The pits
Take a look at these utter bastards…
Two solicitors who took millions of pounds from compensation payouts given to sick miners have been struck off.
[...]
Beresford, 58, said last year to be Britain’s highest-earning solicitor, and Smith, 52, made millions of pounds from personal injury claims for miners under the government’s coal health compensation scheme.
Tribunal chairman David Leverton said: “If ever there was a group of persons who needed the full care and attention from solicitors, it was these miners.
“Mr Beresford described himself as an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, his attitude allowed himself and Mr Smith to put commercial goals before his clients’ best interests.
[...]
The compensation scheme was set up by the government because of British Coal’s lack of safety standards and led to hundreds of thousands of claims from former miners and their families.
[...]
Beresford and Smith’s joint earnings went from more than £182,000 in 2000 to £23,273,256 in 2006, the tribunal heard.
But Timothy Dutton QC, appearing for the Solicitors’ Regulatory Authority (SRA), said charging conditional or contingency fees over and above those set out in the scheme was “unacceptable”.
In one case, the firm deducted a “success fee” from the widow of a miner, leaving her with a total payout of just £217.73, the tribunal heard.
Click for large version
Now, we’ve just had two weeks of the wannabe hardman Leader of the Opposition and attendant gutter press telling us that Karen Matthews was representative of benefit claimants. We’ve had a peacock Work and Pensions secretary strutting about the place telling us that the unemployed need to shape up or ship out. The most vulnerable in our society have been told, once again, that they are somehow lesser. The headlines have told us day after day that the shiftless and feckless underclass need taking in hand.
So, tomorrow, when not a single front page mentions how solicitors Beresford and Smith ransacked the public purse and cheated dying miners and dead miners’ widows of the insulting pittance they were entitled to – not to mention the faceless bureaucrats who thought the invoices reasonable and paid them – what are we to make of it? That this country’s media and political class are morally in the toilet? That would be a gross generalisation, wouldn’t it? We reserve those only for the poor.
You can bet there’ll be no editorial from David Cameron saying we must intervene with solicitors and their benefactors to prevent them becoming like Beresford and Smith. After all, Thatcher shafted the miners and then her spirit of entrepreneurship, nurtured by her morally vacant New Labour offspring, went back for seconds. You can’t expect the likes of Dave to examine his ideological heritage too closely for its moral failings.
Will we see hand-wringing from left-wing commentators and fire and brimstone from those on the right? Will James Purnell and his millionaire adviser be cruising TV studios tomorrow with a new government proposal aiming to drag something-for-nothing solicitors back into line? Sure, not all of them are robbing bastards but are there any votes in differentiating? There aren’t when it comes to single mums and the long term unemployed.
Tomorrow you will see the values (or lack of them) of a circulation-chasing media and a vote-chasing government and opposition. How much of either – newspaper sales or votes – can be extracted from the plight of dying and dead miners and their widows? Any advance on fuck all?
Update 12/12 @ 7.45am: Here’s today’s front pages. No inch-high screamers calling Beresford and Smith THE LAWYERS OF PURE EVIL. Call me less than amazed. Am I a cynic or a psychic?
Posted on December 11th, 2008 at 9:19pm under Crime and punishment, Culture, media and sport, New Labour, Tories
I met Beresford a couple of years back. Obscenities fail me when it comes to describing him. Not only does ripping off those less fortunate net you a sumptuous lifestyle, it also gets you snazzy offices such as this:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2351/2186286124_4831cac11d.jpg?v=0
There are times when the epithet “cunts” is no longer sufficient.
If they’ve been struck off, does that mean that what they did was illegal? If so, have they been prosecuted for it? Or is it another “rich man’s law” thing?
Speaking of arrogant over-wealthy twats, the Barclay brothers are to shut down all the businesses they own on Sark because the population (in their first ever democratic election) didn’t vote for the Barclays’ stooge candidates. This is likely to render one sixth of the island’s population unemployed, and Sark doesn’t have a welfare system.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/guernsey/7778245.stm
Look in particular at the comments of the bastards’ “advocate”. Another candidate for having his nipples ripped off by rabid dachshunds, I’d say.
