AS a self-confessed amateur public transport anorak, I treasure the photographs I took back in the late 1960s of fully laden double-deck buses – the old open-platform variety – caked in snow and plying through the city outskirts of Leeds and London, as they did most winters.

It was certainly cold inside, and they did occasionally slither to a stop or leave you to crunch through an icy gutter to climb aboard, but the services were maintained.

So that was then, and this is now, and what has happened? Today’s drivers are certainly no less skilled, the vehicles are infinitely more sophisticated, and we are definitely not expecting them to set out alongside the Ice Road Truckers of Alaska.

I freely admit I have never driven a rear-engine bus, so I can’t talk with any authority about their stability in inclement weather. However, I do know that in London in the 1980s, when snow hit the streets in any depth, London Transport would withdraw their lumbering new big red boxes in favour of the ageing traditional Routemasters.

Sadly, that opportunity no longer exists, as evidenced by the gallery of newspaper pictures in recent weeks of their successors stranded by the roadside or embedded in shop-fronts. Like the faithful West Park Puddleducks, London’s robust, purpose-built, people-friendly Routemasters fell victim to the sweep-away march to costly modernity.

So there may well have been a wholly legitimate safety aspect to the precipitate withdrawal of our entire Connex fleet when the flakes began to fall. It’s also true that because of the effects of our warming climate, we road users, including local PSV drivers, have drifted out of the habit of coping with adverse road conditions, so our skills have been if not eroded, then certainly ‘put on ice’.

However, I had never before heard of services being terminated en route, with passengers returned to their point of boarding and faced with the prospect of making their own way home.

It meant dumping vulnerable young people back in town on a late weekend evening with only the prospect of parents setting out on the same roads the operator considered too dangerous to drive on in order to collect them.

There might not be a strictly legal obligation to honour a contract of conveyance to a designated destination, accepted when fares are handed over, but there is certainly a moral one. What balance of overall safety was applied to such a call?

Now I’m certainly not interested in any ‘knock Connex’ campaign; I have a high respect for this local operator of a smart fleet of reliable, courteously driven vehicles, but under the cloak of ‘safety’, all they seemed to be doing was to remove risk from themselves and shift it elsewhere.

This year, as soon as the snow settled, out came the toboggans to slide down every available slippery slope. Wherever they could, youngsters unable to enter schools slid, fell over and laughed in the snow. Every frozen puddle was explored for its glissant potential. Given the exceptional circumstances of a relatively light covering of snow in the Island, there were many examples of fortitude, with folk trudging through the white stuff to get to work, deliver supplies, check on relatives and elderly.

They will have been unaware that in Scotland an eagerly anticipated curling match (which is held on ice, isn’t it?) was cancelled because – you’ve got it – someone in authority in bonnie Loch Lomond felt the surface might be slippery and cause organisers to foot a bill if anyone slipped and sued.

You see, the Elf and Safety spotlight has swung away from sensible individual precautionary measures, such as the universal clunk-click of car seat belts or wearing safety helmets when cycling. We are now confronted with institutional cheque-book safety designed to protect companies and local authorities against legal redress for negligence.

The 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act is daily being abused and adapted on the hoof to provide spurious excuses not to promote safety at all but to offer an excuse to guard against litigation. The act is a very proper counter to a historic litany of outrageously dangerous practices in the workplace. But it has been hijacked – not by safety professionals, but by lily-livered bureaucrats in fear of their own incompetence.

So no candle-light processions at Christmas – not because, even if properly organised, they are inherently ‘dangerous’, but to ensure if anybody were to trip on a paving stone in the dark, a bill might not arrive in the post. Litigation has made cowards of us all.

But all is not lost. There are shining examples of where prudent consideration of both health and safety can pay dividends. Look no further than the recent scare over the possibility of a swine flu pandemic.

Even before it became Mexico’s most infamous export, contingencies were being put in place to combat mass viral infection. If you subscribe to the adage Failing to prepare is preparing to fail, the cost involved in buying enough vaccine to immunise the whole Island population was a tribute to forethought.

As a result, and in the face of much hyperbole and scaremongering, the health of the Island has been safeguarded and the safety of the community guaranteed.

Admittedly, the outbreak was less severe than had been feared, and the Health department is left to dispose of surplus vaccine, but it ill behoves the cosy hindsight brigade beating the drum to waste and extravagance.

Sometimes, like bus operators and road gritters, those balancing public health, safety and purse strings just can’t win. I’d happily go to town on that. Weather permitting, of course!