Flintoff’s £9 million payout

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Those saying £9 million is excessive and Flintoff shouldn’t get it are missing the point.

BBC studios failed in their duty of care. That is civil law rather than criminal. If this had gone to court it’s likely the judge will have ordered BBC to pay more than £9 million.
 
WoodallServices said:
Surely he doesn’t earn that much?
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There will be damages for the injuries and also psychological injuries. The loss of earnings will be calculated not just on this last year, but on a lifetime's future earnings in television, which may be severely impacted by his facial disfigurement and perhaps a reluctance on his part to return to Top Gear or any television programmes. There will be medical costs, counselling costs .... all manner of things enter the calculation.
 
sherlock1969 said:
Spot on Andy.

Let's look at the arguments put forward on this thread.

'He asked for a helmet', 'it wasn't risk assessed', 'the BBC didn't provide him with the correct PPE' etc.

Then saying that this means he should get full career loss of earnings (let's ignore the fact for now he can still work and would never get anything like £9 million from any other job).


Now let's compare that with health professionals that worked throughout the pandemic. Without proper risk assessment or PPE. Many lost their lives, many others have long covid and can probably never work again. More still have PTSD far worse than those being mentioned on this thread that saw someone flip a car at 22 mph.

What do we get from the same kind of people defending Flintoff's ridiculous payout?

'It's a vocation', 'they knew the risk' etc and those people got no kind of compensation whatsoever, in fact they have been discarded and forgotten by many of the same people who banged pots and pans on a Thursday evening.

The hypocrisy stinks, as does trying to make out that saying Flintoff has to take some responsibility is the same as saying a woman in a short skirt should take responsibility for being raped.
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You don't half spout some rubbish. Quite offensive rubbish too. You don't know about other people's experiences stop belittling people's views with whataboutery.

I lost a close family member during COVID and my partner worked on the frontline throughout COVID despite having an autoimmune condition and was subsequently hospitalised for quite a long time leaving me with two very upset and confused children. So yes, i'm well aware of the impact without someone like you preaching ill informed nonsense.

I also happen to have sympathy for what happened to Flintoff and the impact on his colleagues. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Well only in your head it seems.
 
Alzi said:
You don't half spout some rubbish. Quite offensive rubbish too. You don't know about other people's experiences stop belittling people's views with whataboutery.

I lost a close family member during COVID and my partner worked on the frontline throughout COVID despite having an autoimmune condition and was subsequently hospitalised for quite a long time leaving me with two very upset and confused children. So yes, i'm well aware of the impact without someone like you preaching ill informed nonsense.

I also happen to have sympathy for what happened to Flintoff and the impact on his colleagues. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Well only in your head it seems.
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Sorry for your loss.
 
WoodallServices said:
Surely he doesn’t earn that much?
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No idea what he earns or how it was calculated but generally compensation awarded is much lower than it should be so I'm sure it was substantiated.

He was the victim. There was no duty of care displayed by the BBC. Yet some on here think he is at fault and deserves nothing.
 
B_G said:
No idea what he earns or how it was calculated but generally compensation awarded is much lower than it should be so I'm sure it was substantiated.

He was the victim. There was no duty of care displayed by the BBC. Yet some on here think he is at fault and deserves nothing.
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Who said he deserves nothing?
 
sherlock1969 said:
Who said he deserves nothing?
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Everyone implying that he should carry responsibility for the accident. There's plenty of posts on the thread.

Are you OK Sherlock? Genuine question. There seems to be a lot of anger in your posts over the last 24 hours.
 
B_G said:
Everyone implying that he should carry responsibility for the accident. There's plenty of posts on the thread.

Are you OK Sherlock? Genuine question. There seems to be a lot of anger in your posts over the last 24 hours.
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I'm great thanks. Where have I seemed angry?

I've never said he deserves nothing, I am questioning the level of the payout.
 
Andy_W said:
I love Freddie and I think taking inflated money for a risky job is 100% fine, and I've done it myself many a time, but when the risk occurs I don't think it's right to try and claim the full damages as a replacement. It's sort of like an ex-marine going to work in close protection for some dodgy bloke in the gulf. Sure 150k a year is nice for a grunt, but it's risky, and there's a chance you'll get hurt and never live another day.

The role at top gear was probably one of the most lucrative roles he could ever do, claiming a loss of earnings for that role is a bit much, when you could only get it in that role (with assumed increased risk). The increased risk is sort of necessary for the cameras/ job role, and they wouldn't get the viewers if every single thing they did was with helmets on.

If he asked for a helmet then sure, they should maybe have given him one (or come up with another safe way), and sure they may have to pay out for not giving it, but not the full amount. He's a big enough boy and with enough of a stature to say he's not doing it without a helmet, if he thought there was enough of a risk there. On some occasions staff can ask for PPE when risk dictates it's not necessary though (this may or may not have been the case here), and one event where a small risk materialises won't prove that either way.

Then there's also what caused the incident, it was seemingly a 22mph crash in a sort of kit car, and it's not common to wear a helmet in one of those (albeit on road), and that is legal by UK law, on motorways etc. Sure, on a track you may opt for one but most still don't as they're not really more risk than say driving down a country lane, sure speeds are quicker, but there's far less around which can kill you.

22mph is not fast, not at all for a car with a roll cage, the risk there of the damage he suffered was probably a 1 in a 10,000 hour event, and Risk Assessments won't cater for that, and nor should they for that risk assessment for that role. I do double that speed on my road bike (cycle), which is perfectly legal and that's around cars and buses etc, and about 20mph is average speed, with very little protection.

