Insurance

In they pour, one after another, cheerily thudding on to the doormat: ‘Thank you for insuring with us again! Now, pay us more than you earn in a year!’ Yes, it’s insurance premium renewal time – and they’re shooting up once more. Insurance premiums have swollen unstoppably, expanding upwards for all the world like a batch of evil mushrooms. In our household, home insurance alone now comes in at the same size as a monthly mortgage payment. Whack on to this car insurance (necessary), pet insurance (necessary?) and health insurance (in this day and age, yes), and you’d have to be earning the annual equivalent of Andorra’s GDP. What are

‘Do you have any questions?’ said the man at the insurance company after an hour of me trying to take out a new car policy. ‘No. I wouldn’t know how to ask you a question about what has just gone on even if I wanted to,’ I replied, because insurance is now so complicated there is no way a person not employed in the underwriting industry can understand it. And that would not matter, except we do need to get our heads around it, because we have to change it every year. Insurance companies are good to you until they’re not, because insurance is like a toxic love affair. After

Mr Benn has been in touch because he wants a right of reply to an article I wrote about my horse insurance. Yes, I am aware that sentence makes no sense, but this is the world we live in. You may remember I was surprised to receive my insurance documents for Darcy the thoroughbred with a covering letter from the 1970s children’s TV character. For reasons I could not make out, my insurers had gone from being a reassuringly serious-looking outfit called Equine and Livestock to being called the Insurance Emporium in big loopy letters with a logo that was a bowler-hatted, waving Mr Benn. All things considered, the incongruity