No FT, plenty of comment

It was good to see old colleagues at a get-together for ex-Financial Times journalists in London last night. A lot had retired but many have gone on to glittering careers - two to the House of Lords, one in Government, two on BBC news (constantly), two Fleet Street editors and one running the Confederation of British Industry.

The gathering was special for another reason. It's not often that you come across 150 journalists in a bar, buying their own drinks out of their own pockets with not an expenses receipt between them. How times have changed. "At least we were never taking money from the taxpayer," said an old colleague, reflecting on the MPs' expenses scandal.

I had a hot tip from one, confident in his insider-knowledge, that Ed Balls had definitely got the chancellor's job. And it may well have been true, but political events are moving so quickly and that was before we had the news of James Purnell's resignation. Purnell was the man being sounded out for Balls's job at Education. So Alistair Darling stays put for now and so does Balls, his ambition to run the Treasury as yet unrequited.

Balls wasn't there last night but I can never relate to him as a politico anyway. Instead I recall Ed as the centre forward who gave our old FT football team a bit of aggression up front. Ian Hargreaves, former editor of the Independent, was also there. Ian was a gritty midfielder, never afraid to bite a few ankles.

A lot of the chat was reminiscences and gossip - the stuff I miss most from my days on the paper. A few of my old colleagues liked to lunch in a certain style. David Churchill, former leisure industries correspondent, had his favourite tables at Orso's and Joe Allen's restaurants - indeed still does. One lunch time he arrived at Joe Allen's only to find that Joan Collins was sitting at his table. A word in the ear of management and she was summarily shifted elsewhere.

Elf and safety

I thought that Boris Johnson and Ed Balls were yesterday's blogs until I saw the carping column written by Johnson in today's Daily Telegraph complaining that Balls was shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted on playground safety.

Balls was only acting, said Johnson, "after 10 years of elf and safety lunacy". That's not quite true. The "pirates" game I mentioned here was banned many years ago, banned, possibly before Boris was fitted for his first tailcoat at Eton. Whether it was banned under a Tory or Labour administration, I cannot remember.

The point I'm making is that health and safety concerns have been a creeping trend in schools, playgrounds, workplaces, public places, you name it, for more than a quarter of a century. And it shouldn't all be blamed at the government.

Ask yourself this Boris: Why are you told to put on a safety belt when you climb in to a plane, even when you go for a snooze, when the same doesn't happen on a train? On every flight there's the same routine about emergency exits, life jacket, whistle, drop-down oxygen masks, when we know that our chances of surviving an air crash are pretty slim.

On trains, where crash-survival chances are much better, there is no-one to tell you about the hammer for smashing the windows - you need to work that one out for yourself - and there are no seat belts. Why?

The answer, I believe, has something to do with human irrationality. People are more afraid of flying than they are of train travel and the safety routine has a soothing effect. Air safety has been much better managed with lessons learned from previous disasters. Train safety has improved also, but it has never extended to cocooning individual passengers.

There's a good book called Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales, that outlines a theory suggesting that some of the things we do for protection, such as roping up when descending mountains, can be a bad thing because we become overdependent on the safety measure when we should take more care as individuals. It's worth reading.

Where I did agree with Johnson in his column was his point about degree status expected for nursery-school carers. Why should everyone be expected to have a degree today? I don't have one and I've brought up a family of three kids. Mind you, that might explain a few things.

Hard Balls

Congratulations to Ed Balls, the UK Government's new Schools Secretary, for promising to tackle the fear of law suits that has led to playground bans against games such as marbles and tag.

I played in the FT football team with Ed who was centre forward and probably our best player after centre half Alan Harper, a much missed photographer who in 1991 was killed in Kuwait with David Thomas, another fine FT journalist.

As school secretary, Ed has his work cut out if he is to reverse the trend towards ever more sanitised playgrounds. I blame mothers who want to wrap their kiddies in cotton wool as much as I blame the so-called "compensation culture."

Pirates

This trend started years ago. I remember playing "pirates" in the school gym when you could swing from ropes and jump over all the gym equipment until some official banned it as too dangerous. It was a great game, of course.

I was less enthusiastic about British Bulldogs where you had to run from one side of a field to the other while some in the middle tried to pick you off your feet. I couldn't run very well so was useless as a chaser and was easily caught when chased.

There was another game - "finger, thumb or dumb" we called it in the Scouts - where three of you crouched in a line against a wall and others would leap on your backs. That one was a bit rough too.

My old school, Carlton Road Junior School in Dewsbury, was typical of its type with asphalt playgrounds, one for the juniors and an adjoining one for the infants. A new headmaster called Gordon Hirst came to the school intent on improving our cricket performances. We didn't even have a school team.

Canon balls

He introduced a "corky" ball in to the play ground. These balls were hard and black with a brown cork outer. They whizzed up off the asphalt like cannon balls. It wouldn't have been so bad except that we didn't wear pads in the playground. You can imagine that those brave enough to bat became good at hitting the ball pretty quickly. There was no choice.

Sometimes a ball would be cracked over in to the infants' playground, flooring some poor tot who had been playing ring-a-ring of roses, fell down, then didn't get up.

The upshot was that we won the Dewsbury junior schools cricket cup for two years running. At the same time we cleaned up on the swimming trophies too. My cousin Andrew and I were good swimmers and I have already mentioned Melvin Holmes, the third member of our swimming team, here.

Should we go back to the old days? It never did me much harm. A much greater evil in playgrounds is bullying and sometimes the rough games worked against the bullies where they were exposed, away from their little gangs. It's remarkable what you can get away within an organised game - an elbow here, a set of studs there. There would be retribution later but sometimes it was worth it.