Discrimination

So, it appears that insurance companies are no longer allowed to discriminate against people based on their gender.

Interesting idea.

It won’t work, of course. The problem is insurance is an area where you’re allowed to discriminate. That’s the point. You’re working with odds, charging an insurance premium based on the likelihood that you’ll have to pay out. It’s what keeps insurance costs so low for low-risk groups. This is basically going to hurt people less likely to crash whilst helping those more likely to.

This worries me a little. Not because of changing insurance premiums, I haven’t owned a car since last summer. But I’m reminded of a favourite book of mine by Rob Grant called Incompetence, a detective story set in a United States of Europe in which nobody can be “prejudiced from employment for reason of age, race, creed or incompitence”. It’s a story – one of the funniest books I’ve ever read – which I often think of when Europe starts stopping us from discriminating against the people we should be discriminating against.

Discrimination is good, people. Not all discrimination obviously, but most is fine. We’re all different. People claim they want to be treated equally but they don’t really mean it; either that or they haven’t thought it through properly.

Single sex toilets are discriminatory. Disabled parking spots are discriminatory. Film ratings are discriminatory. Ten items or less checkouts at the supermarket are discriminatory (if you try to tell me it’s ‘ten items or fewer’ I’ll stick a spanner up your nose).

You see where I’m going with this.

We have to discriminate, because we’re all different.

The only good that might come out of this is it could spell the end of those horrible Sheila’s Wheels ads.