There is a massive backlog for the site, submitted a load before christmas that never made it up

I hate w***ers who park like that. People don't respect other peoples' stuff and this includes cars. Absolutely hate it when people ding car doors - I had five small dents in the car because of supermarket dings. This is despite me parking well away from anyone else.

It looks like a commercial vehicle, does it have a business name on the side? No harm in naming and shaming in the local area. If only it were a national company, you could get the guy seriously reprimanded for that.

No, just a blank side - otherwise I would have reported it to his bosses.

He had the kind of face that looked like someone had hit it with a shovel repeatedly - no wonder, if he parks like that.

Car insurance.

I'll say no more. I'm currently having fun playing different insurers and brokers off against each other. I'll lose whichever way it turns out.

Good luck with that - they share information nowadays.

I have phoned several insurers in the past only for some of them to tell me who had already quoted me and how much!

You'd think that would breach some kind of competition law.

I know. It's becoming more of a scam each year, frankly.

My current insurer shaved £45 off the renewal figure when I called to haggle, but it's still not enough. A local broker has some cash back scam where I pay £140 more than my renewal but get £200 back at some point in the game. Still can't figure that one out.

Direct Line, who promise better deals because they "aren't on price comparison web sites", were more expensive than my renewal. That was at least more "hilarious" than their television ads. More Than also lived up to their name. According to the adverts, I could get up to 50% off my renewal, so on that basis the quote was originally over £400.

Car insurance ought never to be more than about 10 per cent of the market value of the vehicle, in my opinion.

If I ever get hold of mother nature, I'm going to punch her in the face!!!

A lot of them are all part of larger groups, so they probably share with brands under the same parent company.

2 and a bit hours to get home, usually takes 15 minutes

It was a bit rainy...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alistair_u ... 330046654/

my mother in law is experiancing a lake inher garden (she lives in Fawdon near Gosforth) and my brother in law is having fun trying to co-ordinate his wife and kid getting back to his house in whitley. looks like they had the odd shower!

The value of your vehicle is totally irelevant. It's the value of the vehicle you might bump into that matters, and that's generally going up as people afford ever bigger and more expensive machines.

Presumably they're anticipating some people to hit more expensive cars than others then?
The couple I was staying with on Thursday night were looking at buying a Mitsubishi FTO. For one of them, the insurance was about £500. For the other, it was over a £1000.
Does that mean that they think one person is only aiming at cheap cars while their partner has got it in for the more pricey stuff?

No, they just think one is twice as likely to crash.

Correction - it's the value of the accident. If you have an accident and hit a person eg pedestrian who is later paralysed and sues, or if you hit a kerb at speed and crash into a house, the car insurance will cover it.