“Out of this nettle - danger - we pluck this flower - safety.”

William Shakespeare 1564-1616


We are proud to announce that from 1st February 2009, we are setting the standards in electrical safety within our industry.
We already comply with the stringent ADIPS (Amusement Device Inspection Procedure Scheme), which is the Health and Safety Executives recommended inspection scheme for funfair attractions, but from the start of February we are taking things a step further by combining the Portable Appliance Testing (commonly known as PAT) scheme with the ADIPS scheme.

We have had the majority of our equipment and power cables PAT tested for the last couple of years. However a desire to exceed the current safety requirements, and actually set the standard, has led to the purchase of our own electrical testing equipment, followed by training for key members of staff.

As a result we now have the procedures in place to test all of our equipment and power cables at least every six months, with a view to increasing the frequency of this testing as more members of staff are qualified to undertake PAT testing. Additionally we have purchased RCD testing equipment allowing us to regularly test the safety devices fitted to much of the equipment we operate.

As a final initiative, we have added a number of in line RCD devices to our equipment reserves, this will allow us to provide additional protection to our attractions when we are operating inside older buildings and events venues. Our portable generators are already fitted with protection devices of this type, which again will receive regular audited testing to ensure that we have no compromises when it comes to ensuring the safety of our equipment.

Glossary

ADIPS The Amusement Device Inspection procedure Scheme. A rigourous safety standard applied to the funfair industry in this country.

PAT Portable Appliance Testing A scheme widely used by other (non funfair) industries in the UK.

RCD Residual Current Device. An electrical safety device which disconnect the power in the event of someone receiving an electrical shock.

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We have been supplying all of our candy floss carts with Fairtrade only ingredients since late 2007. Now we have taken things a step further by sourcing ingredients that carry both Kosher and Halal certification, whilst still remaining Fairtrade. Hopefully this will go down well with the large number of Jewish and Muslim clients we have acquired over the last few years.

Whilst sorting everything out, I noticed the many similarity's between Kosher and Halal, and that intrigued me. So being an inquisitive sort, I dug a little deeper using the power of the internet. What I found surprised me. We don't really study other religions in this country, in truth the ways things are going we don't study our own very much. However looking below the surface of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, the amount of history and symbolism they share is incredible. All the religions worship the one deity, only with different names. Jesus is not only an important figure the Christian religion but also the Islamic one. Many of the characters in the Old Testament also appear in the Qur'an (the Islamic spelling of what we commonly call the Koran) Adam, Abraham, Moses, Noah, Jesus are all there.

Many of the incidents in the Bible are also recounted in the Islamic book, too closely to be mere coincidence. About the only major figure which isn't shared is the prophet Mohammed PBUH, although some other offshoots of the Christian faith do mention him. All in all it seems the world's three major religions share more common ground than many people would be comfortable admitting. Which makes the whole middle eastern conflict one big puzzle, sure as hell confuses me.

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posterity may learn how dangerous it is to let speculation riot unrestrained, in the pursuit of enormous profits from inadequate causes.

The above quote could be used to describe the situation that Bernard Madoff has created with his "Ponzi" investment scheme. But is doesn't, in actuality it was a quote describing the great South Sea Misadventure which occurred in England during the early 1700's. For full details on the South Sea Bubble Click Here.

If you go a little further back to 1637 we find the Great Tulip bulb bubble, when speculators paying absolute fortunes for Dutch tulip bulbs suddenly found themselves holding a pile of worthless flowers when everything came crashing down.

I haven't really looked any further back than this, but I am quite sure that some enterprising cavemen at some point in time made an absolute fortune by selling options on wooly mammoth tusks. No matter how often these sorts of schemes pop up, run their course then collapse leaving people destitute, there is always a new herd of sheep waiting to be fleeced out of their money. I suppose the old saying of you cannot con an honest man has some truth in it. These people who think they are being ever so clever by investing in schemes that are too good to be true only to find they are too good to be true probably deserve what they get. The annoying part is when institutions like banks fall for it, then are bailed out by the "honest" people who didn't jump on the bandwagon, and actually invested their hard earned funds in genuine schemes. Anyway enough of a rant for this week.

The job we did for the Trinny and Susannah show at Godstone back in the summer finally made it to the screen the other night. There was a fleeting glimpse of yours truly whacking the peg on one of our strikers, a quick glimpse of my other half making candy floss and a few shots of the swing boats and sidestalls we had there.

At the end of November we presented attractions at the four day Christmas market in Stockton On Tees. We also had a number of other smaller Christmas Fairs in various parts of the country, and we are currently in negotiations to take quite a few more on. The upshot was in conjunction with another operator we formed a jointly held limited company specifically to market ourselves to that sort of event. Our new website can be seen at www.christmas-funfairs.com. Its still a little sparse but will be built up with additional pages over the next month or so.

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With all the predictions of doom and disaster it is difficult to predict how this season will turn out. I have been going back through our records from the start of last year, and to date our level of inquiries are up thirty five percent on this time last year. How many of these will ultimately be converted to actual jobs is impossible to tell, but at least the fact that people are still planning events is some comfort.

Traditionally January and February is our quietest time, so we usually get through any maintenance jobs that have been deferred from the end of last year and make any alterations or new additions to attractions that we usually don't have time to do in the busier months. I'm also taking this opportunity to finally implement a couple of new safety related initiatives that we have been planning for a while, I hope to be able to announce them by the beginning of March. Also we are revisiting our progress with our environmental initiatives. We made great progress in a number of environmental fields during the past 12 months, so its time to take stock, see where we go next and draw up the plans to achieve our aims.

Most of our big clients have confirmed their intention to use us again this year so things on the surface look fairly optimistic. I think our biggest worry this year will be other firms failing. If Woolworths had asked us to supply a substantial amount of events a month ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity, blue chip companies like that are usually sure bets. Who would ever have believed that a month down the line they would be gone? Similarly we tend to work a lot with banking organisations, another industry that is on pretty shaky ground at the minute.

I'm hoping that if companies are cutting their budgets back this year, we may end up with more work for our smaller attractions. Although the major events with 4 or 5 adult rides and supporting attractions are nice, they take up a larger proportion of our organisational facilities, and planning time. The same resources can see us undertaking perhaps a dozen or more small events, which taking everything into account can sometimes be more profitable at the end of the day.

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Coming back to the yard last week I notice a large stretch of the adjoining field being dug up. After investigating I discovered that the electricity company are removing the overhead power lines (which run over the middle of our property) and re routing them underground. This is an extremely good idea, especially considering what happened a few years back.

To protect those involved, I won't name any names John Henry, but I was sat eating breakfast early one morning, contemplating starting to load everything up ready for the move to northallerton. At the time it was absolutely throwing it down with rain, and I didn't really fancy making a start. Anyway, whilst I was psyching myself up, I suddenly heard a yell, followed by a crash, more yelling and some Anglo Saxon language. Coming out to investigate, I came across the unnamed person (John Henry) who was hobbling about with smoke coming from one of his boots. What had happened was that he had an aerial mounted on a long pole, fastened to the drawbar of his trailer (caravan). To remove this ready for hitting the road he had to lift it up a couple of foot higher , the power cables ran directly overhead, and with the amount of moisture in the air, a spark of electricity had jumped from the power lines, into the Aerial, down the pole into his knee where the pole was resting and out through his boot to earth!, luckily when he dropped the pole he missed my car which was parked next to him so it could have been much worse.



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