Attitudes Concerning Rescue

[Tengu]

BTW, Abbe Osram, `what` football hooligans?

I have stewarded last two seasons and not met any.

 

[Abbe Osram]

BTW, Abbe Osram, `what` football hooligans?

I have stewarded last two seasons and not met any.

The groups of club supporters which have to be put on separate trains, which have to be checked by security for weapons before entering the football station, the onces running down a street trying to catch a guy with a "wrong" flag or colored T-shirt from another club. The onces hitting a police guy with a iron stick, to his head, so that he was in hospital,in koma, for several month.

Don't know what you call them but I thought "football hooligans" are the right word. Teach me another one if you like I am from Sweden and don't know the right terms. We have this type of brainless people in all nations, so don't worry that I am talking bad about the English. Saying that comes to mind that it cost a hell of a lot money what we pay every weekend in the entire Europe for that kind of stuff.

Our talk started about "costs" and "muppets". I thought that these thousands of muppets on our streets every weekend cost us much more than some stupid kids which need a chopper to get them down from the mountains.

Lets stop public football and safe millions for better use.

cheers
Abbe

 

[Wayne]

Abbe your correct football hooligans and other undesirables cost the economy a lot to police. The current UK prison population is vast,

There is a difference in the costs of policing criminals to that of a rescue of the criminally stupid. Unless you suggesting we should make being under prepared or skilled an offence.

I try not to get too upset by the idiots that need rescue because the conditions are more harsh than they expected.

That is our fault as a society anyway as we are producing a generation of people with little exposure to the outdoors and any sort of risk. Therefore how can they judge the risks they are taking with no frames of reference to guide them.

We need to promote education, a love for the outdoors in our schools and promote self reliance.

 

[Abbe Osram]

Wayne please don’t understand me wrong. I don’t believe at all that people, who are getting into distress, should be accounted for. It is one thing to make a mistake even if it’s coming from ignorance and another thing being an idiot. I believe we should be up for it and even pay for the ignorant but if someone is doing the same stuff again and again expecting a different outcome, or filling his emotional needs (fighting with other people to deal with his personal insecurities and anger) we should not put up with it.

1. If there are people who need help again and again. Like the free climber, which had to be helped down from a wall, he got stuck, several times. I would say we should pay for the first help. He pays for all the following times.

2. A football hooligan should not get any help! If we use our police force to protect them from killing each other, the football clubs should pay for it and only them.

The millions we save we can put into rescue choppers, boats, education, salaries for personal etc etc. Environmental projects etc etc.

Cheers
Abbe

 

[Mantic]

There is a lot of evidence indicating that we are indeed creating a nation that is becoming more and more helpless.

A silly example but one none the less - yesterday my wife was shopping at the meat counter in Sainsburys. She was pointing out to our 3 year old what all the meats were and where they come from. A woman next to her thought that it was completely bizarre that she she do so! Bizarre? What, to know where meat comes from? My 11 year old niece thought pork came from beef! She's not stupid, just ignorant of such things because she's never been taught about them. There are studies showing that 40% of inner city kids don't know where milk comes from

 

[Wayne]

Abbe i live on the coast and every year people are rescued in their epensive yachts with no equipment. One yachtsman had to be rescued twice in a week after putting to sea with no radio or flares and wtas trying to navigate using an AA road map.

Frustrating and expensive each life boat launch costs thousands. The crew gave him a serious talking to. I think these people are going beyond unlucky to negilent. However once the precendant is set and we put value judgements on the rescue then before long we will all be facing bills or compulsary insurance.

I have been to your home town. The conditions can get rough, If your out checking your traps in the woods and you need aid who decides your behaviour was unreasonable. Probably would be some government offical with no outdoor experience.

 

[william#]

in the summer months we use to get the inevitable inflatable problems
ie getting blown out or along coast both us lifeguards and the coastal rescue would have an un official policie of punturing any inflatable which caused us to go out to get (well the coast guard would say there is no point bringing it in they will only go back out in it ) maybe the second time they should of sunk his yaht
lol

 

[Abbe Osram]

Abbe i live on the coast and every year people are rescued in their epensive yachts with no equipment. One yachtsman had to be rescued twice in a week after putting to sea with no radio or flares and wtas trying to navigate using an AA road map.

Frustrating and expensive each life boat launch costs thousands. The crew gave him a serious talking to. I think these people are going beyond unlucky to negilent. However once the precendant is set and we put value judgements on the rescue then before long we will all be facing bills or compulsary insurance.

