A crisis of enforcement: the decriminalisation of death and injury at work

Fatalities and injuries caused through work are far more prevalent than the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) currently reports. For example, they fi nd that more than 80 per cent of officially recorded work-related fatalities are fi ltered out from the HSE’s headline figure and remain buried in other categories in the official data. The official data made available by HSE reporting methodology may thus only serve to mask the true quantity and quality of harm that takes place during work processes. After re-assessing the scale of the harms caused, Tombs and Whyte conclude that being a victim of a work-related fatality or injury is far more likely than experiencing conventionally defi ned and measured violence and homicide. While such siphoning seems an inevitable and inherent characteristic of legal and regulatory systems, this briefi ng suggests that it may be only through the acknowledgement of ‘safety crime’ by agencies such as the Home Office, the police, the courts and the Scottish Government that safety crimes can be recast as ‘real’ crime and thus dealt with more appropriately. The authors’ conclusion, that most safety crimes are either undetected or filtered out from offi cial channels of resolution, begs the question whether burdens have been displaced to employees and members of the public

Triennial Review of the Health and Safety Executive. Submission to the Department for Work and Pensions

In this response we have chosen not to address the guided questions specifically, but rather to respond to the general coverage of the document, not least that set out at Annex E, “Background to the Health and Safety Executive”, where it is stated that: HSE’s functions are undertaken in the pursuit of four headline aims that support delivery of its mission. These aims, set out in the HSE’s Business Plan for 2012-15, are to: Lead others to improve health and safety in the workplace; Provide an effective regulatory framework; Secure compliance with the law; and, Reduce the likelihood of low frequency, high-impact catastrophic incidents. (Department for Work & Pensions, 2013: Annex E, 14) Our response addresses many of the claims made in that Annex regarding enforcement and inspection. We welcome this review of the HSE since, as the evidence set out in this response demonstrates, it is clear that the regulator is increasingly unfit for purpose. It is presently unable to provide either minimal inspection coverage or a credible threat of enforcement, and is therefore in no position to secure compliance with the law

Quasi-Isometric Embeddings of Symmetric Spaces

We prove a rigidity theorem that shows that, under many circumstances, quasi-isometric embeddings of equal rank, higher rank symmetric spaces are close to isometric embeddings. We also produce some surprising examples of quasi-isometric embeddings of higher rank symmetric spaces. In particular, we produce embeddings of $SL(n,\mathbb R)$ into $Sp(2(n-1),\mathbb R)$ when no isometric embeddings exist. A key ingredient in our proofs of rigidity results is a direct generalization of the Mostow-Morse Lemma in higher rank. Typically this lemma is replaced by the quasi-flat theorem which says that maximal quasi-flat is within bounded distance of a finite union of flats. We improve this by showing that the quasi-flat is in fact flat off of a subset of codimension $2$.Comment: Exposition improved, outlines of proofs added to introduction. Typos corrected, references added. Also some discussion of the reducible case adde

Alcohol-related mortality in deprived UK cities: worrying trends in young women challenge recent national downward trends

Background: Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland, has high levels of deprivation and a poor-health profile compared with other parts of Europe, which cannot be fully explained by the high levels of deprivation. The ‘excess’ premature mortality in Glasgow is now largely attributable to deaths from alcohol, drugs, suicide and violence. Methods: Alcohol-related mortality in Glasgow from 1980 to 2011 was examined relative to the equally deprived UK cities of Manchester and Liverpool with the aim of identifying differences across the cities, with respect to gender, age and birth cohort, that could help explain the ‘excess’ mortality in Glasgow. Results: In the 1980s, alcohol-related mortality in Glasgow was three times higher than in Manchester and Liverpool. Alcohol-related mortality increased in all three cities over the subsequent three decades, but a sharp rise in deaths in the early 1990s was unique to Glasgow. The increase in numbers of deaths in Glasgow was greater than in Manchester and Liverpool, but there was little difference in the pattern of alcohol-related deaths, by sex or birth cohort that could explain the excess mortality in Glasgow. The recent modest decrease in alcohol-related mortality was largely experienced by all birth cohorts, with the notable exception of the younger cohort (born between 1970 and 1979): women in this cohort across all three cities experienced disproportionate increases in alcohol-related mortality. Conclusions: It is imperative that this early warning sign in young women in the UK is acted on if deaths from alcohol are to reduce in the long term

Coarse differentiation of quasi-isometries II: Rigidity for Sol and Lamplighter groups

In this paper, which is the continuation of [EFW2], we complete the proof of the quasi-isometric rigidity of Sol and the lamplighter groups. The results were announced in [EFW1].Comment: 47 pages, 3 figures. Minor revisions addressing comments by the refere

Coarse differentiation of quasi-isometries I: spaces not quasi-isometric to Cayley graphs

In this paper, we prove that certain spaces are not quasi-isometric to Cayley graphs of finitely generated groups. In particular, we answer a question of Woess and prove a conjecture of Diestel and Leader by showing that certain homogeneous graphs are not quasi-isometric to a Cayley graph of a finitely generated group. This paper is the first in a sequence of papers proving results announced in [EFW0]. In particular, this paper contains many steps in the proofs of quasi-isometric rigidity of lattices in Sol and of the quasi-isometry classification of lamplighter groups. The proofs of those results are completed in [EFW1]. The method used here is based on the idea of "coarse differentiation" introduced in [EFW0].Comment: 44 pages; 4 figures; minor corrections addressing comments by the refere

Has Scotland always been the ‘sick man’ of Europe? An observational study from 1855 to 2006

Background: Scotland has been dubbed ‘the sick man of Europe’ on account of its higher mortality rates compared with other western European countries. It is not clear the length of time for which Scotland has had higher mortality rates. The root causes of the higher mortality in Scotland remain elusive. Methods: Life expectancy data from the Human Mortality Database were tabulated and graphed for a selection of wealthy, mainly European countries from around 1850 onwards. Results: Scotland had a life expectancy in the mid-range of countries included in the Human Mortality Database from the mid-19th century until around 1950. After 1950, Scottish life expectancy improved at a slower rate than in comparably wealthy nations before further faltering during the last 30 years. Scottish life expectancy now lies between that of western European and eastern European nations. The USA also displays a marked faltering in its life expectancy trend after 1981. There is an inverse association between life expectancy and the Index of Economic Freedom such that greater neoliberalism is associated with a smaller increase, or a decrease, in life expectancy. Conclusion: Life expectancy in Scotland has only been relatively low since around 1950. From 1980, life expectancy in Scotland, the USA and, to a greater extent, the former USSR displays a further relative faltering. It has been suggested that Scotland suffered disproportionately from the adoption of neoliberalism across the nations of the UK, and the evidence here both supports this suggestion and highlights other countries which may have suffered similarly

Non-resident Fathers: A Literature Review of Factors Influencing their World

It has been acknowledged (McCashin, 1996; Hogan & Gilbertson, 2007) that services designed to support families tend to focus on the mother and children and little contact is generally made with fathers, even when they are resident in the family home. Considering the changes in family structure in contemporary society and the often complex range of needs held by families who avail of social care services, this paper provides some insights in the factors that impact on non-resident fathers. The paper presents a literature review on the topic of non-resident fathers covering areas such as fathers’ role in the family and in children’s development; factors that have been found to impact on non-resident fathers’ contact with their children and the impact of non-residency on the fathers themselves