Bankstone News is a big fan of laws. When it comes to making sure things get done right (or that they don’t get done wrong), you just can’t beat a law.
Such is our fondness for laws, in fact, that you’ll often catch Bankstone News poring avidly over the latest editions of dusty old law periodicals such as Legal Highs, The Law Man, Creative Legislator or whatever.
Thus it was that we recently came upon a fascinating report in something called Legal Gazebo about how a bunch of uppity MPs have dared to impugn the good faith of the people’s brave insurers.
Now, as you’ll probably have gathered by now, if there’s one thing Bankstone News likes even better than it likes laws, then that thing is almost certainly insurance. So you can imagine how confused and upset we felt when the article in question appeared to suggest that insurers are what the great orange ape across the sea would call ‘bad dudes’.
Legal Gazebo reports that, on the 7th day of the current month, the House of Commoners Juice Committee had what’s know as a session. Apparently various insurance types had been invited along to have a bit of chat about personal injury claims and proposed reforms thereunto.
The first bad sign was that only four of the eleven juice committee members bothered to turn up for the beginning of the session. Then some loudmouthed MP type called Bobbin Eel started on at the ABI’s Jimmy ‘Duellin’ Dalton. He said that calls for PI reform were based on ‘no hard evidence”. Are you seriously suggesting, Eel demanded rudely, that ‘we should be changing the law on the basis of suspicions?’
Worse yet, he had the nerve to question whether ‘this is going to feed through into lower car insurance premiums.’ Which seems a bit ridiculous, when that £50 a year off (see previous editions of Bankstone News) is a boner fido banker – so much so the ABI might as well have carved it on a giant tombstone like that Ed Millipede did.
Then some foreign sounding MP called Alberto Costa got in on the act, banging on to Jimmy D about whether or not he believed ‘in the duty of care that is owed in a society between one citizen and another?’ Poor old Jim probably hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about, but obviously felt it would be rude to say no, so he kind of nodded a bit.
Not content with that sneaky little ambush, Costa then accused Dalton and his ABI mates of calling whiplash claims an ‘epidemic’. Then without even giving JD a proper chance to justify this classification, Costa asked him whether it was or was not the case that whiplash claims have actually come down quite a bit lately.
Maybe they had, Jimbo was forced to concede. Before undertaking to check the numbers later and get back to Mr Costa. Why do we have to make new laws, lazy Costa wanted to know. Why don’t we just enforce the ones we have? Yeah, said some other MP called David Handsome, and how many ABI members have actually committed themselves to reducing premiums?
Apparently Jim had nothing to say about that. But why should he, when insurers have already made it abundantly clear that the whole point of changing the law on PI is so that decent ornery motorists can have £50 a year off their motor insurance!
Then, to cap it all, some bloke called Alex Chalk wandered in and asked completely at random ‘how exactly a worker on minimum wage might fight a £4,000 claim against his employer.’ Quite rightly, Jim refused to be drawn into fruitless and irrelevant speculation such as this. Clearly that’s a matter for minimum wage workers to address as they see fit.
What an unpleasant and mean spirited bunch these MPs are!
And what an unpleasant and mean spirited publication Legal Gazebo is to take such delight in the discomfiture of a decent, hard working true friend to everyday motorists everywhere as ABI Jimmy Dalton.
Not fair!
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