Trolley 569

Captured this morning on our very own Chase Estate, not previously thought to be home to the sort of people who dump shopping trolleys far from their home. Returned to the M&S food hall. Which seemed quite cool, reminding me of the huge amount of energy that all their chiller cabinets, many of them open fronted, must be burning up.

Which pushed aside, for a few minutes at least, my irritation at the piece at reference 2, consumed before breakfast.

Which was all about a tainted blood transfusion disaster, dating back to the 1970's and 1980's, which killed getting on for 3,000 people and no doubt damaged a lot more. I have not attempted the report, from the pen of one Sir Brian Langstaff, but I imagine a good part of the story is the politicians and the health bureaucrats failing to concede that there was a disaster in good time and with good grace. The sort of failure more often associated with the Metropolitan Police. So what started as a disaster becomes the worst scandal ever to hit the NHS.

All of which is very bad news, but the sight of a very highly paid lawyer dishing out huge amounts of other peoples' money is a bit rich too. A highly paid lawyer who has quite possibly made complicated arrangements to avoid paying too much tax himself. Who has awarded damages to the tune of between £5 and £10 billion, say £3 million per fatality. Now while I can see that serious compensation should be paid to the family of a young breadwinner with three young children, a wife and a mortgage, I do not see that such compensation should be paid to the family of an octogenarian with pre-existing health conditions - perhaps the sort of thing which meant that he or she needed regular blood transfusions.

Compensation should be paid for real need. People who are just grieving for the loss of a loved one do not necessarily need to have a lot of money thrown at them - money which might otherwise be spent on reducing waiting lists, paying junior doctors more or whatever. In any event, something more deserving. And I don't see that punitive damages - if they are part of this mix - are appropriate at all - and even if they were, they should fall back to the state, like a speeding fine. They are additional to compensation.

And getting back to the lawyers, no doubt they will get their nose in the trough when it comes to administering this fine new scheme, to contesting the amounts of all the awards.

Having reports done by independent experts is all very well, but they are all too likely to start throwing other people's money around. From where I associate to the heritage people getting into a lather about things - perhaps some important Neolithic stream bed, the only one which has been uncovered in the whole of the Home Counties  - and inflicting big bills on other people for heritage flavoured work.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/05/trolley-568.html.

Reference 2: UK faces bill of up to £10bn to cover blood scandal compensation: Payout expected to be extended to families of victims who contracted HIV and hepatitis C from contaminated transfusions - George Parker, Financial Times - 2023.

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