Insurance is a requirement of living in the modern world. Most people will personally need household insurance and/or car insurance, and owners of businesses have a whole load of additional insurance products aimed at them such as professional indemnity and liability insurance, some mandatory, some optional.

Given that this produces a large, fairly captive market, albeit one with a lot of choice of providers, why do insurance companies do such an awful job of dealing with their existing customers when it comes up to renewal. To take a recent case, when my car insurance came up for renewal recently, I got an automatic offer from my existing insurer through the post. Considering that I had changed my car for a lower insurance group car, had been with the current insurer for a year with no claims, I was surprised and/or annoyed to see the “best deal” quote I was being offered was more than the previous year. A quick search around and I found an equivalent deal at slightly over half the renewal quote, and accepted that.

Of course, when I called up my current insurer to let them know I would not be renewing, they immediately searched again and found me a “better deal”. Why was I not offered this immediately? Why when looking on a comparison site, were they offering better rates then they were offering me direct for renewals? The “better offer” was still not as good as the one I had from another insurer, so they lost my business, but if they had come up with a decent renewal quote to begin with, they might have kept my business.

Possibly the most distasteful news item to emerge this week is the allegation that investigators working for the News of the World not only “hacked” into Milly Dowler’s phone voicemail whilst the police investigation was on-going, but deleted messages so that more messages could be received. Not only tampering with potential evidence, but also giving false hope to her family. Whilst News International boss Rebekah Brooks has promised the “strongest possible action” if the allegations are proven, surely now is the time to ask what, exactly, they knew at the time, and perhaps more importantly what communication they had with the investigators at the centre of the allegations.

Surrey University has announced it is to charge the maximum £9000 tuition fees for students, blaming the requirement on cuts to its teaching funds and capital grants. It joins Oxford, Imperial College, Durham and Exeter in announcing it will charge the highest level of fees.

As covered by our earlier article “Tuition Fees: The Law of Unintended Consequences“, the government has warned that, if too many universities decide to charge £9,000, there may be further cuts to teaching grants. As more universities are due to vote on their fees, warnings such as this are as likely to lead to universities charging the higher rates to make up a shortfall imposed by other high fees, as to charge the lower rate.

To date, no university has announced it will charge below the maximum rate. Probably not a surprise to any of us, except those in government it seems.

The ZX81 is 30 years old, and there are a number of retrospective articles, including this one from the BBC. Many of us have very fond memories of Sinclair Research’s early machines, and the ZX81 was my introduction to the world of computing. Back then, computers were strange, mysterious devices. Indeed, my brother and I saved up to buy a ZX81 without really knowing quite what it was. Having received the sleek, futuristic wedge-shaped black box, the only thing to do with it was learn to program – yes there was the “1K Games Tape” with some simple games, but once the novelty of these had begun to wane, it was time to see what use the machine could be put to. Adding a 16Kb RAM Pack made the machine more powerful (and allowed better games, when not writing programs, including the fabulous 3D Monster Maze).

The ZX81 taught me Sinclair BASIC and Z80 Assembler, and lessons in writing efficient code, that don’t seem to be anywhere near as relevant to the art of programming these days. Computers have become an everyday object that everyone has, but few are truly interested in. I miss the days when it was an enthusiasts hobby, and just having a computer implied both a greater interest and a deeper understanding.

SpamCheck, the Open Source email spam and virus filter has been updated to version 0.6.11

This version fixes the email format, in particular adding a non-HTML section to the MIME formated emails.

Driving home from work yesterday, and noticing that I will have to fill up (again) soon, I was struck by the question, “why do I have to pay VAT on petrol”. VAT is considered to be a “luxury” tax, a tax on non-essential items. The only way for me to get to work and back, particularly at odd times of the day and night (4am visits to the office being less regular than they once were, but still a possibility, and there is no public transport available at that time, any day of the week) is by car. Why then am I being taxed at 20% for an absolute necessity? Can anyone please let me know? And why aren’t there huge protests over this, surely I should be able to claim the VAT back on the petrol required for me to get to and from work (and therefore be a benefit to the state rather than a drain on it)? In any sane country I would be able to claim all the tax (duty + VAT) back.

Apple has launched the second generation of their iPad product with “a faster processor, improved graphics, and front and rear cameras”. Is this enough to keep the growing competition at bay? This year promises a whole range of Android tablets, including the Motorola Xoom and HTC Flyer, and whilst Apple has had the high-end (and 10″ screen) market pretty much all to itself, this is unlikely to last. With Apple’s market share for tablets falling from a high of 95% down to (a still impressive) 75% according to Strategy Analytics, it seems that anyone in the market for a new tablet should be in for an interesting time.

Excellent news for those of us who appreciate a good Cornish Pasty. The European Commission has given Protected Geographical Indication status to the Cornish Pastie as requested by the Cornish Pasty Association. From this point onwards, in order to be called a Cornish Pastie, a number of criteria must be met, including:

Made in Cornwall (obviously)
D shaped and crimped on one side
Made of uncooked minced or roughly cut beef, sweed, potato and onion
Slow cooked from raw

Full details are available at the Cornish Pasty Association web-site.

Alan Turing’s papers, including his first published paper, have been saved for the UK. A donation from the National Heritage Memorial Fund has allowed the papers to be bough and kept at Bletchley Park where they belong.

dot.Rory has an article with comments plus some additional links describing the background.

The law of unintended consequences, sometimes defined as “a perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended (when an intended solution makes a problem worse), such as when a policy has a perverse incentive that causes actions opposite to what was intended.” (thanks to Wikipedia there) has swung into effect on the governments university tuition fees plans.

Back in November 2010 we were being told that tuition fees were rising to provide additional funding for universities, in part to fill the gap left by a reduction in government funding. To quote the BBC web-site on the matter:

“Much of the proposed fee rise, up from the current £3,290 per year, will replace funding cut from universities in last month’s Spending Review.”

Now, it seems that someone has made a mistake, with the Minister of State for Universities and Science (who, we assume, should know what he’s talking about) quoted as saying “If graduate contributions end up higher than £7,500, we would reluctantly be forced to find savings from elsewhere in HE [higher education].” or in other words, if universities decide to raise their fees to the maximum level to offset the cuts the government has made, the government will be forced to make more cuts to cover the cost.

As well as being a quite bizarre example of badly thought out legislation, what does this say about the qualifications and experience the current government has, and are they truly capable of making the correct financial decisions in these tough times? A flagship economic policy that makes the situation worse is not a good sign.