Pension Postcode Lottery

Once again justifying it's "Daily Fail" title, the mail prints this article.

If someone said to you: "I'm going to give you £100, if each year you then give me a certain amount back until I die." What questions would you ask before accepting the offer?  Certainly, how long they're likely to live would be one of them...  If someone's on their last legs and the doctor thinks they've only got a couple of years left in them, you'd give them a lot more than if they're hale and hearty and likely to live for 40+ years.

According to the mail, this is unfair. 

It's a well known fact that people in different areas live different lengths of time.  How is it wrong for insurers to take this into account?  The EU have already said that they can't take into account the fact that women live longer than men (which - if it's anything like the last big change to pensions back in 1990 just means that most people will now get the lower rates), so the insurance companies need to take into account other factors.  Isn't it fairer that everyone gets a reasonable return on their money over the whole period of the annuity, rather than the people in the affluent, healthy areas getting a lot more money than the people in the crappy areas (over the length of the annuity)?


"Fred Ford , 67, a finance director and semi-professional magician, lives in Biggleswade, Beds, with his wife Dorothy (pictured above)... living in Basildon, Essex, would have boosted his income by almost £300 a year. He says: ‘I think it’s unfair. It should be about the lifestyle you choose as an individual, not where you live.’"

I wonder if he's quite cottoned on to the fact that people in Essex live shorter lives.  Would he be willing to make that exchange?  (Imagine if an insurance company did offer lowered rates, in return for your taking a daily cyanide pill, or somesuch...)

Incidentally, if you're applying for an annuity, do make sure to tell the insurers about all of your vices.  If you smoke, for example, most insurers will offer an enhanced annuity rate - although they do periodically check up on these things, so don't be tempted to lie...

News from History - 5 Sept 2005 to 11 Sept 2005

Way back in 2005 I started to play around with php. One of the things that I made was a simple little chat site so that some friends and I could talk while at work (as we couldn't get on msn). To begin with it was really simple and I gradually added features to it over time. One of the things I liked to do even back then was read a bunch of blogs and news stories and pass on the ones that I thought were interesting.

On the 5th of September 2005, I added server side logging of what was said in the main chat page. Given how life is kinda hectic and I really don't have time to post regularly on this blog, I thought it might be interesting to revisit the past, and see what was interesting back then. I plan to put posts up here with a week at a time, detailing the links and what I think of them now - hopefully some of it will be interesting for anyone who happens to read them :-)

So to start with, 5/9/05 to 11/9/05:

on the 5th, we have:

• the house that css built - quite a neat demonstration of what can be done with no images at all, just cleverly written CSS code
  
• a baby grown outside of the womb - I've heard of ectopic pregnancies, but I'm no medic and I'm not sure if that was what happened here, exactly. I do know that it's interesting stuff - might it mean that men can one day give birth?

On the 6th:

• Buttock vibrating technology to be included in cars - I've not heard of this happening for real yet, but it wouldn't surprise me...

On the 7th:

• MP critiscised for taking the mickey - A grant of £48k was given to study Gypsies and travelling communities. Monmouth MP David Davies (Conservative - note this is not the David Davis who resigned over the terrorist detention extension - there's an e in the surname) wrote to the Heritage Lottery Fund asking for the same amount to study people who don't travel around. I thought it was amusing...

On the 8th to the 11th:

no news posts. I should point out that on the 7th and 8th most of our talk was around the forthcoming release of Exalted 2nd edition, but I figure most people won't want to see links to that. If anyone does, just say so in the comments :-) On the 9th I wasn't at work, so there was not a lot of chatting and linking going on, and likewise on the 10th and 11th (as they are a weekend).