Personal injury news roundup: 7 days ended 27 Jan 2015:
Here’s something that will get your blood boiling: the it’s been revealed that the MoD conducts surveillance on injured military personnel to look for fraud.
This has been going on since 2008, according to some newly released official figures. Almost 100 military personnel that made accident claims for injuries sustained whilst on duty have been spied on over that period of time – with a cost to the taxpayer of around £1,800 each.
Defence Minister Philip Dunne did some major tap-dancing as he defended the practice, remarking that it was only undertaken in public places or on social media networks where the personnel posted public status updates. He said it was only done ‘occasionally,’ and only to make sure that the MoD wasn’t being taken for a ride by people who were trying to get some trumped-up personal injury compensation claim for nonexistent or over-exaggerated injuries.
This is, for lack of a better term, completely and utterly disgraceful if you ask me. For what it’s worth it’s not enough that our poor armed service members have to be shipped off to some horrid place and get shot at for months or even years at a time, only to come home with post traumatic stress disorder and a body riddled with combat injuries only to have their own government suspect that they’re just making up their injury claims? How is this any sort of way to treat combat veterans and the like?
For pity’s sake, these people sacrificed their own health and safety so people like you or I wouldn’t have to. But their bosses quickly stop caring about them once they’re back home and no longer taking bullets for our side. I don’t care if they were in the rear with the gear through two tours of Afghanistan and they ended up tripping over someone’s misplaced combat boots – if they did the time over in those hellish conditions they deserve our respect and our thanks, and most certainly deserve more than a ministry who can’t even be arsed to take these people t their word.
Let this be a lesson to you: never try to cheat the Government, as they simply hate competition.