For the Love of Money

For the love of money
People will steal from their mother
For the love of money
People will rob their own brother
For the love of money
People can’t even walk the street
Because they never know who in the world they’re gonna beat
For that lean, mean, mean green
Almighty dollar, money
– The O’Jays

Every now and again a search on Google turns up dynamite.

£45,701.50  …  read this figure again out loud.

It transpires that Dr Philip Johnson has been paid £45,701.50 by Avon & Somerset constabulary since the 1st of August 2014 for his role to conduct reviews of Injury on Duty awards.  And this is just for an ‘evaluation’ to see how unlawful their unlawful review program really is.  Heaven knows how much he’ll cost them when he does this for ‘real’.

We know that the minions of the A&S HR department have 3 lists:

1. Those they have ignored for years and want to reduce but have no legally valid idea how to squeeze their pips;

2. The 16 band fours it trampled on in 2014 (most of which still have had no result);

3. Those retired recently (more likely by Johnson) who are due (according to them) a review.

Johnson has barely ‘reviewed’ a double figure number of IODs  and, for this part-time work on top of his salaried job as force medical officer of Dorset, he has been paid a king’s ransom of almost £46,000 in just over 12 months.

That works out at around four and half thousand pounds per person reviewed.  If the farce wants to review all 490 IODs the constabulary will end up paying Johnson a handsome £2,450,000.

Don’t forget that this £2.5 million is not a one off.  Bulpitt (A&S force medical officer) and Johnson are under the delusion that every IOD shall be reviewed every 2 years if they can’t be dropped a band and every 5 years if they are dropped a band.

Do you like their logic here?  Review them more often if they can’t prove substantial change – more bites of the cherry you see; but review them less often if the ‘good’ doctors get their devious way and they are reduced.

It’s like playing snakes and ladders with the board full of grease-covered snakes, with only one ladder … and this ladder is decrepit, riddled with wood-worm and with a suspiciously sawed through rail.

Back to Johnson and his £46K.   As mentioned this is a recurring payment as the constabulary is deluded into thinking they have a positive power to review ‘as and when’ their coffers are running low.  As soon as they are brassic, up steps Johnson, ready to invoice the constabulary more money per IOD than he can ever attempt to unlawfully reduce them by.

Of course, this money per IOD does not include the expense of a Police Medical Appeals Board, the Judicial Review and the Regulation 32 reconsiderations that follows.

Johnson has already cocked up massively.  He has recklessly  and unlawfully given some IODs new certificates with changes to their percentage even though he has written on the same certificate and accompanying report that there is no change (let alone no substantial change) to the IOD’s medical condition or capacity to earn.

IODPA wonders whether Johnson will now invoice A&S for all the time he takes to put together his defence when he is dragged in front of appeal boards.