Nationalize the Buggers!

I haven't done a political rant in a long time. So please indulge me.

I've been looking at my various options, figuring out where I want to live for the next little while. Still want to go to Nova Scotia and live a life of rural bliss. I may end up in the city, which I'm not totally adverse to as long as it's a liveable city. Rural Nova Scotia would be my first choice.

Here's the obstacle -- I schmucked my car in December. My fault, I admit it. But nobody was hurt (except the insurance company's bottom line, that is) The other woman's car only had a paint smear on her pretty white SUV. My passenger doors got punched in (the picture in on a previous blog entry here). They wrote me a cheque and said "your first accident won't have that big an effect".

Well, I'm not so sure. My own insurance company isn't even getting back to me. And on-line quotes are ranging anywhere from $2200 a year to $5700.

Well, I will be damned if I am going to allow myself to be held hostage to these thieves. One accident. And not even a big one. Come on.

On the other hand, this hands me an opportunity to put into practice one of my beliefs -- that if more people found alternative ways of living, like going car-free, we would have a cleaner, more sustainable environment. And a car is also a very expensive habit, both in terms of money and our health (so much healthier to be biking and walking)

And if more of us said "No, that's fuck YOU" to our insurance companies and said, hey, we can live without you, maybe they couldn't continue these extortionate rates.

Well, that felt better. I'm now going to walk the dog .. it's a beautiful day. And then I'm going to call my MPP to ask "hey, time to put public auto insurance back on the table".. (no high hopes here .. my MPP is an NDP, but the NDP did wuss out on public insurance when they were in government, so ...) But at the very least, taking political action does make me feel less powerless.

oh, ya, another thing. The accident will come off my record in ten years. But then they'll continue to be able to charge exhorbitant rates because I haven't had insurance for ten years. Under the current system I can see no immediate way to win this one. So I'm going to have to look long term and do some political action if I want to see any changes.