We must fight the little Hitlers on the beaches

IT has been an extraordinary Scottish summer – weeks of blue skies, blazing sun, parched pastures. It is as if we had been inexplicably towed away to la Côte d’Azur. In the serene seaside town of Nairn, a good-hearted mum decided to organise an informal day on the beach for local families.

Dawn Cowie-Mcinnes, 41, settled on a sandcastle competition for children this weekend, and advertised the free event on a community Facebook page.

‘Everything for kids is so expensive,’ she says. ‘I thought we could have some good old-fashioned fun on the beach and bring a few families together.

‘The idea was for the kids to have an hour to make their sandcastles, they would all get stickers and we would get someone local to judge the best ones.’

So far, all very informal, jolly and non-commercial.

But not everyone who looks over community Facebook pages is necessarily benevolent. For, days later, the horrified mother received an email from some panjandrum at Highland Council.

‘A sandcastle competition that is apparently proposed for the central beach has been brought to my attention,’ droned the bureaucrat. ‘It is nice to see a new initiative to add to the events at the links, however, Highland Council does not seem to have received any application or request for permission to run an event on the beach.

‘It is important to ensure permission is granted so your event is covered if any issues arise.’

Thus Mrs Cowie-Mcinnes was ordered to furnish an ‘event plan’. A full description of the proposed occasion, immediate contact details – and an exhaustive outline as to how the afternoon would be organised, the attendance expected, traffic and parking management plans and the programme of activities.

NOT to mention a map of the site, ‘including details of temporary structures’ – presumably all those sandcastles as yet unbuilt – appropriate risk assessment, proposals for first aid, plans for security, the arrangements for catering ‘if applicable’ – and, by the way, a cheque for £559.

What is it with these local government minions? A few years back a friend decided to erect a holiday hut, in keeping with the ‘sheiling’ tradition on Lewis and amid a cluster of other such summerhouses, old and new, by high cliffs south of the Butt of Lewis and far from any community, public road, electricity or running water.

Neat as his hut was – his family are professional builders – it was spotted by a princeling of the planning department months after its erection and he was slapped with a rude letter and menaced with a fine.

A couple of years before that, some mainland wifie in the same authority’s public health office learned not only that there are very many old wells on Lewis but, even worse, some are still actually used.

She tracked them down, whisked away bottles of water for analysis and in due course post-apocalyptic signs were by each one proclaiming that harmful bacteria had been found. They included one by my late great-grandfather’s cottage, from which he had so irresponsibly drunk all his days that he was early torn from us in his 91st year.

But instances of clipboardtoting jobsworth idiocy abounds all around us, in the name of everything from the horrors of food poisoning to the deadly designs of Al Qaeda.

A happy rite of washing down the Clyde on the Waverley is going down to see the engines, where – leaning over the mahogany handrail from the passageways either side of her magnificent Rankin & Blackmore triple-expansion machinery – you can lose yourself in the hypnotic dance of cranks and pistons and the sweet smell of steam and hot oil.

Except that you cannot now lean over the handrail, for – by the orders of officialdom – close vertical stainless steel bars now protect engines and engineers from anyone minded to spring at them with an axe.

Not, as an exasperated Waverley director sighed, that they would prevent someone poking through the barrel of an AK-47… or that we can seriously believe anyone bent on a global caliphate might commandeer a septuagenarian paddle steamer to, presumably, ram-raid Rothesay.

There are, these days, so many people wearing those ridiculous hi-vis yellow jackets that city crowds increasingly resemble bobbing buttercups and only those who shun them are conspicuous.

There have been dreadful instances when folk have died because – be it health and safety regulations, prescribed ‘best practice’, the fear of being taken to court or of losing one’s job – those in a position to help did nothing.

BACK in 2007, tenyear-old Jordan Lyon drowned in a pond in Wigan, Lancashire, despite the efforts of anglers and others to save him – while two ‘Police Community Support Officers’ stood on the banks and did nothing.

Greater Manchester Police later insisted the officers could not enter the water because of ‘health and safety rules’.

Alison Hume, 44, of Galston, Ayrshire, fell down a hidden mineshaft in July 2008 and, though found within hours, she died because the fire brigade commander who took over the rescue operation forbade his officers, harnessed as they were, to descend into the pit.

Commander Paul Stewart insisted they wait for a police mountain rescue unit, which took two-and-a-half hours to arrive. By the time Mrs Hume was retrieved she had suffered a fatal heart attack.

Commander Stewart told the incredulous Fatal Accident Inquiry in 2011 that the operation had a ‘successful outcome’ because the casualty was indeed retrieved.

Sheriff Desmond Leslie ruled that Stewart and other commanders ‘focused on selfjustification for the action or non-action taken by them’.

He added: ‘I found their evidence bullish, if not arrogant.’

Only after his damning verdict did Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service apologise to Mrs Hume’s family.

Commander Stewart? He was in 2015 promoted to area manager of a new £45million training college at Cambuslang, Lanarkshire, after enjoying a senior fire prevention role at Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games. Public sector Scotland looks after its own.

In Nairn, happily, no one will die. Mrs Cowie-Mcinnes posted Highland Council’s ridiculous missive on Facebook and was mobbed with offers of help.

Saltaire Security, from Fochabers, offered their services free and flourished a copy of their public liability insurance certificate. Lifeguards have volunteered and Nairn Business Improvement District promised assistance.

In flailing retreat, Highland Council shovelled up excuses, saying the licence fee will be ‘waived as a goodwill gesture’.

Yet they are out there still, all those mad officials… wagging a disapproving pencil near you.