I saw a report the other day that said something along the lines that Hobart had the most rainfall recorded in one day for a hundred years (gasp, horror, its climate change)
Hang on you fucken morons, that means that a hundred years and one day ago it had rained more
Same goes when we hear that some outback place has had the highest temperature recored in 75 years....so 75 years and 1 day ago, it was fucken hotter!
And fucken tell me, how the fuck did the dinosaurs die? Apparently an ice age came through. So, if we werent burning fossil fuels to make electricity and run cars, how the fuck did the ice melt? There werent any fucken power stations around then!
Fucken climate change wankers. It gets cold in winter, hot in summer....get fucken used to it!
Monday, April 18, 2011
Insurance claims...the other side of the story
This is an article I recently read.
I will not say I agree or disagree, but it may shed some light on the current feelings out there.
“FIRST comes the chilling horror of the catastrophe. A nation is gripped with numbing terror as a child is wrenched from his mother's arms in the flood.
Up north a cyclone bigger than Katrina blows away homes and crops.
Across the Tasman our neighbours' beautiful, historical city is torn asunder. As the ground shakes, dark forces hurl the church spire like a javelin while hundreds of townsfolk are buried in a cement sepulchre.
Suffer the little children buried in tiny white coffins.
With the grieving comes a craving for statistics in a futile attempt to explain the inexplicable.
Each disaster is different but a journalist's questions remain the same. How many dead? Any survivors' tales?
Then, after the personal stories are told, the blame game begins.
Why weren't we warned? Did the state cause the flood by holding back and not releasing water sooner? Why weren't we warned? How come amateur forecasters were hours ahead of the weather bureau in foretelling the Lockyer Valley calamity?
Into this emotional mix comes the insurance companies. They are the latest whipping boys.
This is unfair in my view, especially now we are all atheists and the concept of "act of God" is foreign to us.
Surely someone is to blame? If there is a cadaver under the rubble there must be a liability.
If my house is wrecked by a falling tree, I want compensation. I'll phone my solicitor immediately.
Our compensation culture demands someone be held responsible.
I'm already getting tired of people blaming the insurance industry for their woes. In this I include people who should know better, such as the Prime Minister and the Premier.
Community leaders urging insurance companies to go easy on insurance claims are missing the point and creating dangerous, unreal expectations. Insurance is a business like any other. If I owned shares in companies like QBE or Suncorp (I don't) I wouldn't want assessors being pressured into giving away my money to people not entitled to it. It would be improper and bad for business
.
If you aren't covered for flood, you aren't covered. This doesn't mean insurance industry workers are crooks.
A few years back the Insurance Council of Australia came up with a flood definition but the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said it was anti-competitive and knocked it down.
There are other problems.
If insurance companies relax the rules and give away money, they may go broke. That won't do policyholders any good.
Insurance is all about risk. Life is full of risks; some we must hold on to alone and some we can offset by buying insurance coverage.
If I choose to live in a flood-prone area and cannot buy insurance, I take a risk. With global warming the risk is getting greater. Don't blame the insurance workers. Insurance companies are bending over backwards to pay claims.
David Muir, of HWL Ebsworth Lawyers in Brisbane, is a respected insurance solicitor who sits in a glass CBD tower overlooking the river that brought much of the damage.
Muir believes politicians are "bashing insurance companies" for political gain.
He said "If political pressure is brought to bear on insurance companies to pay claims that are not covered then some insurers, particularly overseas insurers, may withdraw from the insurance market in Australia altogether. After all, we represent about 1 per cent of the insurance market in the world and overseas insurance markets will be nervous enough as it is about doing business in Australia with all the natural catastrophes. If politicians are not careful they could cause an insurance vacuum in Australia they will have to fill."
He added: "There are differences in flood definitions among some contracts of insurance. However, by and large, if a building is inundated by water, following a river breaking its banks, then I am sure most people will recognise, as a matter of common sense, it is a flood.
"Some insurance companies may even pay claims when there is an element of stormwater involved even though they don't have to.
"There is a legal principle handed down in the Court of Appeal in England some decades ago which allows insurance companies to correctly, as a matter of law, deny claims in those circumstances."
Longreach-born Muir, who set up Crime Stoppers and was a long-time state president of Amnesty International, is a director of the Foodbank charity.
