RIDICULE has been heaped on the Carlisle headmaster who suggested that kids wear safety goggles to play conkers.

God knows why, because I reckon the first people to criticise, if someone got a sore eye from a bit of flying conker, would be the same people who are now screeching on about wrapping kids in cotton wool.

Headteacher Shaun Halfpenny suggested the goggles because he didn't want to ban the age-old game but feared the consequences - by which he means financial cost to his school if something went wrong.

And good for him. Headteachers, along with hospitals, are the top victims of choice for spivvy lawyers, acting for chavvy families who look upon their kids' injuries not as a piece of bad luck, but next year's trip to Magaluf.

A few months back, my friend's daughter broke both her arms in a riding accident. After they'd healed, she returned to school with strict instructions to take care and not run around and fall over.

Unfortunately that's just what she did do; ignoring a teacher's command, she slipped up and fractured both arms again.

To cheer her up, Amanda took her shopping, and was astonished to find a woman with a clipboard asking the child how she had become injured.

"Did she do this at school?" the woman inquired.

Yes, she was told. At which point she started dribbling with excitement and told Amanda: "You know you could get a lot of money in compensation for that."

Amanda explained that it was her daughter's fault, for disobeying instructions, but was told: "That doesn't matter," and she was again told it could be worth "thousands".

Amanda declined the offer. But she was shocked to find that this woman appeared to be working on behalf of a law firm. And even more surprised that plenty of other parents in the shopping centre seemed interested in the proposal.

This is the reason why headmasters prevent hopscotch and conkers and cancel school trips. It's why councils take down hanging baskets, drain public fountains, and dismantle exciting play equipment.

Clipboard woman is the reason my local swimming pool has a flume that no one's allowed to use. It's why kids who want a donkey ride at Bognor have to wear hard hats, and why carnivals are being cancelled and why roundabouts only go round at two miles an hour.

Because all it takes is one chancer on the make to spoil it for everyone else.

Our lives are slowly but surely being constricted by the insidious compensation culture, which is driven by greedy, grasping lawyers and their cronies in the insurance industry.

And it can only get worse, because we will never get any change all the while the majority of our MPs are, or have been, lawyers, just like the Prime Minister, his wife, his best mate and the leader of the opposition.

The compo culture means jobs for the boys and jobs for the girls. And whacking great insurance premiums and loss of freedom for the rest of us.

First published: Oct 9