NO COMPENSATION
The tragic death of 17 year-old Krista Ocloo from heart failure in 1996 was too much for any parent to bear. But for her mother Josephine, the tragedy has been compounded by her failed case for compensation brought against the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospital Trust, and their demand for damages of £115 000. A lecturer from Kilburn in North London and a single mother, Josephine Ocloo pressed her case that the Royal Brompton was negligent in following up Krista's condition. Ocloo was coordinator of the Brompton and Harefield Heart Children's Action Group, 23 families that lost relatives under treatment.
"I am bringing this case not for money, but because it is the only way left for me to establish the truth about what happened to the beautiful young woman that was my daughter," Josephine Ocloo said in November of last year. But sadly the truth was that her daughter died a natural death, and, as the court found, the Hospital was not negligent in its treatment. The Trust tried to settle the action, but were rebuffed by Ms Ocloo, thereby incurring costs nearly six times the amount claimed.
Jospehine Ocloo's tragedy was that she thought that the courts could find a guilty party for her loss. Now she is blaming the Trust for pursuing her for costs. But the National Health Service is paying out a substantial proportion of its budget in compensation cases. As long as people who use the service feel at liberty to make compensation claims against the NHS, then it has little choice but to claim for costs spent defending itself. The compensation culture makes victims of everyone, in more ways than one.
'CRAZY AMERICAN BASTARDS': A KOREAN HISTORY LESSON
Visiting Korea, President George W Bush was called upon to explain his description of North Korea as part of an evil axis in his State of the Union address. Bush referred journalists to events 26 years ago when two American soldiers were bludgeoned to death in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between the divided North and South.
In August of its bi-centennial year, the United States Army took part in military manoeuvres with their South Korean allies, code-named Team Spirit 76. Tensions were already high in the region following the fall of the US backed regime in South Vietnam. Defence Secretary James Schlesinger had already threatened the North Koreans with a nuclear attack if they attacked the South - and nuclear-armed F111 swing-wing fighter-bombers took part in the exercises. US intelligence had already eaves-dropped on North Korean communications that assumed the exercises were prelude to an invasion - but no measures were taken to calm tensions between US and N Korean troops in the DMZ.
Captain Arthur Bonifas and Lieutenant Mark Barrett had set about trimming a poplar tree, when they were interrupted by Lieutenant Pak Chul, who told the West Point Graduate Bonifas that 'if you cut more branches, there will be a big problem'. Ignored, Pak told the work detail that they would be killed if they continued. Bonifas continued to ignore the Korean, and paid with his life, as did Barrett. Having got the worst of the confrontation, US strategists went into over-drive to restore face. 'North Korean blood must be spilled', raged Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The conflict was accelerated by the American election campaign, in which Ronald Reagan, challenging Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination, called him soft on Korea; beating off Reagan's challenge, Ford made the same accusation against his Democrat opponent Jimmy Carter.
Kissinger: 'it will be useful for us to generate enough activity so that the North Koreans begin to wonder what those crazy American bastards are capable of doing in this election year'. He chaired the Washington Special Actions Group that considered options including exploding a nuclear weapon of the N Korean coast, seizing a ship and a vast battery of threatening troop and aircraft deployments.
On August 21 a convoy of 23 American and S Korean vehicles drove into the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom without telling the N Koreans - operation Paul Bunyan. A sixteen member US engineering team were backed up by a US infantry company in 20 utility helicopters and seven Cobra attack helicopters, B52 bombers US F-4 fighters and S Korean F-5 fighters. Waiting on the runway at Osan Air Base, armed and fuelled were the F-111 fighter-bombers, and the Midway aircraft-carrier task force was stationed offshore. Operation Paul Bunyan carried out its objective, it cut down the poplar tree.
Surprised that the North Koreans offered no resistance, US officials were outraged when their leader Kim Il Sung suggested that the whole operation was undertaken to win Ford the election. 'We realised that our soldiers had been taken in by the enemy's political scheme' said Kim 'so we decided not to aggravate the incident any further'. National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, however, did speculate that if North Korea had risen to the bait, 'Ford would have won the election'. In the event, it was Carter, who, to the irritation of his Chiefs of Staff, tried to withdraw US troops from Korea, but was stonewalled, throughout his one-term presidency. American endeavours to crank up the conflict with the North have continued, not just for purposes of domestic political consumption, but to stymie the growing mood for reunification in the South.
-- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP5.01 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org