 15 per cent of all cars on the road are taking children to school, thereby increasing traffic and congestion at already-busy times. On top of this, car-journeys to school contribute to noise and air pollution on our roads and add further risks to those who choose to walk or cycle to school.

(c) Liftshare.org (and taken verbatime from their web site - see above link)

Ethnikos Piraeus

Finally, Ethnikos Piraeus are back to a reasonable level in Greek football. After financial problems and a merger with AO Mani, they finished second in the Greek third division (southern group) and were pronoted to the 2nd Division.

Greek football is undergoing yet another restructuring of the leagues. 5 teams were promoted from the two level 3 leagues. 3 were relegated from Div 2 and 3 promoted to Division 1 (A-Ethniki). The top division, which last year was won by Olympiakos yet again, remains at 16 teams, but there wil be 18 in the second division.

Olympiakos were champions by 3 points from both AEK and Panathinaikos, with a 16 point gap between 3rd and 4th (Iraklis). The third Salonika side, Aris, were promoted back to the top league after being relegated for the first time the previous season.

Olympiakos' win makes in 9 of the last 10 championships for them, with the Panathinaikos win in 2003/4 being the only blip. The total number of titles are as follows:

34 Olympiakos (Pireus)
19 Panathinaikos (Athinai)
11 AEK (Athinai)
3 Aris (Thessaloniki)
2 PAOK (Thessaloniki)
1 Larisa

Ethnikos, who won in 1905 and 1906 (in a different guise), as well as winning the Cup in 1932/33, are one of the oldest clubs in Greece, and used to ground share with Olympiakos.

Greek football, however, is in a parlous state as FIFA have temporarily banned the national side and all club sides from competing outside Greece while government interference in the domestic game is investigated. See: this BBC report and another one.

Good safety blog

Showing the numbers of US work related accidents

Health Fascists

Response to the NHS survey on cigarette pack labelling.

Sirs,

I am an Health and Safety professional. I have never smoked and I have relatives in nursing and the NHS. However, I believe that the way the NHS and anti-smoking charities and pressure groups are going about their message is wrong. I don’t believe that shock tactics and graphic images should be used for anti-smoking campaigns. I have no desire to watch TV adverts which if on a regular television programme would be censored. I do not want this invading my living room.

If people want to smoke, then they should be able to do so. The message that smoking kills and causes disease and wastes money for the NHS is already out there. I do not believe that the vast majority of smokers are unaware of the effects of smoking. However, the state and the health professionals have taken their remit much too far. There is too much interference in what can and cannot be done by people and about the choices that people make.

Yes, people should be made aware of the consequences of their actions, but the concepts of hazard, risk, risk perception and acceptability of risk are very poorly understood. Smokers are now pariahs of society, or at least the “society” that is currently defined by the state.

We should be educating people about consequences and the difficulties of “giving up”, but people should not be forced to give up smoking or have to suffer upsetting pictures when they reach for a pleasure. Freedom to choose to smoke or not, or to drink or not, or to hunt or not, or to eat meat or not, should be enshrined in the British way of life. We are a long way from this.

The next logical steps are to paint scenes of maimed people from car accidents on the sides of cars and on beer bottles.

These pictures frankly disgust me and are a long way removed from the genuine warnings that should be present. There is no option in your survey to state that "none of these warnings should be present", as it is intimated tha this is not a "correct" view to hold.

I realise that I am a long way from the prevailing opinion, but I suspect I am not alone in these views.

Yours,

Jonathan Hall (Dr)