A woman received a sum of £6m after succesfully sueing a plastic surgeon who “played god” with her life . Penny Johnson, 49 claims that cosmetic and plastic surgery company Le Roux Fourie used experimental surgery that has damaged the nerves to the right side of her face and led her financial business into administration. She asked to be awarded with a part of the 54£m that would be her potential loss. The judge decided that she would be awarded £6,190,884.92 of which 800,000 for the facial disfigurement, saying that the surgery did affect her financial business but the main reasons were for her bad business were not due to the plastic surgery.

Comment:

A difficult situation, as it is really hard to determine who’s to blame. On the other hand the woman should have known that plastic surgery is not without risk. But of course the company Le Roux Fourie is the one who did something wrong. I think that in this case the judge acted right. Penny Johnson has suffered from the mistake personally for which she got the 800,000 pounds. However, I think that the claim that it has led her company into financial peril is just her trying to get more money from the case, as it is said that her business was already decling before the incident.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/may/23/plastic-surgery-award-businesswoman

vrijdag 6 mei 2011

Target tsunami creates too much stress for teachers.

Summary:

An increasing number of teachers is quitting their jobs. The cause, according to delegates at the National Union of Teachers conference; stress. 41.5% Of the teachers consider themselves highly stressed, making it the most stressful profession, with some even considering suicide. The conference reports a meteoric rise in work-related stress because teachers need to meet the high demands of the government. The increased workload is mainly caused by an increase of form filling. To blame is the “target tsunami” by the government. Many teachers, heads and deputes are working 50 hours or more outside the workweek. Most of the time is not spend on teaching but bureaucratic procedures.

Comment:

A problem that is not only occurring in the UK but also in other countries. In my opinion there are several things really wrong with the current state of the education system, this being a big one. Especially the cause of the whole stress problem is unnerving. The government just keeps setting targets and procedures to get better results, but they tend to ignore the problems they cause. Especially in a slow-environment in which everything goes for millions of teachers and students, the government keeps changing and adding more and more target, rules and demands without giving time to the system to adapt.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/apr/25/stress-drives-teachers-out-of-schools