Nowadays, most personal injury claim solicitors in the UK advertise themselves as no win no fee solicitors. No win no fee solicitors are solicitors who agree to represent you in an injury claim but are paid only if they win the case for you.

‘… A No Win No Fee agreement, also known as a “Conditional Fee Agreement” is where you and your personal injury solicitor agree that you will only have to pay your solicitor’s fees if you win your case.If you win your case, you will receive 100% compensation and your solicitor’s fees are usually recovered from the losing side – so it is indeed a win:win situation for you. Although it should be noted that cases are only taken on a No Win, No Fee basis, if they are likely to be successful.

There are of course some exceptions to the rule. In cases related to Industrial Disease, Medical Negligence, Criminal Injury Compensation Claims and Motor Insurance Bureau ‘Untraced Driver’ claims, legal costs may not be covered. If this is the case, you will have to pay some or all of the solicitor’s costs out of your compensation. There are some other exceptions which your solicitor will explain to you before you begin your claim. …’

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‘… Taking out a mortgage or a debt consolidation loan, should not be taken lightly. If you rent a home, you are a tenant, if you do not pay your rent., the landlord can evict you. If you own your own home, the company who holds the mortgage or loan can also evict you if you fail to make the payments. The big difference is of course that if you rent, and you are evicted you just have to find another place to rent.

If you are a homeowner, the consequences can be far more severe. You could loose your deposit that you originally put down on the house. As well as the lot of the equity that you have built up and a large part of any improvements like a new kitchen or extension that you have paid for.

Once you start down the repossession road with a mortgage holder that has a lien on your home. It can be incredibly difficult and expensive to avoid an impending repossession order.

The best way to deal with this kind of circumstance is to not get yourself into that position in the first place. You need to stick to your agreement with the when the as best as you possibly can.

When taking out a mortgage or a debt consolidation loan you must seriously consider if you can afford the monthly repayments. You must not only consider if you can afford the payments now, but also, if the payments go up because of interest rate rises, will you still be able to pay what is owed each month? …’

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I have, in my short and humble life, achieved a great deal.  At the tender age of 14 I won an Olympic gold medal, a year later I single-handedly fought my way across Nazi-occupied Europe and assassinated Hitler, and not long after, before I had even left school, I fathered nine children, married six times and was arrested for bigamy.

I didn’t stop there, though, and before I finished my teens I’d set foot on the moon, scored a last minute World Cup winning goal and even founded my very own civilisation.

Nowadays my gargantuan adventures have had to take a bit of a back seat but in the last few months I’ve still managed to save the world from the odd alien invasion and find the time to gun down a load of drug crazed, machete wielding zombies.

All in all it’s not been a bad life.  I think a lot of people would be proud of the achievements that I’ve managed to squeeze into my short years, although possibly not the bigamy bit of it.  But there lies the problem.  Some people would be proud at how much I’ve done, but there are some folk out there who look down on my accomplishments with scorn.

I might have scored a 40-yard volley in the dying seconds of the World Cup Final but a friend of mine once scored a hat-trick of spectacular overhead kicks to win the coveted trophy, blowing my meagre feat well and truly out of the water.

The same goes for my heroic dash to the centre of the Third Reich; a friend surpassed even my glories by assassinating the Fuhrer without being shot once, whereas I was riddled with bullets and needed pints and pints of blood to replace that which I had spurted onto German soil.

And he doesn’t let me forget it.

Of course, none of this is real, for it if were I wouldn’t be here writing this but would be up at Buckingham Palace being knighted by the Queen or sat chatting away on Parky’s sofa.  Alas, instead, my amazing achievements have all been accomplished whilst sitting on my backside in front of a computer screen.

That’s right, what I’m talking about here is addiction to computer games.  I wouldn’t say I’m actually ‘addicted’ but I probably have spent way too much of my life living in an artificial world, killing artificial baddies and scoring amazing artificial goals.

My friend on the other hand, the one I’ve mentioned above who seems to have surpassed all of my awesome feats, is definitely an addict.  I really did think I had a bit of a problem until I met this chap but now I know for sure there are people out there who need professional help far more desperately than myself.

This was the bloke that booked three weeks off work to coincide with the launch of the Playstation 2; the lad that spent a supposedly ‘romantic’ two week holiday with his girlfriend sat on the beach continuously using his laptop to gun down gangsters on Grand Theft Auto.  Needless to say, that relationship didn’t last too long.

It’s not just relationships that this guy has thrown away because of his obsession with computer games.  His university degree once went the way of the ex-girlfriend when he developed an unhealthy addiction to Championship Manager, and a subsequent job similarly followed when he was unable to balance nine to five employment with the stresses and strains of overseeing Macclesfield Town’s bizarre bid for European glory.

