{"id":23706,"date":"2020-02-08T22:48:39","date_gmt":"2020-02-08T22:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=23706"},"modified":"2020-02-08T22:48:39","modified_gmt":"2020-02-08T22:48:39","slug":"easy-come-easy-go-2020-darwin-award-candidate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=23706","title":{"rendered":"Easy Come, Easy Go &#8211; 2020 Darwin Award Candidate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 524px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 524\/296;margin: 5px 10px 5px 0px; float: left; display: inline; background-image: none;\" title=\"Ben Bardsley\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/ben_bardsley.png\" alt=\"Ben Bardsley\" width=\"524\" height=\"296\" align=\"left\" border=\"0\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/>You have to laugh. Ben Bardsley, of Warrington, was having a pond built at his house, and while he was watching the work he was struck by a digger bucket and knocked into the pond. He claimed that the accident had caused damage to his neck and back, meaning he couldn\u2019t lift weights anymore (he\u2019s a bodybuilder and gym owner), and that it had also given him a fear of heights.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"'Scared of heights' injury claimant filmed on Europe's biggest waterslide\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-england-manchester-51404787\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Reading into the story, it seems that if he\u2019d have accepted the offer of \u00a34,500<\/a> the insurance company had initially made, that would have been the end of it. He\u2019d been involved in an accident, after all, and the claim was legitimate in that sense. But Bardsley was greedy, and wanted up to five times that amount, claiming extensive physical as well as psychological damage. That was when Aviva became suspicious and instructed lawyers to investigate further. Reading into it again, they didn\u2019t have to investigate very much to flush him out.<\/p>\n<p>They uncovered multiple photos he\u2019d posted of himself lifting heavy weights in the gym <strong>after<\/strong> the accident. Best of all, he showed how badly vertigo \u2013 a fear of heights \u2013 had affected him by posting a video of himself going down the Verti-Go slide in Benidorm, which is 33 metres high, and you travel at 62mph down it. He even showed his muscles off to some kids at the bottom.<\/p>\n<p>So, from having a guaranteed \u00a34,500 pay-out, he\u2019s now been stung with <strong>no<\/strong> pay-out \u2013 and an order to pay the \u00a314,000 in legal costs.<\/p>\n<p>I have little time for insurance scammers. Every time anyone has hit my car \u2013 or cars my ex-pupils have been driving \u2013 they have tried it on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You have to laugh. Ben Bardsley, of Warrington, was having a pond built at his house, and while he was watching the work he was struck by a digger bucket and knocked into the pond. He claimed that the accident had caused damage to his neck and back, meaning he couldn\u2019t lift weights anymore (he\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[99,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny-related","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}