OK, I know there are certain occasions when such an attitude
is entirely justified, and I do know that we all have to be held accountable
for our actions. And I know that history is full of examples of the guilty
getting away with their crimes on a grand scale because they had money and
power (and still are in some parts of the world.) But it’s becoming yet another
example of the pendulum swinging madly too far in the opposite direction. It
seems we’re losing sight of the fact that the world isn’t perfect and neither
are people. Mistakes will happen. We all make them.
When it was discovered that a small leica clip had been left
in my bladder after the kidney operation and that I would need a second, minor
operation to remove it, I was surprised by how many people told me I should
sue. My response might be paraphrased thus:
‘Why should I sue? I had an enormous amount of time, care
and expense lavished on me, and all of it aimed at saving my life. I spent six
hours on the operating table and four in the recovery room, and at the end of
it all the surgeon – a highly skilled and dedicated man according to the staff
who knew him – made one small, non life-threatening error which was easily
rectified. I wouldn’t dream of suing. Wouldn’t that be a most extreme example
of churlishness?’
‘But you could make some money,’ one or two of them replied.
Money, money, money… Money makes the world go round… Doesn’t
it all so often come down to this obsession with money which the culture here
in the ‘developed’ world so emphatically encourages?
‘But I’ve already had some money,’ I was wont to reply.
‘Lots of it – probably hundreds of thousands of pounds worth in time, effort
and care. Why would I want more?’
And do you know what? In the end they all agreed with me, so
maybe they were conversations worth having.
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