This has very little to do with competent health and safety advice, but more to do with fear of being sued, and due to that the insurance company requring a "risk assessment". It is not health and safety enforcement requring all this. A simple assessment will satisfy the health and safety enforcers. The risk assessment need not be bureaucrtic or excessive. Can be done on one A4 sheet, at the most on two. It is also high time the Times also got to the real reason rather than simply the headline grabbing.

Jay Joshi, Chartered Safety & Health Practitioner, Guildford, UK

Isn't the cobbled street slippery for the rest of the year? Why is health and safety only important on one particular day?

Keith, Brum,

Our Californian contributor fails to mention the other side of the coin here, namely the compensation culture we have imported from the US. The key words in the report are in connection with the risk assesments - "the insurers demand it". If some of the people racing fell over and broke an ankle, they would immediately sue the organisers and the result would doubtless be an insurance pay-out.

We're treated day and night to adverts on TV from lawyers encouarging people to sue their employer for accidents at work, which in some cases result from people simply not watching where they are going. The cancellation of events like this is the consequence of the compensation culture, not H&S requirements.

Alistair, Perth, UK

They have to pay the police £1200?
But yet nightclubs and publicans don't need to pay for the police on duty for the drunks on the streets at midnight?

I know its not the fault of the police force and they're forced to raise money in these ways by government. But where on earth is this going to end?

Dave, Gib,

Health and Safety !!
The Blair legacy goes on..........

barrie garland, Bristol, U.K

Makes me ashamed to be British.

We need more information. Is Britain the only country who have gone this mad? Do other countries also suffer this level of cotton-wool wrapping? Tell me a country which does not, and I'll find my passport.

Arthur, Newcastle,

Health and Safety. Labours tool to slowly dismantle English culture.

Cromwell, Leeds, ENGLAND

What people do not understand is that the health and safety bureaucrats must go to these extraordinary lengths in order to justify their existence and to ensure they have a pay packet. Oh, some of their dictates may seem a little daft; perhaps rather stupid. And they may take the spirit out of childhood. Or even destroy centuries old traditions. Or emasculate everything that made Britain Great. But they go will on, and on, and on, and on. And they will never end, for who has ever heard of a Government agency, quango, study group, or commission EVER being controlled, let alone ended, by the Government that created them?

Bob Evans, Anaheim, California