I'm sitting here at home on saturday 9th February and tonight is New Year's Eve. The office has closed for a week, and we are told that Hanoi will be empty for the next few days as so many people have gone back to their home town in the provinces and all the expats have gone on holiday. We are going to enjoy a quiet Hanoi ( that will be weird) and watch all the celebrations tonight.
So the topic this week is 'Health and Safety'. Over the years ( and without any facts or figures) my feeling is that Europe has created a whole industry with rules, jobs,fines,legislation and media influence around Health and Safety. And now I am questionning whether what Europe has done is a little over the top.
But before talking about Vietnam , I'm going to talk about a company I did some work with in Liverpool. It made playground equipment including the ground areas for playgrounds. As you can imagine the company was beseiged by safety standards that goverened every single thing it did. Yet chatting to the older guys there, they did'nt really believe that what they did was totally worthwhile. Typically the story went......'in my day everything was concrete and if we fell off we learned the lesson, got bandaged up, and went back to playing again'. So arguably the safer you try to make something, the more compromised it becomes in terms of a learning experience.
Vietnam does have health and safety standards.. But if you go out in the street, within 10 seconds you'll see something that would be immediately closed down in Europe. And are their buildings falling down, fires in the streets, multiple pile ups, epidemics of typhoid, and all the things that H&S is meant to prevent? Err......no,at least not apparently so. People tend to look out for themselves, which doesn't seem such a bad idea to me.
Take a look at these photos, both of which are less than 50 metres from our house. Who knows what is going on with this 'highly traditional ' cooking method for street food which seems to comprise a multiplug, a piece of wood, a plastic bag, a portable stove, a pot with some food in and an unidentified electrical gadget which certainly isn't on sale at Currys.
And the other photo shows an alleyway's electrical system. There are thousands of these 'spaghetti junctions' in Hanoi.
And one other highly refreshing aspect , whilst I'm on the subject. If you transported the pavements of Hanoi to any UK town , it would be a 'kerb trippers' paradise. ( See the lovely little toe breaker just down the road). But there ain't no insurance companies here paying out on this kind of thing. So there's one industry that will find it hard making its way to Vietnam.
I am not saying that H&S is a waste of time and money. But what I am questionning is how to create an objective view of the state of affairs and to consider no further expansion in legislation once the law of diminishing returns comes into play.Put another way, a rethink of the balance between legislation and common sense.Indeed a study I looked at last night commissioned by the UK government suggested that there needs to be a higher level of engagement with society about what 'risk' actually means. Probably a niaive standpoint from me on this, but isn't part of the point of a blog just to make people think?
The H&S area that Hanoi is crying out for is to improve the pollution levels. It's arguably got the worst air quality of all cities in SE Asia , and my guess is that it is vehicles ( rather than industry) which is to blame. When I was told that there are real plans for an Underground I just laughed wondering when Vietnamese April Fool's day is. But there are plans which I have now seen, although I don't think that I'll be trying to buy my annual season ticket to Tay Son Street any time soon.
Changing the subject, do you remember that in a previous edition I told you that shops of the same type are grouped together? ( ie all the sports shops are together, all the bookshops etc etc......), well I was in a taxi the other day and went down 'maternity dress street'. Pretty much all the pregnant clothes mannequins in the world are in one street in Hanoi.
So now you know..........
very best everyone; and here's some more snaps
kevin
See above what we found in our chicken stew given to us as a gift. Nothing goes to waste here you know.
Above shows what appears to be beautiful blossom on a small tree at a garden nursery. But check out the black branches which are in fact plastic , as is the white blossom. Astonishing.
And finally, this is a huge world map covering one wall of Hanoi Post Office. It's odd to see Australia and Asia in the middle ( rather than to the right which is what we are used to). But given where we are it's screamingly obvious that world maps will be drawn up like this.
