Bubblyrat,

Reading through your post gives me the impression that the Royal Navy had a distinctly cavalier attitude to safety on board their aircraft carriers, one that would not have been tolerated in much of civilian life.

I worked in the chemical industry for a few years and 140 fatal accidents in a year on a major chemical works would have certainly brought the factory inspectorate into the works asking a lot of very awkward questions.

Safety is not about being namby pamby, it is about trying to identify what potentially could go wrong and then working in a way that minimises as far as is practical the risk of it actually going wrong.

How many of those fatal accidents that you referred to could have been avoided with a proper risk management system? I suspect a significant proportion.

I do agree that the system has become unduly bureaucratic in recent years and there is a strong element of risk avoidance, rather than risk management in some quarters. It is just too easy to say you can't do something rather than assessing the potential hazards and dealing with them so that people can carry out the the activity in as safe a manner as possible.

Rant over, I do think there are some sensible suggestions in this thread. The important thing is to identify potential hazards, say how you are going to deal with them and keep it as brief as is reasonable.