Jane Bradley: Why car insurance is not music to the ears of Disco Dave

WHO would have thought that mobile disco owners were quite such dodgy characters? Well, in the eyes of motor insurers, it seems they are, at any rate.

While those in glamorous occupations, such as professional footballers, have long accepted that higher premiums are the price they have to pay for their fast-living lifestyle, Disco Dave from Cumbernauld may not have realised his high-risk job is pushing up his insurance.

Insurers utilise a range of factors – such as age, location and profession – to calculate car insurance premiums, based on statistical risk of car accidents among certain groups.

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But when Confused.com last week published its list of most-expensive professions to insure, it was poor-old mobile-disco owners who pay the most to insure their vehicles – forking out a whopping £6,809 a year.

While they may have a limited amount of pricey electronic equipment in their cars, surely Disco Dave’s vehicle is more likely to be a beat up Escort estate than the top-of-the-range sports cars usually favoured by footballers? And, while there is always a chance they may be boy racers, I wouldn’t like to see Dave take on Ryan Giggs in an off-road race.

The main reason, I’m told by insurance experts, is that mobile-disco owners are mainly out at night, when the quiet roads encourage people to drive faster and the majority of serious accidents occur.

Airline captains, on the other hand, are apparently the cheapest to insure, due to their long periods off the ground – and, therefore, well away from the chance of having a road-based accident – and their high level of skill when it comes to… well, driving anything.

Perhaps most interestingly, how you describe your work can have an affect on your premium.

Solicitors may be charged a different amount to lawyers, according to my insurance moles – while a doctor may be quoted a different price to a surgeon, depending on the accidents that previous incumbents of those titles have suffered.

A quick online test of my own car and my own profession found that, if I declared myself to be a writer, rather than a journalist – as some of the more… flamboyant… members of my trade are wont to do – my premiums would rise. So, I think I’ll stick with plain old hack. It might not win me any friends at parties, but it’s cheaper.

MY INBOX has been groaning in the past few weeks under the weight of scores of surveys informing me just how much the average person spends on celebrating Halloween – and most recently – Christmas.

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While the figures are not vastly different to previous years – parents fork out an average of £13 each for Halloween-related festivities, according to Sainsbury’s, while Marks & Spencer reveals each parent spends an average whopping £560 on Christmas – they got me thinking.

If we all went Scrooge-tastic and ditched the £40 turkey in favour of a normal mid-week dinner of bangers and mash on 25 December, told the children to be happy with a lump of coal in their stocking and didn’t hand out sweets to guisers, then the £50 a month minimum payment required to set up the new junior individual savings account (Isa) could easily be found.

The Isa, launched this week to replace the Child Trust Fund, is a tax-free savings plan for children, which allows parents to invest up to £3,600 tax free. Nothing like a bit of bah humbug to boost the family coffers.

MUCH as I admire Tesco for its relentless growth in the face of a global economic crisis, I’m beginning to feel slightly apprehensive of living in a world where it could fast become the only brand on the high street.

The supermarket giant’s recent announcement that it will make the move into health and beauty, offering cut-price pampering treatments in its stores, has been met with some consternation from organisations including the Forum of Private Business, which claims that the move could drive independent beauty firms out of business.

While the move is ostensibly a boon for one of the most capitalist corporations, for British consumers, it smacks of a world behind the Iron Curtain.

In eastern Europe, countries are only just recovering from a world where consumer choice was non-existent. All stores were owned by the same organisation – in their case, the state – and had no need to compete with each other, waving goodbye to the concepts of competitive pricing and customer service.

Monopolisation. Every Little Helps.

• Jane Bradley is The Scotsman’s consumer affairs correspondent. Jeff Salway is away.

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