Tuesday 18 March 2008

Use price comparison sites to beat energy increases

Price comparison sites such Kelkoo or Confused.com as are a good way for consumers to arm themselves with the information needed to secure the best value energy tariff, it has been claimed.

A study conducted by the Energy Saving Trust recently highlighted confusion among consumers over tariffs for energy, with 82 per cent admitting to being baffled by their bill.

However, this information can be easily gleaned by visiting a switching service "where trained advisors are familiar with different suppliers' bills and can help find the information needed," Siobhan Parkers of Switch with Which? said.

Alternatively, tariff names and usage figures can also usually be found printed on bills or can be gleaned by calling the provider concerned directly, she added.

The Energy Saving Trust's study also revealed that 32 per cent of people consider their energy bill harder to comprehend than bank statements and telephone, credit card and cable TV bills.

Monday 17 March 2008

Climate Change - Business as Usual

Unpredictable weather is on the increase. Scientists, politicians, business leaders and activists all agree climate change is happening. They differ only in what needs to be done about it. Politicians and business leaders are finding increasing ways to make money out of the destruction of the planet with initiatives as varied as carbon trading to expensive green solutions. Activists meanwhile believe we need a change in culture and mindset if we are ever to deal with climate change. They argue we need to think and act locally, that we need to be self-sufficient in our lifestyles.

Climate change is, and will, continue to bring severe weather patterns. Whilst people like to joke about how we could do with some warmer weather, and dream of long hot summers, the reality is very different, and much scarier. This is one of the reasons people have started to talk about "climate change" instead of "global warming". Whilst global warming is happening, the language gives a false impression. We will experience severe and variable weather. Torrential rain, flooding, gales etcetera are all set to become the norm rather than the exception.

Storms and rising water levels are already bring new challenges to the home insurance industry. Recent deluges have seen claims rocket, and premiums soar. After recent incidents such as the flooding of Tewkesbury and the devastation at Boscastle, businesses have had to re-evaluate how they are insuring against extreme weather. This has lead to some companies now refusing to insure home owners living on the flood plains, or in other vulnerable areas, such as exposed coastal homes.

However, with new applications rising as rapidly as the water levels - a growth of 150% was reported on the morning of the last predicted storm - the home insurance industry is meeting the challenge and has quickly realised there is profit to be made from climate change.

Specialist home insurance companies are emerging, set up to charge extortionate rates to those who the more mainstream ones are refusing to touch. The insurance industry is, as ever, ready and willing to capitalise on others justified and genuine fear and misery.

Whilst shopping around at price comparison sites may get you a better rate, the principle remains the same - climate change is becoming just another commodity. The business world has been fast to recognise and grab the new opportunities for money making.

However, herein lies the problem. Climate change has been caused by the growth of Western capitalism. If we allow this growth to continue, we will end up with a devastated world where, as usual, the rich will get richer and the poor will be screwed.

It is only when we start tackling the roots of capitalism that we can deal with climate change and see green shoots of recovery. This is if we ever hope to build a future for our children which is beneficial to both people and planet.

Insurance re-assurance guaranteed

Only a fool would risk not having home insurance, surely? It makes such perfect sense, doesn’t it? The monthly premiums are hardly extravagant, and in return you get to rest assured that if you have a fire, get broken into, have a burst pipe, damage something, or have something damaged by the weather, et cetera, your home insurance policy will cover you for most of all eventualities.

Okay, so call me a fool. Or a complete and utter stupid idiot, as the wife did when we returned home from a two-week holiday abroad to find out we had been broken into and robbed of virtually every material possession we had that could be carried out the door.

Not that she called me that straight away. Sure she was upset when we first got home, surveyed the scene, read the letter from the police and then phoned them to get the details. But my wife’s a practical woman, rational in a crisis; it’s one of the reasons I married her. She put the kettle on and started to get all philosophical. She wasn’t about to let the low life that robbed us ruin a beautiful holiday. It was only material possessions they stole. They could all be replaced. Our home insurance policy would take care of it.

