Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Insurance Insanity

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

I know more or less how insurance works. You spread the risk around a large number of people. If there’s a one in ten chance of a £1000 claim and you have ten customers, you can charge them each £100 for a policy, plus a bit for admin and profit. If you can put separate people out into different boxes you can measure the risks of each box and charge premiums accordingly. Perhaps people who drive red cars are slightly less likely to claim, so you can charge them slightly less and attract more customers with red cars.

It doesn’t matter if it makes sense, as long as the numbers work out over a large number of people. You don’t need to know anything about the specific circumstances of a red car driver to offer him the same discount as all the other red car drivers. The more you know about your customer, the closer his premium will match your actual risk. But presumably there’s a limit to the information that it’s worthwhile to gather, because insurance companies don’t ask for all the information. At some point the cost of doing the admin and the calculations must outweigh the advantage of better knowing the risk. So people get lumped into vague boxes.

But the consequences can still seem mad.

The other day my motorcycle renewal quote came in at nearly £400. It was time to shop around, and I found that GoCompare.com would compare motorcycle insurance quotes. Worth a try. And a huge advantage of this is that you only have to fill in all the details once, on one uniform, fairly well designed web site, instead of having to do it multiple times on lots of different insurance companies’ badly designed sites.

And you can tweak the details and try to optimise the quotes. Is fully comprehensive much more expensive than third party, fire and theft? If I limit myself to 5000 miles does that make it cheaper? Does using the bike to commute make it much more expensive?

I noticed that there was a box to fill in if you stored the bike overnight at another address. I have the option of storing my bike at work in a secure underground car park, so I put in these details and the price plummeted. Great! I picked the best quote which was BikeSure, and handed over the money.

The next day BikeSure emailed me asking me to call them urgently about the details I had provided. It turns out that the underwriter refuses to insure my bike if it is kept more than a certain number of miles from where I live, so they could not offer me insurance after all. I asked how much it would cost to keep my bike at home, but no, they would not insure it to be kept at my home address either because being in London is too risky for them.

So the safe, secure car park is no good because it is too far from my home address which is also no good because it is too risky here.

I get the impression they did not believe that I would really be storing my bike where I said I was. Even the insurance company lady was somewhat incredulous. How can you commute if you store your bike at work? How do you get to work if not on your bike?

The thing is, if the insurance company and the underwriters knew more about me, they’d offer me a far better deal. I hardly use my bike — only in good weather and when the mood takes me. I nearly always commute by train, but quite enjoy the occasional ride home at night, and ride back to work in the morning. The bike really can be kept in the secure, underground car park with the CCTV and the 24 hour security guard.

But to verify all this would be far too expensive. I don’t fit into a neat box that they understand, so I don’t get the deal.

Knuckle Down

Saturday, June 26th, 2010

There are different ways a community can react after a disaster. One is to sit around and put your hand out and wait for help from the government. Another is to just knuckle down and help each other.

Brad Paisley speaking on the Bob Harris Country Show on BBC Radio 2 about the Nashville floods.

Bad News Day

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Truly we are beset upon all sides by the tyranny of evil men. But that’s not really news.

North Korean Football

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

North Korea lost the football game against Brazil 2-1. At half time there were no goals. In the second half North Korea scored a goal. Brazilian players play all year round in the world’s best leagues, with and against the world’s best players. What do North Korean players do? How did they get good enough to even qualify for the tournament, never mind not lose 14-0?

Presumably the players are well motivated. At press conferences the manager is sensitive and testy: “…we are called Korea Democratic People’s Republic. Please do not use any other name.”

He does not want to talk about the leader. When asked, “Who selects your team – you or the president?”, the annoyed answer is, “That’s a political question. Next question please.” But he’ll yak on about the leader all day, living up to the stereotype: “This will bring a lot of joy to the Great Leader, it will show that North Koreans have great mental strength.” In some other interview, he proves that he thinks just how we think he thinks, or at least knows what he is supposed to say: “Perhaps there is no other team in the world who would be fighting with the same dedication to please the leader and to bring fame to their motherland.”

The team are probably lucky ones and well favoured, but there’s no reason to believe they are exposed to the outside world very much. Perhaps they have watched football played by the top leages on TV. Presumably they are physically fit and well trained in basic skills. But I am surprised that is enough to play reasonably well against Brazil. Perhaps physical training and basic ball skills is all it takes to play well and I am overestimating the value of experience. Perhaps Brazil weren’t trying hard enough; it happens when top teams play lower teams. Perhaps those men really are playing for their lives. Or perhaps North Korea has its equivalent of the Premier League and we have never seen it.

Science Reporting

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

David Friedman’s article about a study into whether lesbians make good parents is a very very very good summary of the reasons why people are so routinely deceived by the mainstream media. Even if the authors have doubts about their own study, the media will not report this. Furthermore, here is as strong a bit of evidence as you could wish for that blogs do a much better job of journalism.

Light Blogging

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

It’s a boy!

Do I look like I was born yesterday?

Nick Clegg

Friday, May 7th, 2010

It’s sort of funny that the bloke who came third gets to decide what happens next. Will he decide by 10.30 when he makes his announcement?

As I kept saying last night, I don’t see how a coalition between Labour and the Lib Dems makes any sense for the Lib Dems. Throughout the campaign they’ve been all hopey changey, we need a new politics, out with the old, in with the new. Gordon Brown staying as PM just won’t make for very good rhetoric.

On the other hand, my boss reckons Cameron should do a deal with the SNP to give Scotland independence, and the Tories aren’t likely to give Clegg the proportional representation he wants. We’ll see.

My boss also finds it funny that Labour’s argument that the Tories have no mandate with 36% of the vote is a change from what they were saying last time when they only got 35% of it.

Update: Clegg translated: we’ll work with the Tories if they look like they might give us proportional representation.

Election Live in HD

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Outage

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

Don’t know if anyone noticed, but if so, sorry about the temporary loss of service. Slight miscommunication with the people who look after my domain name. It was quite scary for a moment — the thought of losing my online identity was not pleasant. I’ll be more careful in future.

Quote of The Day

Monday, April 19th, 2010

God this fairtrade, organic banana is shit. Can I have a slave-grown, chemically enhanced, genetically modified one please?

– Stuart MacLennan, Labour candidate who got sacked for “offensive” tweets. I’d vote for him based on that one.

But the rule holds: you can’t swear on the Internet and be a politician.