cottonwool society?

I find Blogger 'help' totally impenetrable. I can't even link this post to Mylissa's Nemeton or get text links to work even if they turn blue (like I do). Blogcatalog 'help' is no better, and now they are inviting me to contribute. Worth every penny, but when you pay you expect help in keeping with the lowest levels of IT savvy, not the highest. Some links to decent help anyone?

Mylissa's blog on the subject of learning from mistakes was fair, the BBC piece well found. An individual's slant on this important subject is bound to be biased. A survivor has survived to crow , a statistic of the group who walked carelessly into a fatal accident has not.

The streets and pavements of Greece are linear death-traps. Many of you would not believe how many holes are left to fall into, how many roads have a deep gutter on one side and a precipitous fall on the other; pot-holes deep enough to contain several scooters can be found on the only main road connecting many small towns or villages. It's getting better, but the excuse has always been 'young people learn not to take a step without using their eyes' 'Tourists?' I would ask. 'What about them?' would be the answer.

Have my daughters survived a mother who would have liked to fit them with collars and leads, but had to be content with trying to smash their self-confidence instead. have they survived a father who let them play on the ice when the canal was frozen over, (My home was a narrowboat at Watford, near London) and let them drive into the locks when he had to get off to fix the gates? And let them work in a fish&chip shop?

Well, they have both travelled the world, been a hippy in India and a lap-dancer in Japan, (hear them scream) but they are still alive, interesting, intelligent, middle-aged (straddling 40).

Yes,Yes, but have they survived? Well, one of them teamed up with and wisely threw out an alledgedly aristocratic frog called 'The Slug', and the other with a Polish postman who, apparently, cannot play chess. Mother is devastated that none of their partners was/is a British aristocrat or wealthy.

Me, I would rather die than accept presents from a wealthy 'son'-in-law.

And if you believe that you will believe anything. But have they survived? That is the point of this post. If Ana and I had been able to work together our daughters would probably have been lawyers, hedge-fund managers, doctors, and not travellers, life-coaches, artists, alternative therapists, and that kind of thing.

CB (CorfuBob) is no better. My backgound was free - deep countryside, private park a mile long with rivers to paddle in at each end, very dangerous barns and such to play in alone. 1964, four months in Greece, volunteer with UNA, instead of marrying a beautiful librarian called Barbara. We loved each other, but she was a catholic who went to church every Sunday. I was a fundamentalist agnostic, afraid of seeing my babies go to church. How inadequate can you get? Deep-thinking, independent, stoopid.

Sorry, didn't really address the question of whether society should legislate for common-sense, or let the kids 'fall off the plank', but safety at work and in the home should surely be a top priority for those who help control the environment, and protect it from profit seekers.