While the nation shows its inexhaustible appetite for stories about the venality of our politicians we should cast a thought towards areas where it is even worse. This from the excellent Berlaymonster blog.
The EU Joint research centre (no, I've no clue what it does, researching marijuana for all I know) based in the Northern Italian town of Ispra, employs a little over 1,000 people. Of these around a fifth, 230, have claimed injury benefit, and between 1996 and 2002 some 5.7 million euros was handed out.
An audit discovered 46 members of staff collected 35 000 euros on average, 23 more than 50 000, eight claimed more than 80 000 and one or two cashed in almost 300 000 euros from the injury benefit system accorded to those on the European Commission's payroll.
76 of the 230 even had the misfortune to suffer a second accident, increasing their claims.But 42 of them - 42 members of staff out of little over 1000 - declared AT LEAST NINE ACCIDENTS EACH between January 1986 and July 2003.
Details were sent to the Italian police of 14 cases (why not the whole lot we shall never know) but the suspects claimed that they hadn't been informed and so their rights were breached.
The 14 have now been awarded 3,000 euros each in compensation.
Just think about this as you go in to vote.
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