"3. Blame and claim culture
Did you chip a fingernail at work? Or did you sit down on the loo at work and momentarily experience discomfort because the loo seat was a bit cold? Even worse, did someone wilfully injure your feelings by calling you a 'div' at work? Sue those buggers! Phone our hotline now, and we'll get you millions of pounds!
Disclaimer – we will not get you millions of pounds. We will get you up to and including five hundred new pounds, of which we will take up to a hundred percent.
Everyone everywhere is scared of everything. Even I have days where I don't want to leave the house in case a meteor falls on my head, or in case a terrorist comes up and tries to do terror at me.
But when I was growing up, getting injured was not a career. It was a vocation, at best. We did not expect to have our clumsiness rewarded with money. That's what clowns and Eddie The Eagle were for.
Now, if you're short of money and don't want to ring WONGACASHNOW4U, you can simply claim you were tripped over by a member of Al Qaeda, or that someone looked at you funny, and all your financial problems will disappear!
Our equivalent – looking where you were going -
You know what used to happen if you fell over in the street? Everyone would laugh at you. Certainly they wouldn't offer you money.
Of course, work accidents did happen, and they were generally quite serious, but back then people tried to
avoid getting injured. They didn't like being injured, what with the pain and all. Getting injured was seen as a bad thing, not as an equivalent to winning the lottery.
When I was growing up, if you tripped over in the street you were unlucky, or a div. If you broke a nail or had your 'feelings injured' while at work, then you were a crybaby, and didn't deserve the job in the first place.
By the way, I wrote these last paragraphs on the toilet. Just thought you'd like to know."