Equal in misery

When you want to know the odds on something you can either go to a bookies or an insurance company, the insurance company especially will use a complicated set of statistics based on your age, area and lifestyle to figure out the odds of anything happening to you or what the chances are of you doing something. After all if they have to pay out all the time, their shareholders will not be too pleased. So in essence they have to get it right and when it comes to car insurance they'll take your age and your gender as well as your past history into account. Well they'll take your gender into account up till 21st of December 2012, after that the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg has ruled that using differences between men and women as a risk factor in setting premiums for car and medical insurance and pension schemes breaches EU rules on equality. And equality rules especially don't work on common sense, they work by dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator. In other words Car insurance companies are no longer allowed to give their statistically safest drivers a bigger discount because of gender any more, well not according to the EU.

Telegraph.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg has ruled that using differences between men and women as a risk factor in setting premiums for car and medical insurance and pension schemes breaches EU rules on equality.

"Taking the gender of the insured individual into account as a risk factor in insurance contracts constitutes discrimination," the court said in a statement.

The verdict - which applies from December 21 2012 - will force changes in the current standard practice across Europe of basing insurance rates on statistics about differing life expectancies or road accident records of the sexes.

Women could face a jump of 25pc in car insurance premiums in light of the decision, while pension income from men could fall by between 5 and 10pc.

The problem is the insurance companies weren't discriminating, they were using statistics which showed them that women were a better risk. Women as a whole drive far more cautiously than men and as a result have fewer accidents, particularly so with young men. And now they are no longer allowed to do this so a low risk group get to pay more, which will please the insurance companies no doubt but not those who are going to get hit by higher premiums.
It's these verdicts which fly in the face of common sense that cause more and more people to ask why we're in the EU at all. But as Cameron said in his interview with Al Jazeera the other day, "we're going to change it from the inside" (or something like that). So we aren't going to be asked if we want to stay in despite the fact most of us would like to leave (according to statistics) but as the above story tells you, ignoring statistics is what those who purport to rule us are apt to do when it suits them.

Me, I just want to know when we can get out of that corrupt nest of political vipers.