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It seems that the traditional discrimination between male and female drivers will end very soon thanks to the European Court of Justice, which has approved the ban on price discrimination and set a three year period for the insurance companies to comply. This is certainly good news for male drivers, especially the younger ones, who are traditionally charged with higher premiums, and also means that female drivers will be subjected to higher premiums as a logical move by the insurance providers to split even the costs in order to comply with the new rules. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a sad fact of life but machines work for less than human beings. In the good old days, every machine needed a human to watch over it and make sure it did not mess up. Now all you do is plug in these new generations of clever computerised things and they can work for days and weeks without ever having to step outside to enjoy a cigarette. It’s enough to make Karl Marx turn over in his grave as the workers of the world have slowly been losing the power to sell their labour. But inside every silver lining is a pig’s ear, or something. If a business can operate with fewer human beings, it’s making big savings that can be passed on to us, the customers. If you’re still able to find work and can afford to insure your car, this is a good thing. If you’re one of the replaced humans and now find yourself on the scrap heap of life, this is bitter medicine.

Automation brings reduced premium rates at two different levels depending on where the savings in labour are made. If the insurer has to employ a call centre full of people (hopefully not offshore to maintain what employment opportunities remain for local people), this is a moderately expensive operation. But if all the selling of policies is effectively automated, all the savings in labour costs can be passed on to you as discounts. For example, the Co-operative offers an 11% discount for buying online. When you add this to other features like a no-claims bonus rising to 70%, it makes them one of the cheapest companies in the insurance business.

But, the most interesting company is Swiftcover. Although set up as an independent, this is now a subsidiary of the Axa Group, selling out in 2007. It’s advertised as the first company relying 100% on the internet to sell its policies and deal with claims. To a greater or lesser extent, all the other major companies have a mixed strategy depending on face-to-face sales through High Street offices, the telephone, the internet and indirect sales through agents and brokers. Through Swiftcover’s website, you can buy a policy online and print out your cover note. If there are any changes to be made to the policy, this is done online. In the unhappy event of having to make a claim, you have a choice of an online process or a telephone call. This is a prize-winning company for its innovation and the cost-savings it offers. Although it now employs some 250 people in England for dealing with more than half-a-million policyholders, this is a fraction of the workforce in other major insurers. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s admit it, nearly all men watch porn. There’s nothing strange about it because visual representation of sex is very arousing for the male eye, in contrast to the emotional aspect of it that most women tend to. The porn industry is a multi billion business with hundreds of studios all over the globe and tens of thousands of titles produced every year. Porn movie development is less complicated, costly and time consuming as mainstream film production. A typical pron movie is shot during one day with actors sometimes being required to have sex several time during the shoot. When you realize it and take a look at the intense action on the screen there’s only place for wonder how come male performers are able to pull it all off in front of the camera. Well, of course, there are certain secrets of the trade and it turns out that Viagra is one of them.

Male porn performers are usually paid times less than female performers because the entire industry is focused on actresses. Rarely does a male actor get an exclusive contract with a good salary. Usually the paycheck is quite average, especially for the effort you have to give. All in all, no matter how good and pleasant sex may be when it turns into a 9 to 5 job with several sex acts every day, it turns into a real challenge that not many men can actually accept. It’s no longer a matter of when you want to do it, it’s a matter of doing it right all the time. And no wonder that under such pressure many men often face problems with erections. You can’t be 100% hard all the time on snap when the director asks you to. The female actress isn’t always your type, there are dozens of people on the set watching you and you could get more sleep yesterday. So when the camera starts rolling there’s a high risk of erection fading away. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s something about speed. It’s fascinating as a driver to feel in control of a powerful lump of machinery as it hurtles across the landscape. The tire noise rises. If you have one of these sporty vehicles with a modified muffler to let you hear the power of the engine, you press a little harder with your right foot. Cars today are manufactured with safety in mind. It used to be dangerous to do more than eighty mph. The brakes were poor, the suspension was worse. Go round a bend too fast and a rollover was common. Today, even a family saloon can do eighty mph and not feel under strain. That leaves many with a curiosity bump. What’s it like to be doing one-hundred or more? Well it turns out an increasing number of drivers want to find out. Not that it’s in any way typical but the Texas Highway Patrol reports writing up 3,726 for speeding where the vehicle was traveling at more than one-hundred mph. Obviously Texan drivers think they live in a big country and stand a good chance of avoiding detection.

So how do the law enforcers react and what happens to your insurance? For these purposes, let’s assume you are caught doing more than forty mph than the limit allows and/or traveling more than one-hundred mph. The majority of states automatically treat anyone doing more than one-hundred mph as reckless. This brings you into the fine fine zone where your wallet is going to be hit for more than $1,000 in penalties and administrative charges. Obviously, there are no fixed rules about the scale of the fine. It will go up if you ignore school and construction zones. Similarly, the higher your speed in the relation to the speed limit, the higher the fine. Some states have a super-speeder tariff. But the real crunch comes if you’re charged with a misdemeanor or a reckless driving citation. In most states this features an automatic suspension of your license and points on your record. Acquire too many points and your license disappears for a year and more. This assumes the courts don’t decide to throw you in jail. This will be a certainty if you’ve been drinking or have drugs in your body. Otherwise you’d better hope the judge is in a good mood. Read the rest of this entry »