Withdrawal symptoms

After nearly a whole week without dealing with anyone's problems other than my own, I'm starting to go into withdrawal. I partially treated this (in a kind of methadone to treat heroin addiction way) by looking for health and safety hazards whilst we were out and about today. Considering it's been sometime since my training, I was quite surprised by how easy it is to find hazards if you are looking for them hard enough!
No wonder those of us with an interest in Health and Safety sometimes get a bad reputation. There is an amusing series of articles on the HSE website concerning times when the HSE has been incorrectly blamed for something being banned. From my personal experience, it's nearly always been insurance issues rather than H&S that causes things to be closed, fireworks displays, school trips and float parades at carnivals being some pertinent examples. I used to love going to a local community centre that did a cracking fireworks display every November, but the rising cost of insurance soon put paid to that.
And of course there are regular stories about union HSW Reps being overzealous. I must be honest and say that those I've met, no matter which union, have been well trained and quite capable of utilizing common sense when needed. But we all hear of stories like this from time to time, and everytime I do I sigh, and wonder why people do it.
Now if that's not a meandering post I don't know what is!