Companies welcome introduction of electronic motor insurance certificates

— iain

Insurance companies have welcomed the introduction of new electronic motor insurance certificates which will allow drivers to have instant access to their documents wherever they are.The Department for Transport has announced that the insurance industry can now issue electronic car insurance certificates to their customers via email, meaning they will arrive instantly and can be held on home computers.

The insurance comparison site www.Insurancewide.com believes the move is a sensible one and will be particularly useful for newly insured drivers who often wait several days or weeks for their paper documents to arrive.Chief executive James Harrison said drivers who do not keep a copy of their insurance certificate in their car risk unnecessary fines and even vehicle confiscation if they are stopped by the police, who are cracking down on uninsured drivers."The arrival of electronic motor insurance certificates will allow drivers to have access to their motor insurance documents almost immediately and will reduce the risk of drivers being wrongly perceived as uninsured," he remarked.According to road safety minister Jim Fitzpatrick the new technology will save car insurance companies between £5 million and £10 million a year.

From: http://www.motorinsurance.co.uk

Motor Insurance 'Crash for Cash' Fraud

Insurance Fraud - Key Facts Booklet PDF Doc.

News Release
7th March 2008
West Yorkshire Police Charge ‘Crash for Cash’ Fraudsters

Tuesday 4th March - West Yorkshire Police have charged 3 individuals in the ongoing inquiry into ‘crash for cash’ scams in conjunction with the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB). Investigators from the (IFB) have worked closely with Keighley Police over the last ten months on Operation Pelican, investigating alleged false motor accident claims involving hundreds of thousands of pounds.

During the inquiry twenty two people have been arrested. A thirty seven year old male from the Keighley area has been charged with conspiracy to defraud insurance companies, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and the intimidation of witnesses. A thirty-six year old female from the Keighley area has been charged with conspiracy to defraud insurance companies. A fifty-seven year old male from the Huddersfield area of West Yorkshire, a self-employed vehicle examiner, has been charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and conspiracy to defraud insurance companies. All 3 individuals charged are to appear at Bingley Magistrates Court on March 13th. A further sixteen people have received police cautions for minor fraud offences and 3 individuals have been eliminated from inquiries.

Detective Inspector John Mountain, West Yorkshire Police comments: “Innocent policy holders are paying for this kind of crime. Fraud increases the average premium by 5% or around £40. We will continue to work closely with the Insurance Fraud Bureau and take a robust stance in targeting and disrupting the criminal gangs preying on innocent motorists and the insurance industry.”

John Beadle, Chairman of the IFB said: “The insurance industry is no longer an easy touch for these organised fraudsters. We will continue to work closely with West Yorkshire Police and are delighted with the results achieved to date via this ongoing inquiry. We know these criminal gangs affect honest motorists in a number of different ways and are ruthless. Through our partnership approach with the Police we will continue to find, expose and pursue those criminals involved in organised insurance fraud.”

The IFB runs a free and confidential helpline which members of the public are urged to call if they have any information on staged motor accidents or other types of insurance fraud. The number is 0800 328 2550.
-ends-

Notes to Editors:
‘Cash for crash’ scams involve offenders staging or contriving collisions between themselves or inducing innocent motorists into having collisions with the purpose of making a claim on the innocent motorist’s insurer, often including several accounts of fictitious injuries from members of the criminal gang. For each successful scam, the criminals can net in excess of £30,000.

The IFB was launched in July 2006, to clamp down on organised, cross-industry insurance fraud in order to protect honest policyholders. Fraud costs the insurance industry over £1.6 billion a year and adds 5% to premiums. Criminal gangs organising complex scams are earning up to £4 million a week from organised insurance fraud and frequently use the proceeds to fund other forms of criminality.

Via the IFB, the insurance industry is working collaboratively to detect and expose these criminal gangs; 97% of the UK’s personal lines insurers are participants in the IFB service. The Bureau analyses the details of insurance policies and claims records of all insurer members to identify suspicious activity. It then leads or co-ordinates investigations with the effected insurers and police to expose fraudsters and bring them to justice, recovering fraudulent monies paid out and seeking criminal prosecution.

