Over The Barrel...

You do not realise it until it happens before your very eyes. Insurance companies have you over the barrel in a lot of ways by the very complex and cunning ways they structure their insurance products. I had to get a Compulsory Third Party / Green Slip insurance certificate today. You are encouraged to shop around and find the best deal. There was no best deal in that sense. My green slip pretty much irrespective of where I went to get it was going to set me back AUD 472.42.

I have my comprehensive car insurance with NRMA and I am supposedly entitled to a discount if I have more than one insurance product with them. My Green Slip was discounted from something above AUD 600 to AUD 472.42. To me that is almost fraudulent. A company that I have no associations with will do it for AUD 472.42 and a company that I have insurance products with where I am entitled to a discount will do it for AUD 472.42. Go figure!

In the end, I opted for NRMA. I did this because in a lot of ways I felt I was over the barrel. The reality is that I will soon be needing home content insurance and as such a third insurance product with NRMA is allegedly going to entitle me to even greater discounts. Excuse my skepticism, but my guess is that the NRMA will ratchet-up the basic cost of my insurance and then discount it to a level that I could get it from elsewhere.

Then the decision really becomes one of convenience. If I am going to be paying within a few dollars of premiums that I can get elsewhere then it makes sense, at least to me, to have all my insurance needs at the one place. Simply, what I make up on the merry-go-round I lose on the swing anyways. So, it really is a very much break even proposition. It is sort of like feeling that this is the least painful shafting I will be getting overall in terms of having complete insurance cover across the board for everything that needs to be insured.

I think the realisation that I was over the barrel was a sobering one in a lot of ways. For when I told the NRMA sales person that I had a non-discounted offer of AUD 472.42 from another insurer that I held no policies with at this point in time, her answer was a simple "So, you want the green slip or not? Can't you see we are busy today?" I took the green slip from the NRMA for the reasons I noted earlier. And, I did not feel too bad about getting shafted, I was just kind of glad to have it out of the way for another 12 months.

The NRMA logo should really read "Helping people [to empty their wallets]".

Show Me The Money!

This is surely one of those moments where your heart sinks to a place somewhere around your ankle level when you realise the magnitude of your stupidity. A British driver from Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex for some reason whacked £80,000 on the roof of his car and then drove off.

I am sure some people have stories where they have placed a bag on top of their car and driven off without getting the bag off the roof and into the car first or perhaps it is a mobile phone or even a can of Coke or something similar. But, £80,000 is a lot of cash to forget to put into the car before driving off.

In any event, the police have recovered some evidence from the scene of the loss and are treating the case as theft. It seems that whoever 'found' the cash took it out of whatever was holding it and left that behind, presumably with some fingerprints that may or may not lead to the perpetrator of the "theft". The report of the crime suggests that there is also CCTV footage of the "crime scene". So, maybe the owner of the money will get lucky.

It must have been a sight to behold when the man gets home and his wife says "so, honey where is the money that you drew out of the bank?" I am pretty sure that a throttling was on the cards.

I have never driven off with anything sitting on the roof of my car. I wonder, have you?

Travel Times...

The most recent survey results (Household Travel Survey 2008 / 2009) on travel times for workers in Sydney highlights that on average Sydney workers spend about 32 minutes on the train in order to get from their homes to their offices. Meanwhile, those taking the bus get there a little quicker with the average being 23 minutes.

Nah, too bad they did not survey me. It takes me, on average, 2.5 hours to get from my house to campus (on the days that I go to campus. I am sure I might have skewed the survey a little bit. The reality is that it would be so much quicker to drive, but also so much more expensive. As a student, I can travel on a concession fare and this means I pay about AUD 28.50 for a weekly ticket (My Multi 3). The beauty of a weekly ticket is that it allows me to travel on all trains, buses and ferries. So, I pretty much can get to wherever I want.

The other parts of the survey dealt with safety, comfort, and service frequency satisfaction. The results here were  probably as expected, but nothing to write home about. On the comfort front, only 62% of respondents responded positively. The figure for service frequency was an improving 77%, which seems pretty good considering the last couple of times I have caught the train it has been late.

