Shreena is mean

[shreena]

I heard a British victim of the Mumbai attacks on the radio this morning talking about how how he was not given any financial compensation.  He comes across a lot better in this article than he did on the radio (in my opinion) but, while I agree that there seems to have been a slightly horrifying lack of co-ordination, particularly when it came to

Comments

[vampire_kitten]

"I remember even thinking I might get a call from Gordon Brown!"

is a bit bizarre. As is

"I didn't expect any special treatment. But we were in a terrorist attack! No one came and said: 'Don't worry, your Dad's on the way.'"

Clearly he did expect special treatment.

Mostly the feeling I get from this article is it is a completely misplaced appeal. Surely the point is conditions for injured/disabled people in Britain is far less than ideal, surely we should have a system in place to ensure such people has all they need, rather than waah, fix my special case right now.

[shreena]

Yes, basically. If the state is not giving him enough for his needs, surely that would be the case for all disabled people? And that may well be right, I'm not sure. I have a feeling that his 2-5 million pound expectation is rather too high, though.

[vampire_kitten]

2-5 million for lifetime care, including equipment and medical costs would be too low... but then most of these costs should be cover by the NHS anyway, so I'm not sure why it is he needs the money. Is he having difficulty accessing the support that is theorectically there? While I'm heard a lot of shit things about disabled support for mental health conditions/invisable conditions, the cover for conditions that are blatently obvious like spinal injury I thought were pretty good.

[shreena]

A lot of it seemed to boil down to the fact that other patients in his ward had similar sums of money.

I assume that it could cost quite a lot to renovate his house to make it suitable but, surely, nowhere near 2-5 million? He was pretty unclear on the radio about what he needed that sum for and his campaign website is no clearer.

[vampire_kitten]

it could cost quite a lot to renovate his house to make it suitable

And there are already UK funds for this:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/BenefitsTaxCreditsAndOtherSupport/Disabledpeople/DG_10018715

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/BenefitsTaxCreditsAndOtherSupport/Disabledpeople/DG_10018723

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/BenefitsTaxCreditsAndOtherSupport/Caringforsomeone/DG_10018921

[vampire_kitten]

And since that took me five seconds, his googlefu must be rubbish.

Hmm, I think this is why his complaints that the government are not paying him attention is grating so - they did pay attention, they set up all these funds and bodies for him to apply to. Surely that is much better than a phonecall saying "we are so sorry"

[shreena]

Heh. Maybe the accident damaged his googlefu too!

The impression that I had from the interview was that it was all about the money, the articles all make him sound less mercenary but more whiny.