I have been to your home town. The conditions can get rough, If your out checking your traps in the woods and you need aid who decides your behaviour was unreasonable. Probably would be some government offical with no outdoor experience.

I understand you mate, it must be frustrating with that kind of people.
Yes, they would help me and get me out. But if I would do the same mistake as the rich guy in his boat and the boys would have to get me twice out of the forest.
I believe everyone in town would know about the stupid guy (me) and laugh about me. I want to make damm sure I really need them before I call for help.

cheers
Abbe

 

[bambodoggy]

As another point of interest (maybe) if you are in Jersey then you need insurance for most things....certainly you cannot take your surfboard over there and go surfing.... First you have to register it with the Harbour Master and you can only do this once you have insurance.

The insurance is to cover the costs of any possible rescue should you get into difficulty and also in case you hit one of the rather expensive boats out there and do any damage.

You get a nice sticker to go on your board to say you've paid this year (it's about £6 or was when I last lived there) and various officals will actually check you have done this and there's a heck of a fine if you haven't.

 

[nobby]

I understand you mate, it must be frustrating with that kind of people.
Yes, they would help me and get me out. But if I would do the same mistake as the rich guy in his boat and the boys would have to get me twice out of the forest.
I believe everyone in town would know about the stupid guy (me) and laugh about me. I want to make damm sure I really need them before I call for help.

cheers
Abbe

I think that things are very different for you Abbe.
You live in a way that makes your bushcraft skills an essential part of your daily life. For many of us it is a hobby lived part time, at best.

Excuse my re entry, after promising to leave, but the nature of the thread seems to have changed.

I was interested in the comment about expensive yachts and lack of equipment. Every weekend, in the season and probably out of it as well, members of the Dinghy Cruising Association will be out coastal cruising using Ordnance Survey maps instead of marine charts. Experience has taught them that the OS is fine for coastal and river crawling, and are cheaper than marine charts. Few of them carry flares or radios. Irresponsible?
Expensive gizmos and pretty coloured detail isn't always necessary. After all, didn't the Japanese invade Singapore using maps of the Bakerloo line, or somesuch?

Before I am accused of irresponsible use of OS maps I must confess a weakness for Imray charts. The Admiralty, naturally, use Admiralty charts and if charts became compulsory would Imray, or Stamfords, be allowed? There would be no profit in those for the legislators.

 

[gregorach]

One thought on the whole insurance issue... We don't have crime insurance to pay for policing, we don't have fire insurance to pay for the Fire Bridage (although we do have fire insurance to cover the damage), and we don't have ambulance insurance to pay for health emergencies. All these emergency services are paid for by taxes. Why should mountain rescue or the RNLI be any different?

 

[bambodoggy]

One thought on the whole insurance issue... We don't have crime insurance to pay for policing, we don't have fire insurance to pay for the Fire Bridage (although we do have fire insurance to cover the damage), and we don't have ambulance insurance to pay for health emergencies. All these emergency services are paid for by taxes. Why should mountain rescue or the RNLI be any different?

I quite agree, I was only mentioning Jersey as a point of interest

 

[gregorach]

I quite agree, I was only mentioning Jersey as a point of interest

Yeah, I know...

It's just always struck me a ludicrous (or perhaps scandalous) that the RNLI doesn't recieve public funding. Sorry if this has already been mentioned in this thread - I haven't been following it that closely.

 

[Goose]

I think that all the rescue services deserve pay, they are real professionals.
I also think it would be to the detriment of the services to pay them!

The people who do this deserve respect and recognition, the scale of volounteer workers and the amount of time they put in with no reward is phenomenal.
People getting paid a fortune to entertain people, whether sport or entertainment receive awards, MBE,Knighthoods etc, while these true heroes get ignored annoys me sometimes.

 

[ArkAngel]

Yup i do believe that people are beggining to lose their respect for the outdoors.

My experience was climbing <well walking up the normal path> up Ben Nevis a few years ago. I was fit, and although i am happy in the outdoors i figured that climbing the tallest mountain in the UK required a bit of preparation. So off i toddled into Fort William tourist infromation and picked up a few leaflets on what to take with me.
As usual my rucksack was the biggest or so it seemed. Unfortunatly my wife had to give up about half way up as we didn't know at the time she was asthmatic. So we had our mobiles,agreed on a time i would be back etc, she went back down and i went on to make a successful summit. It was a scorcher of a day and i had all sorts of stuff with me including fortunatly a good wide brimmed hat and sun tan cream. But i also had warm clothing and waterproofs just in case.

