Haje’s Brain

This morning, I stumbled across a news story about how:

1) Last year, the top 10 NHS litigation claims are responsible for £68m of its budget.
2) all 10 of these claims were related to problems with complications in birth or pregnancy.

This bothers me on a whole series of levels. The average annual brutto salary in the UK is just over £20K. This means that the top litigants, who were on average granted £6.8m of compensation, were given 323 annual wages as a lump sum.

Now, I don’t necessarily have a problem with that civil litigation suits can be a way to keep businesses in check, but the NHS is a government organisation which currently is running at a £512m overspend. The past year, the NHS spent £593m on litigation cases. For a government agency run on taxpayer’s money, this is completely ridiculous. The UK only has about 60 million inhabitants, which means that each and every individual pays £10 every year, just to cover the litigation suits.
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Since I speak a few languages (Dutch, Norwegian, English,
French and German), I often get asked what language I think in.
The person who asked me this was American, when I was about 15 years old.
She only spoke English. This made me think a lot. How do you explain these
concepts to someone who speaks one language?

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This essay will briefly outline a suitable definition of democracy and other terms applicable to its contents, before investigating whether or not democracy is a prerequisite of attaining a condition of global peace, security and stability.

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This essay will offer a brief historical context of the events that triggered the current War against Terrorism. It will then explain what effects the response to terrorism has had, both indirectly and directly. The essay will finally attempt to ascertain whether or not the War on Terrorism has actually made the world a safer place or not. The essay will concentrate on post-September 11th America, as this attack and the subsequent consequences are what is most commonly associated with the war against terrorism.

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Asimov would be violently convulsing in his grave, had he seen the new I, Robot movie that is supposedly based on his work. With Will Smith as the mighty tasty consumerist god in the lead role - how could this become anything but a complete and utter disaster?

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