Compensation culture

I was irritated to read in Saturday's DT this morning that one of our ministers is pressing for Volkswagen to pay compensation to people who bought one of their diesel cars under false pretenses, as it were. All to do with Volkswagen cooking the emissions books.

But it is not clear to me that any great damage has been done to these people. They presumably bought diesel because they get to spend less on fuel that way, an objective which they have presumably met. Saving the planet was, in the great majority of cases, entirely secondary.

So our minister is just encouraging us to think that when anything goes wrong, reach for the lawyers and claim some dosh, preferably on a no-win no-fee basis. A disease which is quite well enough entrenched in our culture as it is.

My own view is that the lawyers also have done quite well enough out of this one already, and a better approach going forward would be for the countries concerned to whack Volkswagen with suitable fines and for the proceeds to be paid into central funds. Much better use of Volkswagen's money. Or better still, for them to volunteer suitable sums, to do a bit of public penance, perhaps in sackcloth and ashes, in the old style, and for us all to do without any more lawyering. This golden goose has already been plucked.

PS: hopefully Volkswagen can lay their hands on some suitable people to do penance, with the image above turned up by google, from I know not where. Readers may be interested to know that the tunic illustrated there is called a cutty sark (as in the famous clipper), and used to be used, in the olden days, for the ritual humiliation of lady offenders in the low churches of Scotland. The priests, needless to say, were all men. And, coming forward a few years, not so unlike the gowns they like to dress you up in in hospitals. See OED for some of this.