On a vaguely-related topic, my wife was helping out in our local school yesterday. A kid cut her hand on the kid-friendly scissors and there was a lot of blood. The LSA said that they weren't allowed to mop up the blood(!), and left it there all over the desk right next to all the other kids(! again). My wife mopped it up and got a bollocking as a result. Erm. What? How sane is that? Have the rulemongers finally taken over? Since when did "must not posess any common sense" become a requirement for working in schools. Mad.