Economy with the truth that brings in the cash

It showed the outcome of a minor road traffic accident between a car and a bus at a busy city junction. At the time of impact, the bus was almost empty, but the minute the driver opened its doors to investigate the damage, in climbed a crowd of deadbeats only to re-emerge moments later, clutching their necks and apparently writhing in agony on the pavement.

Needless to say, what started as a trivial shunt turned into a full-scale incident, swarming with police, paramedics and legal scouts. But as theatrically amusing as the performance of those ‘chancers’ may have been, this fashion for making a quick buck at someone else’s expense has swept across the Atlantic with a vengeance.

The explosion in claims for whiplash has led the former Justice Minister, Jack Straw, to surmise that UK motorists and their passengers must possess the weakest neck muscles in Europe, noting that incidents of alleged injury appeared to coincide directly with areas where claims were easiest to settle.

The epidemic is currently costing the insurance industry a fortune. At least, that’s how it’s being presented, though there are less generous interpretations, since it is providing a lucrative side-line for unscrupulous support agencies.

What is incontrovertible, however, is that the cost of such dishonesty is falling directly on the shoulders of ordinary law-abiding motorists. Only last week, the JEP reported that the cost of car insurance had risen 44% in 2011.

It’s well known that insurers are not unused to scams; they’ve been forced to steel themselves to a liturgy of excuses, tall stories and exaggerated claims, which has earned some of them a reputation for finding every means to avoid paying compensation even when genuine recompense is due.

By coincidence, we’ve just been offered the results of a survey by academics at the University of Essex which suggest that Britons are significantly more dishonest now than they were ten years ago. Admittedly, their scope was pretty limited. It ranged over whether you’d report finding money on the street, own up to inflicting minor damage to a parked car, exceed the speed limit, drop litter or massage your tax return.

The concern is that all these mild misdemeanours are having an increasingly negative influence on the young, compromising integrity and civic duty. But, as our economy with the truth has developed, we’ve become more selective and judgmental about lying.

For example, covering up an extra-marital affair might not be considered as socially reprehensible as defrauding the State benefits system. Moreover, responsibility for the decline can be traced to the deterioration of role models. With footballers cheating on their wives, journalists hacking into phones, MPs fiddling expenses and bankers plundering the City, many erstwhile pillars have been seriously discredited.

So, traditional restraints are loosened, and, as with whiplash – which, according to the medical profession, is un-diagnosable – there’s renewed scope for what can be achieved by invention for profit.

Whatever happened, I wonder, to the much vaunted crack-down on the activities of seedy so-called ‘ambulance-chasing’ no-win, no-fee compensation lawyers, promoted by a raft of C-list TV ‘celebs’ who should know better?

The latest inventive cash opportunity falls to the teams revving up on behalf of the serially publicity-loving who’ve tapped the public mood of righteous indignation with claims that their innermost secrets have been stolen from their voicemails before they’ve had the chance to sell their own ‘exclusives’ or tweet them like a flock of migrating starlings. Mere apologies won’t do; it’s six figures plus.

But to come back to inventiveness. Generally, so long as nobody’s either being hurt or ripped off, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a subtle embellishment of what might otherwise be a pretty boring narrative. It doesn’t need to make crooks of us all. Indeed, minor ‘porkies’ have frequently provided the glue to preserving lasting personal relationships and enhanced fragile reputations. They’re also the stock-in- trade of many a headline writer. Call them the literary equivalent of the airbrush.

Of course, there’s a dark side too. We have only to recall how a grubby fragment of coconut shell became ‘evidence’ of mass infanticide at a children’s home overlooking Gorey, while a malicious gossip columnist can devastate a life of selfless service with a hint of innuendo.

Mercifully, we all possess the power of interpretation. As a result of our social upbringing, we can make up our own minds on the moral divide – whether or not we choose to abide by the code ourselves. But, as the Essex University survey suggests, we have become adept at ‘bending’ how we tell it. Do we actually know when we are fibbing? The instinctive response is, ‘of course we do’.

But it might not be so clear cut. There’s probably a Walter Mitty in us all prompting us to improve our status, to cover up our failures, even to enhance wealth and influence. Indeed,- the biography shelves of many a bookstore groan with the weight of those whose intelligence and imagination have emboldened them to face down the truth. But there has to be a point where moral compromise ceases to be an option.

Indeed, there is a well-defined ‘bottom line’ of trust which deals out sanctions to the transgressors. Of course, those overstepping it will inevitably ‘deny any wrongdoing’. But if they detect their collars being felt, they should be warned – it could very well be the onset of whiplash.