Car insurance that comes at a premium

MY motor insurance policy recently came up for renewal, and I was offered terms by my present insurance company (a large and well-known national concern) at a premium of £409.

However, on consulting their website, I found the same policy on the same terms offered to new customers at £100 cheaper. I gather this is common practice. Needless to say, I will be insuring my car with another company.

I wonder when the insurance companies will learn that their existing customers are more likely to remain loyal if they treat them fairly,and do not take them for granted? Or do they not care?

Fairness in
flotation

From: Keith Loudon, Redmayne-Bentley Stockbroker, Senior Partner, Leeds.

THE CEO of the Card Factory has said that he “liked to keep things simple and cost effective”, in relation to its impending flotation on the Stock Market and the lack of opportunity for private investors to apply for shares. There are two points I’d like to make about this:

1) A listing on the London Stock Exchange is a privilege and is of benefit to the company. To facilitate an efficient market, a wide range of shareholders is needed.

2) Only offering shares to institutions excludes customers, its shops and local retail investors.

Surely it is to the benefit of all parties to open up initial public offers to all investors?

Debt is not 
the answer

From: V Walker, Princess Avenue, Knaresborough

IT has been interesting to read your younger readers’ comments over the past few weeks. As 
you would expect, they are
very idealistic and want what a lot of us would also like to 
see.

However, when you ask what they would like to see done, can I suggest you add the rider — and how will you pay for it?

Although they cannot be expected to come up with a good answer, as future voters they need to know that with rights come responsibilities.

So many people these days have been brought up with the culture that going into debt is the answer, which it is not.

We need to get back to paying now or do without until we can afford it.

Perhaps the media ought
 to do more in this respect 
when out and about interviewing the public about the 
latest spending proposals of councils or the Government.

Try it!

Power of 
the Big Six

From: K Atkinson, 
Gale Lane, Acomb, York.

WITH regard to energy policy, the ‘Big Six’ are only interested in making a killing. How has it taken this long for Ofgem and various governments to admit what is happening within these companies? Most of the population came to this conclusion years ago.

Why can’t the price of a unit of gas or electricity be quoted like the cost of a litre of petrol or diesel?

Lure of the
maypole

From: Jennifer Parker, Central Square, Brigg, 
North Lincolnshire.

THE lovely photograph of children practising their maypole dance (The Yorkshire Post, April 21) brought back memories of the days when I danced around the Maypole at Glebe Road School in Brigg. We had four maypoles on the lawns and all our mums came along to watch.

I always thought the first line of the song should be “come lasses and lads take leave of your dads and away to the maypole, hie (old English for hurry)”.

It’s good to know that the traditional customs are being revived.

Saving 
the rhino

From: Aled Jones, Mount Crescent, Bridlington, East Yorkshire.

wild RHINOS will be extinct by 2020 if the levels of poaching continue unabated, experts have warned. If that’s the case, then drastic measures are needed to save the species.

There are now just 20,000 white and 5,000 black rhino left in the wild. If the cost of capturing and sedating rhinos is considered too large, then a global fundraising campaign could be set up within minutes. It would make millions overnight.

Port at heart of
Ukraine crisis

From: Arthur Quarmby, Underhill, Holme.

I SHOULD like to offer an alternative scenario to that depicted by Stan Solomons; that if the EU had not been making overtures to Ukraine which led to Russia seeing the prospect of their only warm-water port in Crimea disappearing into the control of Nato, then this very dangerous situation would not have arisen (The Yorkshire Post, April 24).

Had the EU kept to its established borders, then this problem would not have arisen. There is no parallel with 1938, and US sabre-rattling with their troops in the Baltic countries and their navy in the Black Sea only inflames a situation which badly needs a negotiated settlement.