Attitudes And Legal Aid
You might be interested in the following article regarding the rail industry and the Main family and their fight to keep legal aid - an issue in which the rail industry seem to be very interested:
http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/News/Article.aspx?articleID=5505
It includes this quote "Their emotional involvement ... makes it virtually impossible for them to engage in any risk balancing exercise..."
Clive Fletcher-Wood, First Great Western
A Comment:
“From my 20 year experience of working with disasters and bereaved families, this is the kind of cheap argument that institutions use when bereaved families become too powerful for comfort or when they have run out of rational arguments. It is not the role of bereaved families to engage in risk balancing exercises. It is their role to add their voices about what they know and have learnt from their unique experiences. These can then be added to other, usually more ‘established’, voices with an interest in the issues. Those charged with the task of doing are then able to make a more balanced assessment than if only a narrow sector of interest is heard. Having paid the ultimate price for their journey they surely have a greater moral right than anyone to express their views and the results of their research
The over-emotional rarely engage in this exercise for long and would not be able to sit in an Inquest for 4 weeks, or represent themselves alongside experienced barristers as the Websters have done, and contain their emotions. Bereavement can sharpen the mind and provide the motivation for in-depth study of complex subjects so that the bereaved often become more expert than the expert. Because they have suffered the worst, the bereaved may be fearless enough to probe and ask questions that others, fearful of losing their position or reputations, do not dare to ask of powerful people and institutions. And sometimes bereaved parents, have moved mountains to make some purpose from the deaths of their children”
Liz