Now he’s wangled himself a job in a video game shop and I can’t work out whether or not this is a good thing.  They say you’re a happy man if your passion is also your work, so good on him, but would we say the same to an alcoholic who earns his crust as a wine taster?

Maybe what he really needs to do, instead of spending 24hrs with his particular narcotic, is move to a primitive desert community without electricity and computer technology.  I guess there’s a possibility that being surrounded by computer games all day might make him overdose and change his ways, but, to be honest, I doubt it.

But whose fault is this whole pretend reality that his life seems to have become?  Is it mine for not insisting we go and play football in the park instead of loading up another match on Sensible Soccer?  Or is it his mum’s for not giving him a clip around the ear and insisting he get some fresh air?

Sometimes in life it’s too easy to blame others instead of taking responsibility for our own actions and, if truth be told, a 20-year-old student should realise that going to an exam is just a touch more important than guiding a computerised version of Arnie through an alien-infested wasteland that exists nowhere else but in his head and on the screen in front of him.

My mate, whose name I’m going to keep to myself, knows that it’s nobody else’s fault but his own that he threw away a stunning girlfriend and a degree from a good university because he cared more about something that didn’t exist than the people and things that did.

But he’s not trying to blame anyone for that, unlike it seems, some other computer game addicts.

I’ve heard talk of people who have attempted to make personal injury compensation claims against computer game manufacturers because of damage they’ve suffered whilst waggling joysticks or prodding gamepads.

As far as I know nobody has won such an accident claim but I imagine it’s going to happen one day.  But under what circumstances would a compensation claim for computer game injuries arise?

I guess that eye injuries arising from staring at a screen for two long, blisters from repeatedly prodding buttons and neck injuries from dodging imaginary bullets are all things for which he could mount an argument for console-manufacturer liability. However, even with us living in the time of what sensationalist media dubs as the ‘compensation claim culture’, that day seems to be a long way off.

Personally, if my finger starts to get a bit sore from excessive button pressing or if my head aches a little because I’ve been staring intently at a 15-inch square of glass for the whole day, I’d figure it’s time to take a rest; I don’t need a warning on the computer game box to tell me to stop if I’m in pain.

But it seems that some people don’t know when to stop.  1990, for example, saw a US doctor diagnose a 35-year-old woman with Nintendinitis after a particularly strenuous bout of gaming left her with a painfully aching thumb.  Whether she attempted to pursue a personal injury compensation claim against Nintendo is unknown but the question remains, why did she allow herself to get so into whatever game she was playing that she actually ended up needing to see a doctor?

The same goes for those computer game pioneers back in the early eighties.  Fair enough, video consoles must have been an amazing discovery to a youth who had grown up knowing nothing of Playstations, X-Boxes and Wiis, but to play so much that you developed what became known as Space Invaders’ Wrist seems a tad excessive.

Nowadays it’s no different.  2006 saw the launch of the Nintendo Wii, a games console which comes with a wireless controller that gives the user the opportunity to become actively involved in the game.  If you’re playing a tennis game, for example, you can actually play each stroke, jumping around your living room like a lunatic as you attempt forehands and smashes and inelegant between-the-leg lobs.

This new type of computer game has brought millions worldwide off their backsides and forced them to replace the normal finger waggling method of control with a full body workout.  No doubt in the not too distant future you’ll be able to play a full football match in your lounge, complete with slide tackles and Gordon Banksesque saves.

That day might not be too far off and with it will surely come numerous personal injury compensation claims from people who’ve split their heads open on the mantelpiece and kneecapped themselves on the TV cabinet.

Nintendo have already started to see some of the problems with enabling people to play tennis and have swordfights with deformed goblins in their living room and company boss Satoru Iwata recently said, “Some people are getting a lot more excited than we’d expected.  We need to better communicate to people how to deal with Wii as a new form of entertainment.”

The president’s observation came following reports that some overenthusiastic Wiiers (is that what they’re called?) hadn’t quite got to grips with wireless controllers and were launching them across the living room as they attempted to knock down on-screen skittles with a virtual bowling ball.

With video games seemingly destroying relationships, ruining jobs, injuring players and necessitating the services of personal injury solicitors, it has to be concluded that they’re evil.  Either that or the human race just needs to get a grip on reality.

Anyway, I haven’t got time to discuss it anymore, I’m off to hack up some zombies and gun down some baddies.  Hasta la vista, baby.

http://www.youclaim.co.uk/product-liability-claim-loud-toy-risk.htm