![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Death and Taxes
Apr. 9th, 2010 10:56 amI was surprised to hear that Malcolm McLaren had died. As the saying goes, "I didn't know he was ill". This morning I read that he died from what the Guardian referred to as "a rare cancer", although it's hardly rare to me, since mesothelioma is that horribly aggressive cancer most commonly caused by exposure to asbestos, and is a key factor in the current "compensation to asbestos victims" argument. As one doctor once described it to me "imagine a giant black ice-hockey puck on the lung".
McLaren lasted just over six months after diagnosis, which isn't far short of standard.
The problem with the asbestos scandal -- and I would be the last to deny that it is a scandal -- is that English Law and Scottish Law at the moment don't really agree on who is a victim (and American/International law is another field entirely). English law currently takes the historical view that people who actually get ill are victims, and that they deserve all of the compensation they can get. Scottish Law, however, took a different course last year, taking the view that people with pleural plaques are also victims.
The thing is, pleural plaques are symptomless. They don't kill you; they don't even make you ill. What they do do is tell you that you are more likely to develop an asbestos-related disease in the future -- for example, mesothelioma.
On top of that, there are an awful lot more people with pleural plaques than there are victims of asbestosis or mesothelioma. Since all of the companies that actually employed workers in the disgraceful asbestos-dustful conditions of some factories have gone out of business, it's insurers that are currently picking up the tab. Jack Straw's department faithfully promised a paper on this matter for early last year, then for before the end of the last parliamentary session, then for early this year. Now we have an election, and it still hasn't arrived. Straw is, basically, a cunt, and is perhaps (maybe along with Harriet Harman) the sole reason why I can't bring myself to vote Labour this time round. People are dying out there, and Straw has delayed any government pronouncement on the matter because he knows that it will stir up controversy. As a result, he has continuously kicked it into touch, not giving a shit about people sitting in legal limbo-land about compensation.
Anyhoo, back to those people with pleural plaques. Let's ignore the irritating thing about money (I can come back to that). What Scottish law has basically decided is that having a justifiable worry about an illness is, if not quite as bad as actually having that illness, still worthy of compensation. English law states that you can't be compensated for something that hasn't yet happened, and a non-compensable event which makes a subsequent compensable event more likely to happen does not merit turning the first event of itself into a compensable event.
From this point of view, I have a lot of sympathy for the Scottish line. If someone tells me that, instead of having a life expectancy of 35 years, I now have one of 16 years, I make that an event worthy of compensation. In poker terms, it's all about EV. English law is in effect saying "but it hasn't actually happened" while Scottish law says "that doesn't matter, what matters is that the probability of it happening has gone up".
But here we come back to money, and that's where it gets difficult. Because there's only so much in the pot (WHY there is "only so much in the pot" is a complex issue -- but please take that on trust). And if you make pleural plaques compensable, what will happen is that there will be less available for the people who do go on to develop the illness. And some people will develop the illness without having been checked for pleural plaques. These people aren't ill yet -- they will become ill over the next 15 years. If all of the people with pleural plaques are compensated for a possible future event, then when those future events occur in a significantly smaller number of cases, there won't be adequate funds available to pay the paople who actually become ill.
Looked at from that point of view, you have a situation where a large number of healthy people who will never in actuality become ill will have been compensated, and a small number of people who become very ill will get either no more than those people who remain healthy or, even worse, get nothing at all. This is in a sense the insurers' argument, and it is the size of this "pot" that the UK government is meant to be talking about. And, predictably, it doesn't want to say yes and it doesn't want to say no, so it procrastinates into the next parliament.
Odd, therefore, that McLaren should die from what is an industrial-related cancer. A bit like Roy Castle dying from lung cancer.
+++++++++++
And while we are on the bad health kick, I appear to have developed a lung infection. I picked it up, I am sure, on that air-conditioned bus from Cannes to Nice (I knew I should have taken the train!) Irritatingly it failed to turn out to be a chest cold that came out via a runny nose within three or four days. Instead it chose to amble down deeper into the lung, probably on the left-hand side, nice doctor told me.
Net result was that I felt gradually worse day after day until yesterday, when I actually went to said GP. She put me on a course of antibiotics which, with luck, will start to make me feel a bit better by tomorrow and capable of getting into work for next week. At the moment, I am a sad wreck of a man with virtually no voice (a result of ghastly coughing fits an average of once an hour through day and night) and not enough proper sleep, despite 13 hours out of 24 being spent in bed. I've still managed to get out the newsletter both yesterday and this morning, for which I am justifiably proud of myself -- some English people still take pride in a job well done!
And the physical damage left me incapable of little else bar watching TV, so I watched disc 2 of Blade Runner, The Final Cut. These "extras" discs are normally total tat, but this one is an exception. Three and a half hours of more on the making of Blade Runner than you ever thought you needed to know. Moments of longeur, inevitably, but it gives a marvellously rounded view of what it's like to make a picture. No-one comes across as an out-and-out goodie or baddie. I even found myself feeling some sympathy for the "men in suits"! Strangely, the documentary did leave me seeing some flaws in the film that I hadn't noticed before -- most particularly the lack of emotional resonance, which is masked by (a) the visual genius and (b) the "rescue" by Rutger Hauer in the remarkable final moments, where he puts an hour's emotion into a three-minute speech. I wonder if Hauer's "Time To Die" speech is so effective because the movie had been so emotionally dry for the previous two hours? That hadn't occurred to me before.
