A plumber shows a 'builder's cleavage'. Photograph: Getty
Guardian readers may have missed the Sun's "Save Our Jugs" campaign to allow chesty barmaids to keep the right to wear low-cut tops. The Sun will be claiming victory today after the EU parliament voted to leave it to member states to legislate on whether employers would be made responsible for their workers' exposure to sunlight. MEPs thereby conceded that barmaids could, if they chose, wear low-cut tops, even in the beer garden.
The controversy stemmed from an EU directive - what else? - aimed at protecting workers from radiation exposure. Nothing controversial there, you might think. Its intention is to save people working with x-ray machines and welding equipment from contracting skin cancer.
But extending the rules to include natural radiation - for example, the sun (the one in the sky, not the one leading the barmaids campaign) - led to fears (or stoked up hype, depending on your view), that builders would be restrained from going shirtless, or displaying their traditional builder's cleavage, and that waitresses and barmaids who collect glasses from outdoors would have to cover up their, er, natural assets.
Defending the directive earlier today, Labour MEP Stephen Hughes said: "The Eurosceptic media and rightwing politicians are hellbent on misrepresenting important health and safety legislation. When we worked on industrial noise, they invented the claim that we wanted to ban bagpipes in Scotland.
"They said our work on the risks of whole body vibration at work was about stopping farmers from driving tractors after only three or four hours, even at the height of the harvest." He said the tabloid treatment of this directive was "ridiculing action on skin cancer as an attempt to force citizens to carry umbrellas. All of this is contemptible nonsense."
After the vote, a German conservative MEP, Anja Weisgerber, told Reuters: "It's a great victory for deregulation and less bureaucracy."
Mr Hughes, however, stuck to his guns: "No employer out there should think that this means they needn't take account of solar radiation."
