Hazardous Sports!

    During No.6's election speech, delivered from the Stone Boat in Free For All, he tells the electorate that you can enjoy yourselves, and you will. You can take part in the most hazardous sports and you will..............
    But that is in the Village. In the everyday world there is something called Health & Safety, of which the main aim is to spoil peoples fun. At the time of the Prisoner the compulsory wearing of seatbelts in cars was going to be enforced, along with the compulsory wearing of a crash helmet for motorcyclists. Something which Patrick McGoohan was against, the repression of the individual. Today one cannot ride a bicycle with out having to wear on ones head, something that resembles a bed pan! Children are disuaded in the autumn months, from playing conkers in the playground. It is also suggested that senior citizens wear full face visors if they want to play a game of conkers!!! Playground areas in parks and schools are deemed unsafe if they do not have this black matting to break the childrens fall.
    Of course any real hazardous sport comes with safety equipment, that is clearly understood, and that certain safety procedures have to be followed.. But generally speaking, people are disuaded from partaking in any dangerous activity, for their own good. But surely it is up to the individual to decide what is and what is dangerous, and to make up his or her own mind whether or not to take part.
    I tell you what was dangerous in the Village, and that was Kosho! This sport was played out in the Village gymnasium, you know, you've watched it in both Hammer Into Anvil and It's Your Funeral. When we went on the trampoline at school there was about six people round the said tramopline, ready to ctach you if you slipped and fell. Not so for Patrick McGoohan and Basil Hoskins. Indeed the most dasngerous bit, was when No.6 dunked his opponant into that tank of water at the end of the Kosho bout in It's Your Funeral. The chap fell backwards into the tank of water. One degree out, and he would have been badly injured!
   It's alright for No.6 to carp on about hazardous sports, and telling people that not only can take part, but forcing then into doing so, becasue back in those days, there was no Health & Safety! I remember as a boy jumping dykes in Lincolnshire. Playing conkers. Climbing trees, fighting in the playground. Running about with school pals playing tag, falling over and getting hurt, it was all part of growing up. There was no mollycodling of my generation, or the one before, and the one before that. No being wrapped up in cotton wool, which the past Labour Government would have do to us.......ridiculous!           Be seeing you