I may blog on this myself in the morning, but feel free to have a go yourself – your command of invective in these circumstances outstrips mine by a mile!
Rather than get prosecuted they’ll probably ’strike a deal’ like the rich tax dodgers do.
Those offices are far less “snazzy” in broad daylight without the glittering multicolour lights. Plus if you know Doncaster and the rest of the area around there it’s typical Northern half-hearted “regeneration” with a few nice buildings, the lake, but then the godawful fake hills in the background and badly-kept pavements and shrubberies.
Living as I do in Barnsley, I’m aware of what constitutes “snazzy” etc. The Frenchgate redevelopment is a classic example of Doncaster’s halfhearted redeveloping. As is the The Hub by North Bridge; a glorious building in less than salubrious surroundings.
And having met Beresford, the only civil comment I could make is that I counted my ribs only leaving, just to make sure he hadn’t appropriate one.
If they’ve been struck off, does that mean that what they did was illegal? If so, have they been prosecuted for it?
I am not a lawyer, but I suspect that it’s unlikely to be actually illegal. You can sell your professional services at whatever usurious rates you can get away with, and write any old crap you like into the small print. They got struck off for violating the ethical standards of their profession, not for breaking the law. Personally, I’m quite pleased to find out that lawyers have professional ethical standards…
It’s perhaps worth noting that it’s also a scandal that the sick miners’ cases spent so long in the courts in the first place, which they did because they were fought against so hard by the government. It’s possible people didn’t follow this story at the time: it’s possible that this was because it didn’t get a lot of media coverage. Which briugs us back round to the original theme…
Well, when New Labour can do it to one of their own…
The Labour MP whose death forced the latest by-election to threaten Gordon Brown’s premiership was suing the Government over its refusal to pay compensation for the illness that killed him.
…what chance do mere miners have?
Ah, you know you just linked to this very thread?
Dang. Fixed now, ta.
Oh dear, more evidence of my naivity. I honestly thought that a tabloid news editor would pick this up – who doesn’t want to read about despicable rich bastards screwing miners and widows? I’d have thought making a splash over this story would fit with the tab’s self image of championing the ordinary man on the street (which is why they’re so down on the unemployed, who don’t fall into that category apparently). Is the story on the inside pages or not carried at all?
Well, I’m not sure about the physical papers but a check of all their websites shows that only the Daily Mail, Independent and Guardian are carrying the story on their home pages. You’ll need to scroll down them, obviously.
would a story about rich people being conned out of about $2 billion each cheer you up?
[...] For those just coming in. Posted on December 12th, 2008 at 1:28 pm [...]
Do they get to keep the money they STOLE?
“what chance do mere miners have?”
Steady now Justin, linking what happens to MP’s with what happens to the rest of us will have Bob the Pied Piper foaming at the mouth.
I note Beresford is on Doncaster Rovers’ board of directors: did he perchance spend some of his pocket money at Transform, the plastic surgery company Rovers’ chairman John Ryan sold a few years ago? I merely speculate because I remember Beresford’s fat little face on his advert in the Doncaster Free Press every week and he looks a lot better now, with a conspicuously refulgent set of shiny white gnashers of the type associated with dishonest, thieving fucks.
If anyone deserves the death penalty, it’s this bastard. This makes me incredibly angry.
And it’s a wonder he managed to live and work in the middle of Doncaster for the last few years. If I had done something anywhere near as deceitful there I’d still be running.
Struck off? Intestines wound out of a winch, please.
On Thursday’s PM Programme (6m30 onwards), ex-miner Ken Perry reduced me to angry tears on the way home. His sense of humour in the face of adversity – he lost money to the firm – is worth a dozen, a hundred Beresfords:
“Let’s face it: there’s blokes there, chaps there, they’ve worked all their God-given lives… they’ve come out crippled, injured… died: and they’re stealing money off them. They should be eating more porridge than the three bears.”