The survey was encouraging in that it shows a decline in the number of people driving to work. This has to be encouraging because it should mean that there are less cars on the road and consequently less traffic. This in turn should translate to less pollution and presumably a smaller carbon footprint?

I have been a public transport person from the day I returned to the land downunder. I do not own a car so public transport is the best option, and most cost efficient, available. I am wondering though whether this can continue when I am posted / placed way out west in NSW as a high school teacher? Maybe I will live close enough to work that I can walk!

Google and Racism...

Hmmm!

Sydney Lifts Water Restrictions

With enough rain the current water restrictions were always going to be lifted. It was really only a matter of time. The current water restrictions are to be lifted at midnight tonight. What this means is that Sydney residents can again use hoses and sprinklers (photo) every day before 10.00 and every day after 16.00.

These times are not absolute in the sense that if it is a really hot day then sprinklers can be on to allow children to cool off.

There are other specific rules in place such as hoses must be fitted with a trigger nozzle if they are going to be used to wash cars. It seems like I will be making a trip to the hardware store to buy a trigger nozzle.

However, I am not planning on watering the garden for a couple of days considering the previous two days have been nothing but rain. The garden is pretty wet already.

Your Home as Your Castle

Some interesting news out of Ohio in the US. Interesting if you are into legal, law, and legislation like I am. If you're not then you might want to skip this post.

The Ohio Legislature has passed a law which states that a home-owner who wounds or kills an intruder in their home is going to be presumed to have been acting in self-defense. This is known as the "Castle Doctrine". It interestingly also applies to motor vehicles.

If you have read my previous posts you will know that I am not a fan of guns or weapons in general. They have a purpose, but I am not sure that a society armed to the teeth is any safer than one where no or very few guns exist.

The previous incarnation of the law required that a home-owner prove that they were acting in self-defense. However, the new law shifts that burden to prosecutors to prove that the home-owner was not acting in self-defense. This is going to be very much a case of shoot first and ask questions later. There may be times where a home-owner acts in legitimate self-defense and other times where they do not. There would seem to be plenty of scope for a defense attorney to use the provisions to get a defendant a free pass for a wounding or death that was not self-defense but because it occurred in a home or a car then the presumption is that it was self-defense.

I wonder whether in 12 months time there might be some regret at this new law. It certainly seems to make it easier for all people to carry concealed weapons. This is likely to make the lives of some public servants such as police officers even more dangerous than it was prior to this piece of legislation being enacted.

Some of the things that citizens can now do and the protections afforded them include, among others:

• Home-owners are presumed innocent where an intruder is wounded or killed;

• The law applies to vehicles as well;

• Home-owners who rightfully use self-defense are immune from civil lawsuits initiated by the intruders, if they survive, or their families; and

• A landlord cannot evict a permit-carrying tenant for keeping a firearm on the rented premises.

The land of the free and home of the brave just became a little scarier by my reckoning.

Jihad

Jihad is an all encompassing struggle and you probably need a personalized number plate for your car to make sure that you get there in the end.

The picture was found here. Unfortunately, the site is in a language I do not speak or read, but some of the words I think I can make sense of. This leads me to believe that the photo was taken in front of a flat in London.

Nice car too!

Speed Limit in New York

The speed limit in New York in 1895 was a whopping 8 mph.

The picture is of the Panhard & Levassor 1895 model.

Priorities...

Australians are known to love their beer and are recognized connoisseurs of the amber fluid but some people just do not have their heads screwed on right!

In a story from Australia's outback, the Northern Territory just south of Alice Springs, a driver has been fined AUD 750 for strapping in his case of beer and forcing his 5-year old kid to sit on the floor. I have heard of and have known men that love their beer, but where are your priorities on this one -- stupid! It is worth adding that the car was unregistered and uninsured which is probably part of the reason for the fine...

It must have been a sight and would have been worth a photo for the "you're not going to believe this one" file. Four strapping fellas seat-belted in (two in the front and two in the back), a case of beer seat-belted in the middle position on the back seat, and a kid sitting on the floor of the car. Try visualizing that now. Does the image horrify you or make you smile in that WTF way?

The original story is pulled from here.