News comes through that a Cambridge University student left permanently disabled in a drinking accident is suing her former boarding school for £30,000 over a drunken fall.

Apparently the girl – 16 at the time - tumbled from a first floor window after consuming several alcoholic drinks at a Valentine's Ball damaging her spine in the fall. Now 20, she suffers from partial paraplegia and she is taking legal action against the mixed-sex independent school, claiming it breached its duty of care. According to documents lodged at the High Court, she blames staff at the school for allowing a drinking culture to develop among senior students. She also claims that the window she fell from failed to meet building regulations because it was able to open twelve inches.

Now I wrote a blog a couple of weeks ago fully supporting the father of one of the French students brutally murdered in South London, as he undertook legal action to sue Jack Straw. This however is the other side of the ghastly compensation culture. This girl has only herself to blame, and I hope that she loses her case and both her and the ambulance chasing solicitors who have undertaken the case incur huge costs against them.

The taxpayer should not be forced to fund the ludicrous claims of people like this who have no-one to blame but themselves for the situation they find themselves in. There are too many people in this world who have no concept of something called “personal responsibility” and are too willing to blame all and sundry for the ills that befall them.