______________
McLaren lasted just over six months after diagnosis, which isn't far short of standard.
The problem with the asbestos scandal -- and I would be the last to deny that it is a scandal -- is that English Law and Scottish Law at the moment don't really agree on who is a victim (and American/International law is another field entirely). English law currently takes the historical view that people who actually get ill are victims, and that they deserve all of the compensation they can get. Scottish Law, however, took a different course last year, taking the view that people with pleural plaques are also victims.
The thing is, pleural plaques are symptomless. They don't kill you; they don't even make you ill. What they do do is tell you that you are more likely to develop an asbestos-related disease in the future -- for example, mesothelioma.
On top of that, there are an awful lot more people with pleural plaques than there are victims of asbestosis or mesothelioma. Since all of the companies that actually employed workers in the disgraceful asbestos-dustful conditions of some factories have gone out of business, it's insurers that are currently picking up the tab. Jack Straw's department faithfully promised a paper on this matter for early last year, then for before the end of the last parliamentary session, then for early this year. Now we have an election, and it still hasn't arrived. Straw is, basically, a cunt, and is perhaps (maybe along with Harriet Harman) the sole reason why I can't bring myself to vote Labour this time round. People are dying out there, and Straw has delayed any government pronouncement on the matter because he knows that it will stir up controversy. As a result, he has continuously kicked it into touch, not giving a shit about people sitting in legal limbo-land about compensation.
Anyhoo, back to those people with pleural plaques. Let's ignore the irritating thing about money (I can come back to that). What Scottish law has basically decided is that having a justifiable worry about an illness is, if not quite as bad as actually having that illness, still worthy of compensation. English law states that you can't be compensated for something that hasn't yet happened, and a non-compensable event which makes a subsequent compensable event more likely to happen does not merit turning the first event of itself into a compensable event.
From this point of view, I have a lot of sympathy for the Scottish line. If someone tells me that, instead of having a life expectancy of 35 years, I now have one of 16 years, I make that an event worthy of compensation. In poker terms, it's all about EV. English law is in effect saying "but it hasn't actually happened" while Scottish law says "that doesn't matter, what matters is that the probability of it happening has gone up".
But here we come back to money, and that's where it gets difficult. Because there's only so much in the pot (WHY there is "only so much in the pot" is a complex issue -- but please take that on trust). And if you make pleural plaques compensable, what will happen is that there will be less available for the people who do go on to develop the illness. And some people will develop the illness without having been checked for pleural plaques. These people aren't ill yet -- they will become ill over the next 15 years. If all of the people with pleural plaques are compensated for a possible future event, then when those future events occur in a significantly smaller number of cases, there won't be adequate funds available to pay the paople who actually become ill.
Looked at from that point of view, you have a situation where a large number of healthy people who will never in actuality become ill will have been compensated, and a small number of people who become very ill will get either no more than those people who remain healthy or, even worse, get nothing at all. This is in a sense the insurers' argument, and it is the size of this "pot" that the UK government is meant to be talking about. And, predictably, it doesn't want to say yes and it doesn't want to say no, so it procrastinates into the next parliament.
Odd, therefore, that McLaren should die from what is an industrial-related cancer. A bit like Roy Castle dying from lung cancer.
+++++++++++
And while we are on the bad health kick, I appear to have developed a lung infection. I picked it up, I am sure, on that air-conditioned bus from Cannes to Nice (I knew I should have taken the train!) Irritatingly it failed to turn out to be a chest cold that came out via a runny nose within three or four days. Instead it chose to amble down deeper into the lung, probably on the left-hand side, nice doctor told me.
Net result was that I felt gradually worse day after day until yesterday, when I actually went to said GP. She put me on a course of antibiotics which, with luck, will start to make me feel a bit better by tomorrow and capable of getting into work for next week. At the moment, I am a sad wreck of a man with virtually no voice (a result of ghastly coughing fits an average of once an hour through day and night) and not enough proper sleep, despite 13 hours out of 24 being spent in bed. I've still managed to get out the newsletter both yesterday and this morning, for which I am justifiably proud of myself -- some English people still take pride in a job well done!
And the physical damage left me incapable of little else bar watching TV, so I watched disc 2 of Blade Runner, The Final Cut. These "extras" discs are normally total tat, but this one is an exception. Three and a half hours of more on the making of Blade Runner than you ever thought you needed to know. Moments of longeur, inevitably, but it gives a marvellously rounded view of what it's like to make a picture. No-one comes across as an out-and-out goodie or baddie. I even found myself feeling some sympathy for the "men in suits"! Strangely, the documentary did leave me seeing some flaws in the film that I hadn't noticed before -- most particularly the lack of emotional resonance, which is masked by (a) the visual genius and (b) the "rescue" by Rutger Hauer in the remarkable final moments, where he puts an hour's emotion into a three-minute speech. I wonder if Hauer's "Time To Die" speech is so effective because the movie had been so emotionally dry for the previous two hours? That hadn't occurred to me before.
______________
