(Published in abbreviated form in The Times Higher on 24 August 2007, as “Tide of paranoia swells safety fears needlessly”)
“We are in danger of having a wholly disproportionate attitude to the risks we should expect to run as a normal part of life.” So said the Prime Minister in May 2005. At the highest [...]

Keynote address to OpRisk Europe Conference, 21 March, London:

All risk is subjective. “Risk” is a word that refers to the future, and that exists only in the imagination.
Risk management involves speculating about this future, about things that could go wrong, and about ways of preventing them.
In recent years, in the public sector and throughout the [...]

Summary of presentation to Omega Centre Conference on “Planning and decision-making amidst complexity, risk and uncertainty”, Royal Institute of British Architects, London, 22 January 2007.
The Omega Centre project aims “to contribute to the advancement of the art and science of planning, appraising and evaluating the impacts of mega land-based transport projects in major urban and [...]

The BBC’s Today Programme is running a competition called Christmas Repeal in which listeners are invited to nominate an existing law that should be repealed.
I nominate Britain’s seat belt law.
[Update 23 December. Despite my high hopes and much encouragement, my Immodest Proposal did not succeed. It did not pass through the Today Programme’s editorial [...]

Following an email encounter with someone involved with risk management in the Norwegian off-shore oil and gas industry, I have put on my website a paper, Prudence and the Gambler, published in 1991 by Shell World – a Shell Oil company publication.
My article was followed, in the same issue, by a “First Reaction” from [...]

On 22 August 2006 Bill Callaghan, Chair of Britain’s Health and Safety Commission (HSC – overseer of the HSE, the Health and Safety Executive) issued a press release entitled: “Get a life”, says HSC”. He announced: “I’m sick and tired of hearing that ‘health and safety’ is stopping people doing worthwhile and enjoyable [...]

Paper for conference on “The Future of Tree Risk Management”
London, 15 September 2006.
The average annual number of tree-related deaths between 1998 and 2003 (the most recent statistics available) was six, or one in 10 million averaged over the national population. The Health and Safety Executive considers that “an individual risk of death of one in [...]

Summary of presentation for CRIMS (Canadian Risk and Insurance Management Society) conference, Calgary, 17-20 September 2006.
It is important to be clear about the type of risk you are dealing with. Directly perceptible risks are dealt with instinctively and intuitively. Virtual risks are culturally constructed – when the science is inconclusive people are liberated to argue [...]

Letter to the editor of the British Medical Journal, 26 June, 2006, commenting on Unsafe driving behaviour and four wheel drive vehicles: observational study, by Lesley Walker, Jonathan Williams and Konrad Jamrozik.
EDITOR — Walker et al show convincingly that drivers and other occupants of heavy four wheel drive vehicles are safer in crashes than those [...]