However the amount of people i saw with nothing more than flip-flops and trainers were mind boggleing. Most had no more equipment than a pair of sunglasses except for the overburdoned who were carrying a bottle of water too!
There were rangers <or mountain rescue> at regular intervals on the way back down and each had 4 or more people with them complaining of twisted ankles, blisters, dehydration, sunstroke. The rescue chopper was so busy they were landing in one of the fields in the bottom of Glen nevis near the youth hostel to cut down on flight time.

I couldn't help thinking how people seem to think it's a Sunday afternoon bimble. I consider myself to be overprepared for most things (if that's possible) but when things do and have gone wrong in the past (my nickname is Tackleberry ) it's amazing how the jokes and jibes stop and i become a really popular bloke!

 

[stotRE]

Abbe your correct football hooligans and other undesirables cost the economy a lot to police. The current UK prison population is vast,

There is a difference in the costs of policing criminals to that of a rescue of the criminally stupid. Unless you suggesting we should make being under prepared or skilled an offence.

I try not to get too upset by the idiots that need rescue because the conditions are more harsh than they expected.

That is our fault as a society anyway as we are producing a generation of people with little exposure to the outdoors and any sort of risk. Therefore how can they judge the risks they are taking with no frames of reference to guide them.

We need to promote education, a love for the outdoors in our schools and promote self reliance.

I agree with you wayne,its up too us to teach our children and pass on our knowledge of 'smoothing it'.

We rely too much on other people teaching our children,many feel that its not their job or the goverment/police/teachers et cetera should take responsability.

We should take responsability.

What would brave men and women like Jim Bridger,Ernest shackleton,Amelia Earhart think about people today?

Did Meriweather lewis and William clark have rescue backup when President Thomas Jefferson ordered them to explore lands west to the pacific?

When i was a very young boy my father instilled in me a sense of self reliance and a taste for adventure,he taught me and my brothers how to live in the bush,to shoot and to fish.

Children are growing up in this country not knowing our native trees and plants,they think that milk comes from tescos and most have never seen an animal in the wild.(i bet that most have never slept in a tent or cooked their own food.)

We need to be more like the Scandinavians and less like the Medterraineans.

 

[BOD]

I wonder what the public attitude is in the UK concerning David Sharp who died on Everest and the fact that no one attempted to rescue him despite being only a few feet from him.

Admittedly Everest is in a different league of mountain from the situation talked about in this thread and he was a competent climber and not underprepared.

Should others have defered their summmit bid and bring him down?

http://www.everestnews.com/everest2006/sharpeverest05172006.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/05/17/wever17.xml

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/tees/5010348.stm

 

[bogflogger]

This just illustrates what a Rediculous Media Circus the ascent of Chomolungma has become.

40 other climbers passed the guy who died, yet none of them had the Moral Courage to give up their own ascent to help.

I hope they can live with their concience in years to come, after they are no longer beholden to their Corporate sponsors.

The only people I have any respect for any longer are: Edmund Hilary and Tersing Norgay, plus Reinhold Messner and Peter Habler.

These are the only four people who have made an ascent with any real meaning.

The God's must have left the Mountain in Disgust, a Decade ago!

 

[nobby]

Did Meriweather lewis and William clark have rescue backup when President Thomas Jefferson ordered them to explore lands west to the pacific?


We need to be more like the Scandinavians and less like the Medterraineans.

To the first: yes they did. They were the leaders of a large inter reliant party. Writing their names in isolation makes it seem that they were alone. Also, they weren't entering unknown lands. Unknown to European men perhaps, but not to the native population.

To the second: why? What advantages would being like a Scandinavian rather than a Latin bring? The cradle of Western civilisation (even the word is Latin rooted) is the Meditteranean.

 

[nobby]

I wonder what the public attitude is in the UK concerning David Sharp who died on Everest and the fact that no one attempted to rescue him despite being only a few feet from him.

Admittedly Everest is in a different league of mountain from the situation talked about in this thread and he was a competent climber and not underprepared.

Should others have defered their summmit bid and bring him down?

QUOTE]

The BBC report indicates he was ill prepared:

Speaking to the Close Up programme on New Zealand television, Mr Inglis said: "The trouble is that at 8,500m (27,887ft) it is extremely difficult to keep yourself alive, let alone keep anyone else alive.

"It was like 'What do we do?' We couldn't do anything. He had no oxygen, no proper gloves, things like that.

"On that morning, over 40 people went past that young Brit. I was one of the first."

I'd have thought that any action, however futile, to help him would be worthwhile but if you are driven enough to want to climb Everest maybe ego comes first.
Whatever happened to the concept of the 'Good Samaritan'?