WTF is up with all this health and safety crap in the UK?

I make a living providing health and safety advice in the construction industry. After ten years or so of doing the job Its clear to me that it's a good thing; stops people getting hurt (or fucked in the ass as someone else put it earlier). Yes of course there's shitloads of laws and rules to follow, but mainly these are driven by employers wishing to avoid hurting people for legal, financial and moral reasons....net result is generally safer nicer places to be and work. Whats wrong with that? The daily mail is a shocker for fuelling the myths about H & S ( remember bonkers conkers?) and the crappy bullshit stuff is mainly is about risk adverse companies with high profiles reducing chances of getting sued. Having said that, some H & S pro's sometimes seem to come up with bureacratic and impractical solutions where other approaches could wokr better IMO.

but even health and safety in the construction industry is fucked. contractors use it as leverage over subcontractors and vice versa. Example: I had to dig that hole in the picture by myself (the other three liggers jumped in for the photo) in all that kit during the hottest, most humid part of last summer.

Flame retardant boiler suit - gas pipe not going in the ground for another 3 months, I don't think there's any gas in it even now!
Plastic Hard Hat - there was no machinery for over 1km and no structures around and the hole was only 1m deep
Safety Glasses - I was using a shovel and spade, no flying debris

All this kit ended up making me ridiculously hot and sweaty as a bastard which steamed up my glasses constantly which I had to keep taking off to wipe only for them to then get muddy and scratched and impossible to see through. But I still had to wear them until they provided new ones. I'm sure you can see then that all this PPE was actually worse for me.

Because archaeologists are the least favoured subcontractors there is no leeway and any little snipe the contractors can get, they'll take, and it's usually through HSE.