The Australian (from The Spectator) - Each rat his own cat, by Theodore Dalrymple

I have always found it worthwhile to talk to people whose work many intellectuals would dismiss as uninteresting. For example, I have found that insurance loss adjusters have the deepest insight into human nature this side of Shakespeare. One of my favourite books, incidentally, is by John B. Lewis, MD, and Charles C. Bombaugh, MD.

The title of the last chapter more or less sums up British social policy of the past 20 years: Self-Mutilation in Accident Insurance: 16 Illustrative Cases of this Criminal Folly.

How else is one to explain that our welfare state has produced more invalids than World War I?

Heh.