One of the worst aspects of living in the Nanny state is the fact that Nanny's bad habits are adopted by many other people, as they seek to blame others for their own failings or simple bad luck.
Here is, in my view, a text book example of how Nanny is negatively impacting the behaviour of people living in this country.
Mr and Mrs Boardman (in their eighties) who live in Lincolnshire called paramedics last year when Mrs Boardman, who has heart trouble, fell ill.
When one of the ambulance workers (a technician) went to collect a stretcher from the ambulance, he fell over in the Boardmans' driveway.
Can you guess what is happening now?
Yes, that's right, this person (I have thought of using various fine Anglo Saxon words to describe him, but am containing myself) now wants to sue them.
The Boardmans have received a letter from his solicitors saying that he is seeking damages for personal injury.
The East Midlands Ambulance Service appear to be washing their hands of the matter, and claim that he is pursuing the matter in his own right. This implies that his work insurance policy does not cover this claim, which in itself speaks volumes about the credibility of the claim in the first place (ignoring the fact that he is trying to claim off the Boardmans).
Unsurprisingly neither the technician nor his solicitors were available for comment, too shame faced I would imagine.
However, the letter from his solicitor to the Boardmans says that the technician fell when the couple's security light flickered out.
Needless to say this disgraceful and contemptible claim is causing the Boardmans a lot of stress. Jim Boardman said:
"I think it's morally wrong.
There are other side issues to be considered... people could be reluctant to call the public services and it brings into disrepute an organisation which I've got the greatest admiration for."
Now, if you didn't think that this was bad enough, read what Unison (The Public Sector union) has to say on the matter!
Carol Brown from Unison said:
"I can't comment on this specific case because I don't know if this worker is one of our members but if our members are injured during work then of course the union would support them.
I can understand people finding it hard to believe but of course if someone is injured during work then somebody has got to take liability."
Read this bit again:
"If someone is injured during work then somebody has got to take liability."
BOLLOCKS!
No they don't!
This is the very essence of Nanny in her worst form.
Accidents happen; sometimes because of negligence, sometimes because of people's own stupidity and sometimes because of sheer bad luck.
Using accidents as an excuse to screw people for money is contemptible.
The union are loathsome scumbags for condoning this kind of morally reprehensible behaviour.
Are we now to assume that all emergency services will first have to conduct a risk assessment of a caller and their home, before they will attend an incident or emergency?
Mark my words, that is where this is leading.
Needless to say, the Boardmans say they are now reluctant to call the emergency services.
Nanny has destroyed our society!
"Needless to say this disgraceful and contemptible claim is causing the Boardmans a lot of stress"
ReplyDeleteSurely there's a case for launching a counter claim then - and I'm sure the union could be included as a defendent for increasing the stress ;-)
If someone made a claim like that against me I would counterclaim for stress illness. Also remove any 'risks' that might be removable. In this case it would see to be the helpful lighting on the driveway.
ReplyDeleteHowever the last thing anyone on their 80's is likely to want to be part of is an insurance scam, assuming they can afford the insurance, perpetrated by someone who no doubt will be claiming they do the job they do 'to help people'.
The quote from Carol Brown is not necessarily wrong in all cases, it just does not apply all the time. But in any case this person's place of work is wherever he/she is sent by his/her employer. As you rightly point out, if the employer, who has presumably continued to pay the individual concerned even if they were off work, does not see any liability then the matter should be closed or at least taken up with the employer's legal department.
Of course it could simply be that the person involved has allowed the legal profession to do their worst without realising the implications. It would not surprise me.
Grant
I strongly believe the conditional fee legislation has destroyed our society.
ReplyDeleteAs a nation, we are too quick to sue for the slightest thing, these ambulance chasers that offer no win no fee services are costing us all dear.
Every insurance policy has gone up in price because, the money won by compensation grabbers is just passed on to policy holders as a business expense.
It is often cheaper for companies to settle the case out of court.....The compensation element is not the biggest burden.....it is the legal fees.....The compo grabber may receive a few hundred pounds, but often the legal fees amount to several thousand pounds.....No wonder there are so many of these lawyers specialising in this type of case.
I am sorry these people must pay for what they have done to a pure-hearted public servant. They have the temerity to own a drive (what is wrong with parking your polluting car on the road, or using our ultra efficient and customer facing, friendly public transport system, and then they light that drive with a security light (think of the carbon footprint) and then expect a service from the public sector they have paid into all their working lifes. Shame on them, and more power to the downtrodden working class heroes and their unions who daily risk their lives on our behalf with nothing more to show for it than the chance to coin it big time if they slip and fall on the job.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes wonder how and why we are all so easily side-tracked. Is 'The Boardman Case', I wonder, part of Nanny's perverted strategy to take our minds off central issues and concentrate instead on the narrower, individual events?
ReplyDeleteI believe that Nanny's minions have treated (and will continue to treat) old and relatively powerless people like the Boardmans despicably. I also believe that there should be expressions of public anger and outrage in every section of the media and from every section of the public about this case.
But I also believe that - in the overall order of things - the Boardman case, distressing as it is, is a relatively small and insignificant event; just another example of the arrogance and contempt that has come to exemplify Nanny's dealings with the public generally.
Last July's smoking ban gave anti-authoritarians something to shout about; in the end nothing changed except that Nanny took heart at the weakness of the protest.; so 'Junk food' and 'Binge Drinking' were the next targets. Murmurs of protest follow every new piece of restrictive legisaltion; but nothing actually happens because Nanny chooses her targets and her timing so well.
