by Chris Stokes (www.heritage-writer.co.uk)

• I hope all readers of Your Expert Witness had a relaxing and happy Christmas, despite the doom and gloom surrounding just about everything from the economy to the state of the nation’s health. Apparently over a quarter of people currently being treated in hospital could be being looked after at home, according to Mike Farrar, the head of the NHS Confederation. He also said that next year will be a “key year” for the NHS as it begins its campaign to save £20bn by 2015.
Those of us old enough to shave can remember the Thatcher government’s attempt to shift the onus of mental health care onto the ‘community’ – that same ‘society’ whose existence her philosophy refuted. That resulted in the NHS and local authorities passing the funding parcel around and around until the music stopped – or someone got killed! The consequences of that policy are still being felt in England, certainly.

• One of the growth areas in expert witness numbers has been in the field of medical litigation, with the UK becoming more litigious. Many experts are prominent members of the learned societies representing their specialism. One such is the British of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), which has been thrown into the legal spotlight this month as a result of the on-going scandal of the PIP breast implants.
Law firm Dyne Drewett reports that the number of British women who could be owed compensation could be as high as 50,000, while more than 250 are already reported to be taking legal action.

Laurent Gaudon, a lawyer representing four French women who received the PIP implants, said: "The doctors must be questioned by experts…They could not have been ignorant of the fact that these implants were fragile," adding that his clients had discovered cracks in their implants but not yet had them removed.
BAAPS president Fazel Fatah commented: "If women are concerned or experience adverse symptoms they should see their surgeon, to discuss options such as having a scan to determine whether there is any weakening or rupture. If there is, we reiterate our previous recommendations: to have both implants removed. We believe there is a moral and ethical obligation on the clinics who performed these operations in the first place to facilitate the removal of the faulty implants for free or at the bare minimum cost.”
Maybe he should have added the familiar TV warning: Don’t try this at home!

• Someone else with reason to be muttering “Humbug!” into his turkey twizzler was former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, who lost his High Court action to try and force his ex-employer to pay his legal fees arising from the phone-hacking affair.
The court agreed with Christopher Jeans QC, for NGN, that the clause of his contract in question did not cover “alleged criminal activity”. And in any case, no proceedings had begun.
Mr Coulson has always denied any wrongdoing.

• I will sign off by wishing everybody a very Happy New Year, in particular everyone who is reading this column as a result of following me on Twitter (@Eccywriter). You know who you are, but you are not worth £1.50 per month to anybody - especially not to the publishers of this website.
Unlike Noah Kravitz, who is being sued for $340,000 by his former employer, the techie website Phonedog, over the 17,000 followers he took with him when he left, I never had a Twitter account, nor knew how to set one up – or why I should bother – until I attended the excellent seminar/social event organised on behalf of the Lancashire Lifelong Learning Network by Brandspankin earlier in December.
I’ll compromise by recommending that any of my “followers” (sounds grand, doesn’t it?) in the legal or medical fields get themselves put onto the Expert Witness Directory of this site.

See you in 2012.