Interestingly, he notices a difference in disaster responses in city and country. "The people in the bush don't get kerbside collection," he said. "They mend their own fences, they clean each other's houses after flood. Pulling together is a bush trait that is undervalued in the city."
Are we also creating a nanny state where people choose not to buy insurance cover because they know they will get a government handout anyway?”
Whether you agree or disagree, it is important to get a balance in the argument
I will not say I agree or disagree, but it may shed some light on the current feelings out there.
“FIRST comes the chilling horror of the catastrophe. A nation is gripped with numbing terror as a child is wrenched from his mother's arms in the flood.
Up north a cyclone bigger than Katrina blows away homes and crops.
Across the Tasman our neighbours' beautiful, historical city is torn asunder. As the ground shakes, dark forces hurl the church spire like a javelin while hundreds of townsfolk are buried in a cement sepulchre.
Suffer the little children buried in tiny white coffins.
With the grieving comes a craving for statistics in a futile attempt to explain the inexplicable.
Each disaster is different but a journalist's questions remain the same. How many dead? Any survivors' tales?
Then, after the personal stories are told, the blame game begins.
Why weren't we warned? Did the state cause the flood by holding back and not releasing water sooner? Why weren't we warned? How come amateur forecasters were hours ahead of the weather bureau in foretelling the Lockyer Valley calamity?
Into this emotional mix comes the insurance companies. They are the latest whipping boys.
This is unfair in my view, especially now we are all atheists and the concept of "act of God" is foreign to us.
Surely someone is to blame? If there is a cadaver under the rubble there must be a liability.
If my house is wrecked by a falling tree, I want compensation. I'll phone my solicitor immediately.
Our compensation culture demands someone be held responsible.
I'm already getting tired of people blaming the insurance industry for their woes. In this I include people who should know better, such as the Prime Minister and the Premier.
Community leaders urging insurance companies to go easy on insurance claims are missing the point and creating dangerous, unreal expectations. Insurance is a business like any other. If I owned shares in companies like QBE or Suncorp (I don't) I wouldn't want assessors being pressured into giving away my money to people not entitled to it. It would be improper and bad for business
.
If you aren't covered for flood, you aren't covered. This doesn't mean insurance industry workers are crooks.
A few years back the Insurance Council of Australia came up with a flood definition but the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said it was anti-competitive and knocked it down.
There are other problems.
If insurance companies relax the rules and give away money, they may go broke. That won't do policyholders any good.
Insurance is all about risk. Life is full of risks; some we must hold on to alone and some we can offset by buying insurance coverage.
If I choose to live in a flood-prone area and cannot buy insurance, I take a risk. With global warming the risk is getting greater. Don't blame the insurance workers. Insurance companies are bending over backwards to pay claims.
David Muir, of HWL Ebsworth Lawyers in Brisbane, is a respected insurance solicitor who sits in a glass CBD tower overlooking the river that brought much of the damage.
Muir believes politicians are "bashing insurance companies" for political gain.
He said "If political pressure is brought to bear on insurance companies to pay claims that are not covered then some insurers, particularly overseas insurers, may withdraw from the insurance market in Australia altogether. After all, we represent about 1 per cent of the insurance market in the world and overseas insurance markets will be nervous enough as it is about doing business in Australia with all the natural catastrophes. If politicians are not careful they could cause an insurance vacuum in Australia they will have to fill."
He added: "There are differences in flood definitions among some contracts of insurance. However, by and large, if a building is inundated by water, following a river breaking its banks, then I am sure most people will recognise, as a matter of common sense, it is a flood.
"Some insurance companies may even pay claims when there is an element of stormwater involved even though they don't have to.
"There is a legal principle handed down in the Court of Appeal in England some decades ago which allows insurance companies to correctly, as a matter of law, deny claims in those circumstances."
Longreach-born Muir, who set up Crime Stoppers and was a long-time state president of Amnesty International, is a director of the Foodbank charity.
Interestingly, he notices a difference in disaster responses in city and country. "The people in the bush don't get kerbside collection," he said. "They mend their own fences, they clean each other's houses after flood. Pulling together is a bush trait that is undervalued in the city."
Are we also creating a nanny state where people choose not to buy insurance cover because they know they will get a government handout anyway?”
Whether you agree or disagree, it is important to get a balance in the argument
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