That’s when practicality, rationality and philosophy went right out the door, faster than our plasma screen television, dvd player, and stereo, et al. That’s when she called me a complete and utter stupid idiot. It was a long night: hell hath no fury like a woman who feels the need to make a point over and over again in order to get it through her husbands thick skull.

To be fair, what she had to say made sense and, despite my best efforts, what I had to say didn’t! Well it’s hard to argue with someone who keeps telling you that for a monthly payment the equivalent of a decent Indian take-away, you can have peace of mind that your home and the contents within it are insured.

My argument was that I was sick and tired of paying a monthly premium for house insurance and never getting a return on it. It was like giving money away to insurance companies for nothing, I said. The more I said it, the more I thought about it, the more I knew it was a non-starter of an argument.

I realise now, I always knew really, it just took the wife four hours of shouting to remind me, that you’re not giving away money to insurance companies for nothing. Your paying for peace of mind, for reassurance that IF something happens you’ll be covered. Even if you never make a claim it is still money well spent, because you never know what’s round the corner.

What price peace of mind? Well if it means I’ll never have to get the piece of my wife’s mind that I got when she found out I hadn’t kept up our home insurance policy, it’ll be worth it to ensure we are insured for evermore.

I’m just glad I never mentioned to her that I didn’t bother getting holiday insurance!

Home Insurance Industry set to pay out £30m

Apparently, on the 27th February, at nearly 1am, there was an earthquake in the UK. I didn't notice it, but It lasted approximately two minutes, registered 5.2 on the Richter scale, and was overall a very British sort of earthquake - the only injuries were caused by falling chimney pots, and across most of the nation people could be heard saying things like "Well I never!" or "Now there's a thing!", before tutting, rearranging their shelves, and returning to whatever book they were reading in bed. Oh, and at least one tabloid found a semi-naked young couple, for whom that night the earth had moved a little more than usual, with which to adorn its front page. Not so much the Lincolnshire Earthquake, then, as "Carry On Up The Richter". But I'm making light of it.

For some people the earthquake has been quite a serious business. Gordon Brown, for one. Having in such a short space of time presided over floods, war, pestilence (foot and mouth, hospital superbugs, bird flu), terrorism attempts, the beginnings of a recession, and now an earthquake as well, he's increasingly coming to resemble some kind of harbinger of the apocalypse. I'd be worrying that famine might be next, but I'm told that it's been around for a while now already, we've just been outsourcing it to poorer countries.

Financially speaking, though, the real losers from the Lincolnshire Quake were, of course, the home insurance companies.

What, no tears? Not even crocodile ones?

If I wanted to evoke sympathy I probably shouldn't have placed that sentence so close to the previous one, really, should I? Of course, evoking sympathy wasn't my intention. What I actually wanted to do was start talking about estimates of how much this latest earthquake might end up costing the UK's insurance industry.

Last April, a smaller earthquake (4.2 on the Richter scale) in Folkestone, Kent, apparently cost insurance companies something like £15m. This February's, they say, will cost them as much as £30m - the Lincolnshire Quake was thirty times larger, but its full impact was centred upon a more rural area. In either case, that's quite a lot of money to lose on something that lasts barely a couple of minutes.
As I was intimating above, though, it's hard to care about the losses of an industry that makes vast profits on the back of other people's fears. In fact, when something like this happens it's tempting to believe that it really was an Act of God and rejoice that He doesn't seem to like insurance companies, either. But perhaps not: after two quakes within less than a year, what better excuse to raise your premiums and make everything back and more?

But I'm being cynical. And flippant. We Brits tend to be. And like I said, this was a very British earthquake - the sum total of the chaos seems to have been, someone breaking a pelvis, some buildings getting a bit cracked, and a chicken laying a particularly large egg. That kind of earthquake is pretty easy to be cynical about. And so's insurance.

If only all natural disasters might be so British, though. And so well insured.