Wednesday 21 October 2009

Talk About UK Health And Safety Gone Mad!

I had to read the date to make sure it was not April Fools Day! a fictitious 'British Biscuit Advisory Board' was created as part of a £3million marketing drive by Fox's biscuits for its Rocky bar, so a National TV ads and billboards highlighted its campaign to ' educate the public about responsible biscuit choices and promote safer biscuit- eating practices' and a spoof 'workplace biscuit risk assessment test' - written in bureaucratic health and safety language - was created and issued to 5,849 council workers across the UK, Mike Driver, Fox's marketing director, said: 'We developed the idea of the British Biscuit Advisory Board as a parody of the nation's obsession with health and safety, but we never thought it would be taken quite so seriously, but this is the thing it WAS taken seriously, a total of 813 over- cautious council employees clicked through to the online survey and 437 risk-averse workers actually took the time to complete it, four councils were so taken in by the spoof survey they reported having specific policy rules on safe biscuit consumption, one council even claimed to have supervised tea breaks for safety reasons, no really I am not making this up! but now the dark side, The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents revealed the most recent figures show that 400 people a year in Britain had to be treated in Accident and Emergency departments for biscuit-related accidents, these included 'somebody falling over while reaching for a biscuit', someone slipping on a chocolate biscuit on their stairs and various people choking on biscuits, however RoSPA spokesman Jo Stagg warned that people should not be too scared of biscuits, 'Many more people enjoy biscuits without suffering adverse effects - you have very little to fear from biscuits as a general rule' phew what a relief to read that, there I was thinking my life was in mortal danger!

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