I see the Boardmans' - and similar cases - as an example of this 'selective targetting'. In Nanny's terms, if she can make people accept - however reluctantly and with whatever amount of grumbling - that this sort of treatment has become the norm, then it is just a short step to applying it to everybody.
As I aid to Andy during 'The Great Fag Debate'; it's not the individual act that's important, it's the principle that governs it and which becomes, in everyone's mind, 'the accepted practice'; that's what we need to be aware of.
So, to my mind, the Boardmans are an unfortunate 'test case'; once the dust has settled and further cases get reported, we may still be pissed-off, but we will - as always - accept the inevitable.
All of these ambulance-chasers should have been put down at birth
ReplyDeleteThe trouble is that faced with these absurdities our society falls back on its own myth of "our wonderful firemen", "our wonderful police", "our wonderful nurses", etc., instead of taking a long hard look at some of the cretins now despoiling the uniforms they don't even wear properly. Many of these pillars of the establishment are idle jobsworths drunk on the fantasy of their own importance and encouraged by the revolting role models seen on TV. No discipline, no sense of duty, no civic pride. We must have some of the scruffiest police officers in the world, in fact many third world countries put them to shame. Shambling, scruffy, hatless gum-chewing creatures in reflective jackets, shaven-headed Phil Mitchell lookalike louts in quasi-SS uniform, or big-arsed women in green overalls talking loudly and patronisingly to old people. I am reminded of a sequence of photographs showing a smart, upright and stalwart policeman in Victorian London removing his helmet and tunic to dive into the Thames to rescue a drowning man. Many of the modern emergency services personnel are not fit to lick his boots and I'm not afraid to say it. These poor, modern imitations cannot hide behind the reputation won by their illustrious predecessors for ever. "Times have changed" the soap-indoctrinated morons squeal. You bet they have and for those of us who can actually remember how it used to be that stupid excuse for the shithole we now live in is nothing to be proud of.
ReplyDeleteBut if they remove the lighting they'll be hit by a case brought by a burglar for loss of earnings because he couldn't see how to break in?
ReplyDeleteI have to say I think Dixon of Dock Green (above) has it about right as far as I can see.
ReplyDeleteDespite the all pervasive reflective jackets that, imho, not only look sruffy but also serve little purpose when all and sundry are wearing them, our local plastic plod, no spring chicken he, does seem to do his best to appear as smart as the uniform will allow. I rather suspect that this may be because the uniform is what he covets, that and the visibility of being around the village so much which offers some form of status. Perhaps I have read him wrongly. Maybe that is all that is intended for him and his colleagues - visibility. Perhaps obvious noticability at any cost.
I'm sure we are wrong to paint all emergency service personnel in the same light and I have met some genuinely decent people on one or two occasions BUT the overall impression of the way things have developed in the last 20 years or so, especially the last 10 of those, is not positive.
Grant
Egad Sir, you are right re the hi-vis vest. Recently, when relieved of my wallet by a (and I completely Nanny, completely understand, his plight) socially excluded and educationally challenged youth I ran up to the hi-vis vest wearing person of authority on my street. Thank God, I thought, my taxes in action a shining beacon of law and order in a glowing, almost knight like vest of authority - well, the blood was running into my eyes at this point, not that I am accusing the youth of any harm to me of course.
ReplyDeleteThe result, "sorry mate, just emptying the bins - fuck me what 'appened to your face."
Grant said;
ReplyDelete"...I'm sure we are wrong to paint all emergency service personnel in the same light..."
But this attitude, which ought to work both ways, doesn't. We are just as wrong to paint all emergency service personnel as though they were saints following a vocation - yet that is the way we have been conditioned to think.
Let anyone offer the smallest public criticism of nurses (for example) and watch the vilification of the complainant begin. Hordes of 'right thinking' people will gather to protest,taking the moral high ground and quoting anecdotal evidence about the way they; their dying Uncle; their Granny; their infant or their pet hamster were treated 'like royalty' when they were in hospital; in a house-fire; involved in an accident or whatever and insisting that THEIR view is the only correct one. Even the overpaid bosses of such organisations (who must know the truth) will support this sort of bullshit; mainly because it saves them from confronting the truth.
That there is (maybe, but I doubt it) a majority of ES personnel who are devoted to public service does not - cannot - mean that each and every nurse, fireperson, copper, ambulanceperson or whoever, is always and forever beyond reproach.
Why do people die because of diseases contracted in hospital? Because our 'angels of mercy' can't be bothered to was their hands.
Why do kids drown in Manchester pools?
Because the 'protector of the public' then on duty hides behind the rules rather than help the poor little sod.
Let's just tell it as it is for a change; without apology and without the guilt trip that we have learned to take every time we hear of an 'emergency person' who needs criticising.
We live in a "blame" culture these days. We oughtn't, but we do. Whenever something goes wrong, there's a feeding frenzy of blame. Old age pensioner trips and falls on pavement? It must be the council's fault, so sue. Drunken shopper slips in Asda and fractures nose on a frozen joint of lamb? It's the supermarket's fault - they should have foreseen the possibility. Disobedient schoolboy ventures where he's been told not to venture and ends up disabled or dead? It's the school's fault - just telling him wasn't enough, the teachers should apparently have interposed their own bodies to keep him safe. Politicians, local authorities, health and safety organisations and all the other nasty little jobsworths who make a living out of telling the rest of us how to live our lives are all active in the blame-game, but the worst of all are the media. A reporter's first question whenever news breaks is "who's to blame for this?"
ReplyDelete