Wear your uniform!

Do we look like a nation of prisoners?

Short walk to school and back this morning in South Shields with a sharp breeze freezing the cheeks, and “Missy” asks if everyone has to wear a yellow jacket?

“Yes, dear, it’s to keep you safe from harm, because the ‘Elf ‘n’ Safety’ folks are determined that there are thousands of people out there who want to do nasty things to you. Next time your teacher takes the class out for a walk to the park you will all have to wear one too” This made me recall the conversation that I had in the South Marine Park recently when an army of school children were marched in for the re-opening of the park, all wearing high visibility vests, I asked another photographer that “if they had not been wearing them, do you think a mad motorist might deliberately want to plough into a train of escorted school children crossing the road?”

“Not bloody likely” he replied.

We had passed three “lollipop ladies”, two street cleaners, four delivery men, three window cleaners, one telephone repair man, and two satellite dish installers, all dressed in the uniform of HM Prison Great Britain and glumly wearing their yellow jackets. Bloody hell, I thought, this must be what it’s like in an open prison, and woe betide anyone who dares to go without, and I wondered just how many years away is the regulation that states that ALL members of the public must wear a high visibility vest when venturing out of doors?

In a previous employment I had almost been sacked for allowing a colleague to operate in a “public area” without the high viz jacket, regardless of the fact that it was 6:30 in the morning and the “public” were still safely tucked up in their beds!

It’s not as though the majority of motorists and motorcyclists are blind, I’m aware that the first thing one needs to do when sitting a Driving Test is to prove your eyesight is OK, they can see humans on the streets, generally irrespective of what colour clothing they are wearing, and the amount of people killed or injured on the roads is NOT rising at all – queue the responses that this is as a result of us all wearing “the uniform”.

Welcome to uniformity and conformity folks!

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