WHAT A WASTE

Sadly I doubt that NI Water, NIHE, the NHS or Roads Service are likely to improve services in the near future. Roads Service is at least trying … on the face of it by gritting the roads in winter.

What the public don’t know is that corruption, mismanagement, waste and an inability to work together has left us in this mess.

I’ll give you one example.

When writs are issued against a contractor that carried out alleged substandard work that contributed to a public liability claim, the contractor … employed by the government utility … join the government body in the legal suit. Time and time again the law sees fit to apportion blame to both parties and costs are awarded against the government (after all, they employed the contractor and didn’t make sure they were capable of carrying out the work to a safe standard). And contractors looking for lucrative jobs like to wine and dine the potential client … even if that client is the government and its employees, who are supposed to be immune to bribery and adverse to coercion and bias … trouble is most aren’t.   

Worse than that (if it’s possible) is the in-fighting between government bodies, agencies or whatever they want to call themselves. Although each utility is represented by the Public Prosecution Service, the PPS brief different litigators for each branch of the services.

That is particularly noticeable in the high court, where barristers and QC’s, in the full glory of wig and gown reign supreme.

Hundreds of thousands of millions of pounds are spent on claims that should never have seen the light of day but the closed shop that is the Law Society encourages claims because they are making a fortune out of suing the government. One barrister told me public liability claims were their bread and butter.

But the claims department are at fault too. They deny liability with impunity. They think they are protecting public funds but they are only adding to the problem by causing litigations to continue and end up in court. It is a culture of “believe no one”. Deny everything. They even doubt the people who are carrying out inspections and recording faults. One had to go to the High Court to get compensation for an injury at work. They wanted to question his credibility yet this was a guy they were relying on to give evidence in support of the system of inspection and repair. It beggars belief.

The “Travelling Community” is notorious for making claims for all sorts of injuries. One in particular got £20,000 in the high court because the DOE barrister failed to notice that his testimony in court and his statement of claim differed. Or did he?

Brian Kerr. Unbeknown to me at the time, destined to be Sir Brian Kerr and Lord Chief Justice, wanted me to OK a compensation payment for an injury that had been valued at £150,000 (hence the top brass employment). I said no way. The case had no merit and should be fought. There were doctors and specialists already there and I insisted we fight the case. In the end it was dismissed but the cost of letting it get to court was colossal. Even before we got in the door they had assembled eminent doctors and all sorts of specialists who must have been rubbing their hands in glee at their fees.       

The whole system is corrupt. MP’s fiddling expenses, the law taking the high ground while ripping us off and creating a false sense of a system of justice, to the wee man fiddling his time sheet. I despair.

We need a radical shake up of the so called “system”. It isn’t fit for purpose.

Everywhere we turn people are being ripped off or paid off or killed off.

Where have all the viruses come from? Why don’t antibiotics work anymore? Drug companies can only make money if we are sick and need to buy their cures. What if they invented the illnesses in the first place? Do not underestimate the lengths greedy people will go to make money. We, the plebs, are expendable.