USUALLY it is the European Community which gets the blame for devising regulations designed apparently to remove all the risk, and with it the fun, from life. However, there is a growing suspicion that while the pen pushers in Brussels and Strasbourg may be responsible for drafting silly regulations and promptly forgetting about them, the real problem results from how those laws are interpreted and enforced in member countries.

While the Italians, Dutch, Germans and French adopt useful regulations readily, they are also quite prepared to use commonsense and quietly sweep under the carpet the ones which would cause a problem. In Britain, however, there are hordes of faceless bureaucrats whose very raison d'tre seems to be foisting unworkable and silly guidelines upon us all. The latest ones concerning paddling pools come not from Europe but from institutions closer to home. They state that children cannot paddle in 12 inches of water which is either not supervised by a qualified life guard, to prevent them drowning, nor chemically sterilised to shield them from deadly bacteria. For around 100 years Ilkley children have been using the paddling pool in Ilkley without suffering casualty figures reminiscent of the Black Death in 14th century Europe.

However, the mere existence of the new paddling pool safety guidelines means that if City Hall officials ignored them and a future accident in the Ilkley paddling pool did occur, a host of clever lawyers could be ready to descend like vultures ready to pronounce blame and pick the financial bones of Bradford Council as clean as a dry desert corpse.

Fortunately, the situation has been saved at the last minute by another set of health and safety bureaucrats who say that they are not in the business of spoiling everybody's pleasure. So its 'Hats Off' to the Health and Safety Executive - unless of course there are another set of official safety guidelines warning against the dangerous practice of waving hats around in public.