There is a lot of horsesh*te (for the last 10 years) written about the fictitiously rampant, all consuming "UK compensation culture", yet scant evidence that one of this kind exists or even threatens to exist. What does exist is the erroneous perception of such, despite evidence to the contrary. This is due to the phenomena of media amplification, by which anomalous exceptions almost mystically become by dishonest implication an alleged 'norm', when they are in fact nothing of the sort. A good example of this is the recent thread positing the question 'are English emergency services really this bad?'; although the individual incident was appalling, the obvious answer to anyone with an ounce of common sense and ability to think critically would be an unequivocal no. I couldn't even be arsed to reply and explain (and prove) why. Back OT, as much as I'd love to join the "blame US Cultural Imperialism for every single thing bad in the world" movement, and in particular compensation, its a bit more complicated than that. Mainly political but we won't go there.

Papers like the Daily Wail are masters of the dark arts of Moral Panic; their raison d'etre is the creation of Folk Devils and Great Satans and in Mail World (and others) the sky is perpetually falling. The very obvious motive for this distortion is primarily monetary, it helps them to sell their toilet roll erm, 'newspapers' and also reinforces an Ideological worldview amongst the more gullible that IMO has little basis in reality.

In 2004 a study was commissioned which revealed that the UK was in fact the second stingiest country in Europe (second only to Denmark) in terms of Tort compensation payments, the UK’s expenditure (at 0.6% of GDP) as lower than that of ten other industrialised nations, including Canada (0.8%), Australia (1.1%), Germany (1.3%)and the USA (1.9%): only Denmark spent less. Nearly 10 years on, there has been very little change. Though claims for motoring incidents and medical negligence have indeed increased, claims for accidents in general have actually fallen. Generally speaking, in the UK spurious claims are not successful (and rightly so).

http://shura.shu.ac.uk/691/1/fulltext.pdf

In 2010 for example, the then Leader of the Opposition David Cameron appointed Lord Young of Graffham, (who also served in the Thatcher administration), to review health and safety laws. He concluded that,

"behind the myth, the truth behind health and safety hysteria, the problem of the compensation culture prevalent in society today is one of perception rather than reality".

Here is Master of the Rolls Lord Dyson on the populist myth.

http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/compensation-culture-media-created-myth-dyson


I think the false perception of this is exacerbated by the deluge of sh*te on TV channels like ITV etc (which I don't actually watch barring when the footys on, or the odd history show exception) like "Have you hit your thumb with a hammer by accident" etc; to which I always immediately reply 'well you should have been more careful then you daft b*stard, now get over it and do one" . This is most peoples natural reaction, but joking aside this pejorative connotation can also serve to unfairly villify those who do have a genuine and rightful claim, (particularly those with severe disability's) due to the negligence and sometimes just plain old criminality of others. These fly by night TV compensation cowboys (most of whom will disappear like 'General Accident' and others in recent past) are only allowed to ply their trade because the market conditions for their existence have been created by Governments through legislation.

It is disgusting however when you see 'did your doctor do you harm?' adverts in hospitals (which no doubt is a big reason for the increase in claims); in some cases they may well have done, but it should be self evident that the vast majority of doctors and Nurses don't wish to harm anyone.....and this is definitely influenced by US-type advertising . Horrible, really. This is obviously not the fault of the average American however, most of whom I know are equally disgusted by this rubbish.