A compensation culture, or protecting the public?

It is also a fact of life that anything which is introduced to make life easier for people, and to help them overcome financial, physical and emotional hardships, is open to abuse. I used to work in a benefits office in Mansfield, Notts, and for every ten genuine claimants, there was always one trying to con the system. Emergency payments could be made to claimants for extraordinary circumstances, such as if they had to attend a funeral in a different part of England or travel to visit sick relatives. I lost count of the times one particular claimant told me his ´grandma had died´. ´How many grandmas have you got?´ I eventually asked him, exasperated. ´Four´ came back the reply. Now I have never been very good at maths but even I could smell a rat! Needless to say said claimant never did get his early payment and left with his tail between his legs.

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We lived at the time in a large coal mining area in Nottinghamshire, and were surrounded by pits. My parents ran a restaurant just outside the city, and we used to host members of the National Union of Mineworkers and the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers – obviously not at the same time. The general consensus among the miners of Nottingham (and I am probably opening up a can of worms here), was that the NUM was a fantastic union when it was first founded, but turned into a power-crazy organisation when ´King Arthur Scargill´ took over the leadership. One of my friend's fathers, Tom, was a retired miner at the time of the pit strike in the 80’s and he used to tell me what a great job Joe Gormley did. Formerly head of the NUM, Gormley ensured miners were paid a proper wage and that working conditions were improved. Funds were made available for miners injured in the pits, and improved medical care for those suffering from life-threatening lung diseases associated with coal dust such as emphysema. Tom had been buried up to his neck twice in the mines, and although he was given some support, he died from emphysema two years after retiring at the age of 62.
Had Tom or his family been able to claim compensation earlier, his suffering would have been more bearable and the financial strains on his family would have been eased.

In my mind, anything which is introduced to aid the welfare of the public can only be a good thing. I now live in Spain, and it seems the whole of the Costa del Sol has been turned into one big building site over the past ten years. The amount of injuries sustained by people tripping over uneven pavements, or workers injured on constructions sites is massive. If you try to claim any compensation here for personal injuries suffered through no fault of your own, you will at best be met with a shrug of the shoulders and at worse told ´you should have looked where you were going´. Sad but true. So yes, although compensation claims are open to abuse, I know which society I would rather live in if I have the misfortune of suffering a personal injury that is someone else's fault!