Heck, you can even get ran over at 20mph and it be fairly safe (apparently). We apparently deem that as the safe speed limit near schools etc.

If you're willing to take on good money for risky jobs, you shouldn't kick off too much if that risk materialises, as that's why you're getting the money. If the risk wasn't there, the viewers wouldn't be and the money wouldn't be either.

The settlement is coming from the taxpayer, one way or another whether that's from funding BBC, or through paying high insurance premiums via BBC. This plus the £5m or whatever it cost to axe/ pause the rest of the series.
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You say all that, yet the fact remains that they paid him £9 million. They wouldn’t pay a penny if they didn’t have to, so you can try and put the blame on him all you want but the payout he received would imply he wasn’t to blame.
 
sherlock1969 said:
Spot on Andy.

Let's look at the arguments put forward on this thread.

'He asked for a helmet', 'it wasn't risk assessed', 'the BBC didn't provide him with the correct PPE' etc.

Then saying that this means he should get full career loss of earnings (let's ignore the fact for now he can still work and would never get anything like £9 million from any other job).


Now let's compare that with health professionals that worked throughout the pandemic. Without proper risk assessment or PPE. Many lost their lives, many others have long covid and can probably never work again. More still have PTSD far worse than those being mentioned on this thread that saw someone flip a car at 22 mph.

What do we get from the same kind of people defending Flintoff's ridiculous payout?

'It's a vocation', 'they knew the risk' etc and those people got no kind of compensation whatsoever, in fact they have been discarded and forgotten by many of the same people who banged pots and pans on a Thursday evening.

The hypocrisy stinks, as does trying to make out that saying Flintoff has to take some responsibility is the same as saying a woman in a short skirt should take responsibility for being raped.
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Yet he still received a payout.

Are you trying to claim the, undoubtedly extremely experienced, lawyers are wrong, and don’t know what they’re doing in this instance?
 
sherlock1969 said:
I repeat as I said earlier, where have I said he deserved nothing?
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They wouldn’t have paid him more than he deserved. As has been said earlier in the thread, they would have calculated the costs of the various aspects of the incident and taken those into account.

They did that, and the parties involved agreed that he deserved £9 million.
 
The guy was hurt doing his job. He was compensated. It is nobodies business what that award was and negative comments about it are childish, at best.

Leave it alone for Christ's sake
 
king_hellfire said:
You say all that, yet the fact remains that they paid him £9 million. They wouldn’t pay a penny if they didn’t have to, so you can try and put the blame on him all you want but the payout he received would imply he wasn’t to blame.
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I'm not pinning any blame on him, absolutely zero whatsoever. I've not seen the incident, and if he was doing 22mph, then he probably wasn't doing much wrong unless it was reversing at 22mph into a ditch which he probably wasn't.

I'm just saying he took good money to take some risks, then something which was extremely low risk (lower than other risks) materialised. Just because it might not have been Freddie's fault, doesn't mean it was the BBC's.

Just because he got paid out £9m doesn't mean he deserved the full payout. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't who knows, I wasn't there and didn't see his contract.

I could get my leg broke by an asteroid when on a building site, doesn't mean it's the site operators fault. Sometimes low risk things just happen.
 
sherlock1969 said:
Now let's compare that with health professionals that worked throughout the pandemic. Without proper risk assessment or PPE. Many lost their lives, many others have long covid and can probably never work again. More still have PTSD far worse than those being mentioned on this thread that saw someone flip a car at 22 mph.

What do we get from the same kind of people defending Flintoff's ridiculous payout?

'It's a vocation', 'they knew the risk' etc and those people got no kind of compensation whatsoever, in fact they have been discarded and forgotten by many of the same people who banged pots and pans on a Thursday evening.

The hypocrisy stinks, as does trying to make out that saying Flintoff has to take some responsibility is the same as saying a woman in a short skirt should take responsibility for being raped.
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Exactly, people are expected to risk their life for 25k (Nurses, Cops, Police, Firemen), with an actual risk of losing their life and that's all fine and dandy apparently, but when a celeb gets hurt in an isolated low risk incident, which may have been hard to foresee, then the world ends.

Like I said, it probably wasn't Freddie's fault (the accident), unless he did something he wasn't meant to or went against training etc, but there are no details of this, so would be wrong to assume either way.

But just because it wasn't Freddie's fault, does not mean for one second it was BBC's fault or Top gears fault. Sure, it may have been, but it doesn't mean it was.

The Health and Safety at work act actually requires employees to take their own measures also, it's not just the employer. The basics of it are:
  • Taking reasonable care of their own health and safety
  • Co-operating with their employer and following instructions
  • Not putting others in danger.
  • Report any hazards, illnesses or injuries
  • Don't interfere with safety equipment
  • Participate in any offered H&S training.
Then there are also many more additions to this when working in dangerous environments like construction, combat zones, diving, air ports, ports, train stations, racing, driving on test tracks etc.

Equally the payout means zero either, loads of people have been paid out for things which were largely their own fault, or been paid out because it's basically "simpler". Equally loads of people get paid out because they deserve it. Sometimes people get way more than the problem the injury causes, and sometimes it's absolutlely nowhere near.

Sometimes people get paid LOADS extra to take on minimal extra risk, sometimes people get 10 year pay cuts and get TOLD to take on extra risk.
 
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