Buddy can you spare a dime?

A lengthy spell in hospital may be dangerous for one’s sanity and general well being but there’s also another side effect that few people consider: finances.

Unless you’re a politician or an investment banker it’s nigh on impossible to earn a living by doing bugger all. In fact, I can only think of one profession where it’s possible to earn good money by lying flat on your back. Unfortunately that’s not a career path that’s open to me. As a consequence I haven’t earned a bean since this whole sorry episode started back in February 2009.

“What about the ‘social’?” is most people’s response to this tale of woe. Good point. However, unless you’re an asylum seeker or hovering on the threshold of death, the Department of Work and Pensions refuses to make good on its wicked Ponzi scheme. And if you’ve bothered to save a few quid for your old age you can sod off and forget about any sort of help from this caring and compassionate government.

So my mind must turn to alternative ways of raising money to pay for life’s essentials such as Council Tax, TV licences, speeding fines, passport fees and tax demands; all those little extras that so enrich our lives here in Blighty.

Now I think I’ve come across something. In the USA there is a firm of lawyers that specialises in making claims for people who have been injured by their hospital beds. The firm of Saiontz & Kirk investigate potential cases of injuries caused by the negligent use, maintenance and design of hospital beds. Apparently there are 2.5 million hospital beds in America, all of which are potential death traps involving head, neck and chest injuries with bed railings being the most dangerous part of the bed. Since 1985 there have been 803 serious bed incidents in the United States through people becoming entrapped, tangled and even strangled in their own hospital beds. Some 480 of these incidents proved fatal.

If there were some way I could engineer a strangulated entrapment in my bed here without finishing myself off I reckon I could be on the end of a decent wedge of compo, especially if I employ these big shot bed-injury lawyers from the States. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do this but if anyone has any smart ideas then please leave them in the comment section below.

In the meantime I need to check last night’s Lottery results to see if my financial problems are at an end. If they are, I’m going to upgrade to the hospital’s private ward where they have carpets, glamorous nurses and a nice little Chablis on the menu.