there can be few things that personify the bourgeois indulgence of what are termed "first world problems", look you see, than the matter of purchasing, or if you like investing, in insurance in England. the market for insurance is structured and stacked in such a way that your choice amounts to whether or not you want a plastic bulldog with a bouncing head, a stuffed meerkat (toy rather than a real one, i think), to give money to someone who hires the hideous Sharon Osborne to be in adverts or if, as was apparently the case with me, you want a plastic robot.
yes, i now own one of them Brian toys off of the advert off the TV. for those of you reading outside of the UK, which looking at the stats would seem to be "most", here you go, a link to an advert for insurance for you to see what this is all about.
oh yeah, i could have gone for them that do the insurance but have hired Harvey Keitel for the ads, but no, the boys assured me that i wanted a Brian toy.
apologies if that video comes across as being in some way sideways, i don't think i held the blueberry phone the right way around to do the video with and i am not sure if blogger will bother to rotate it.
so yeah, insurance. it's the law here that you have to have car insurance, otherwise they take your car off it, impound it and probably crush it. so i needed to attain insurance, then, thanks to the previously discussed (at length) decisions made by Arriva, the celebrated bus company that doesn't actually want to have any buses running.
it was in investigating insurance options that i discovered the basic choice came down to which toy you would like, or the hiring of which celebrity or actor you felt like giving your endorsement too. in England it seems there are as many insurance "companies" as there are or were Arabian nights; although all one thousand plus of them would appear to be subsidiaries of a mere handful of actual underwriters.
oh yes, i am peppering, or if you like littering, this blog post with some videos of my smart new Brian toy in action for you, so that you may both see and hear the joy that has come into my life.
in an effort to make it easier to pretend that this is interesting, or that these videos have in some way or another have value, i've made a special mix up for you, so some of the videos were made on the blueberry and others on the iTwat. if you appreciate the differences, well, that's just awesome, man.
which insurance company, or "price comparison of insurance companies", would i have gone with if i was given a free hand? absolutely any of them which gave me the lowest price in relation to services offered, except of course that lot which hire Sharon Osbourne. she's not really the problem, it's that bald headed twat with the CGI long legs and high heels which annoys me in the advert. but still, no dice.
as bewildering and unlikely as this seems, i am going to assume that there's quite a market for these Brian toys. this would be a market that has apparently inspired a bootleg market for toys in his likeness. that, dear reader, can surely be the only motivation for the inclusion of a certificate of authenticity in the box.
are we really living within the realms of reason in a world where there is a need to give a certificate of authenticity to a plastic toy that was shot in the post by some random website you bought insurance through? what next, certificates of authenticity for corporate pens, drinks coasters and bottle openers as and when they get handed out?
it is, make no mistake, very nice indeed to be living in a world where one of the few things to trouble you on a night is which free toy you might want with a financial product or service. no, this won't be one of them "some people don't know how lucky they are" things; for i loathe them and do all i can to avoid them. everyone should just deal with the hand life has dealt them, not put up with crass "but you should see how bad it is for so and so" comparisons.
another video? surely.
i must admit, this bizarre, bastardised hybrid of Wall-E, that robot off of Short Circuit (a film which i think starred Guttenberg, you might find) and Marvin off of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy is kind of growing on me a bit. the ads are smart, i suppose, and it is kind of cute the way that the robot talks.
would i recommend that you too use this outfit for your insurance concerns so that you may get one of these classy robots? if the toy is pretty much the only point of difference you have had between quotes then go for it, unless you really want a stuffed (hopefully manufactured) meerkat, or want to either give more money to Sharon Osbourne or keep Harvey Keitel in work away from actual cinematic movies. i mean, if it's a case of "well, this insurance meets all my needs, but this one, for £200 more, doesn't but does come with a sort of semi-smart plastic toy", well, you don't need me to indicate the wiser approach, do you?
another picture? certainly, and why don't we have a go at a full frontal of Brian, since were' here.
if you have read this far in the hope of some practical car advice being present, you are in some luck. the weirdest thing i discovered was that insurance companies here do not want to "upsell" or extend further services to existing clients. for this reason i strangely find myself making use of an insurance company which, on face value, is entirely different from the one the wheels of my (considerably) better half are covered by, yet they seem to both be owned by the same firm at the end of it.
our first port of call was our existing insurers, or if you like brokers. they quoted us an insurance price, for a year, which was basically around £100 south of the actual value of the car. they said that your existing policy had no bearing at all, and that it would be treated as an entirely new insurance policy, despite you being evaluated against the existing one. hence us using the computer and that to find insurance that was, annually, way, way, way south of what we paid for the wheels entire.
so, insurance companies of England - consider making more money by simply being competitive and equalling the price of services for your existing clients. if some other firm can do it for £x for a new client, surely you can too for someone you already have on the books.
another video, then.
the arrival of Brian in the post was marred by some disappointment, i must say. when i heard a knock on the door and found an employee of Royal Mail at the threshold to our home, i had hoped it was because that book i ordered, the one i cannot recall the name of but him who did French Connection is going to film it, would not fit through the letterbox. no, that has not arrived as such as yet, and it was the case that it was Brian who could not fit through the letterbox. well, just how big do you think our letterbox is?
another Brian in action video to finish off with? why not.
yeah, i've put the toy, and the all important certificate of authenticity, back in the box. perhaps i should have a gander at the paperwork which came with Brian; for all i know it might be that i am supposed to drive around with him/it in the car, so that it may serve as proof of my insurance should the constabulary have reason to stop me and ask.
i appreciate it would be a strange fluke if it has, but all the same i do hope that all of this has been of some use or relevance to one or two of you.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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