For further information visit http://www.insurancefraudbureau.org/
For further media enquiries about the IFB please contact:
Anne Staunton / Nicky Godfrey
Peak Marketing and Communication Services
0845 056 0534
anne.staunton@peak-marketing.co.uk /
nicky.godfrey@peak-marketing.co.uk
For further information regarding Operation Pelican at West Yorkshire Police, please
contact West Yorkshire Police Press Office 01924 292 045.

Corporate Manslaughter - UK

The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 largely comes into force on 6 April 2008, creating new offences that affect a whole range of businesses and corporate entities.

New law targets corporate killing - BBC News

A new law has come into force which is intended to make it easier to prosecute companies accused of causing death because of negligence.

Under the new offence of corporate manslaughter, employers may face large fines if it is proved they failed to take proper safety precautions.

The old law was criticised for making it too hard to bring prosecutions.

Proof is no longer needed that a single senior official was to blame, only that senior management played a role.

'Improved justice'

Under the new UK-wide legislation companies may face higher fines of up to 10% of turnover, or more in the most serious cases.

And for the first time the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act will make government bodies liable for prosecution by lifting their Crown immunity.

Justice minister Maria Eagle said: "From Sunday the law ensures improved justice for victims of corporate failures.

The new Act will not save the life of a single construction worker

Alan Ritchie, Ucatt

"We are sending out a very powerful deterrent message to those organisations which do not take their health and safety responsibilities seriously."

Critics of the new law, which comes into force more than 10 years after Labour promised the legislation, say it does not go far enough.

Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of trade union Unite, said: "Individual directors or senior managers will still not be held responsible for health and safety failures that result in the death of either their employees or members of the public."

THE FACTS BEHIND THE LAW
In 2006/07, 241 people died at work
In 2007, 77 construction workers died on the job
More than 450 people have died in major disasters over the past 20 years
The highest UK health and safety payout was £15m
The fine was levied against gas transporter Transco after an explosion in 1999 killed four members of the same family
Under the new law, firms may be fined from 2.5% to 10% of their turnover
Firms may also be made to take out adverts in newspapers publicising their guilt

Construction industry union Ucatt was even more damning, describing the law as "the dampest of damp squibs".

Ucatt general secretary Alan Ritchie said: "Only by creating the possibility that directors will go to jail will there be a change of culture in the construction industry.

"The new Act will not save the life of a single construction worker," he said, adding that in 2007, 77 construction workers were killed at work.


Similar measures to those in the new legislation were first proposed in 1997 by then Home Secretary Jack Straw in the wake of the Southall rail crash which killed seven people.

But there has been public outrage at the repeated collapse of prosecutions over disasters such as the Southall crash.

Legal experts warn the implementation of the new law will not be straightforward.

Julian Acratopulo of law firm Clifford Chance said employers would face uncertainty when the law was first put into practice.

Clarification needed

He said: "The growing pains of this new piece of legislation will be particularly acute, given that a conviction could occur in circumstances most of us would regard as a terrible but unfortunate accident."

One area that still needs clarification is how to proportion responsibility between middle and senior management.

The Sentencing Advisory Panel has also suggested that major national companies who are found guilty should be forced to publicly name and shame themselves in media adverts

Martin Luther King Jr. Last Public Speech/ I Have a Dream Speech

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. The beauty of nonviolence is that in its own way and in its own time it seeks to break the chain reaction of evil."

MLK on History.com: http://www.history.com/minisites/king

The last wish of Dr Martin Luther King
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/opinion/06branch.html?ref=opinion

The Money War Between Obama & Clinton -- Why It Matters

by Ashish, http://www.411mania.com/politics/columns/68588

Could money woes force Clinton out?
With all the talk we've heard for the past few months about convention floor showdowns, backroom deals, superdelegates tearing the party apart, etc. comes word from Newsweek that Hillary Clinton may have only raised $7 million in primary funds in March. How can that be when she claimed to have raised $20 million? Simple. Her rich donors are maxed out for the primary (people can only donate up to $2300 for the primary) and she got them to donate towards her general election campaign so she could inflate the total sum and hope people didn't notice that most of the money can only be used in a general election, a place she is unlikely to even get to.

She did the exact same thing in February to try and stop talk of her being finished. Remember how she shouted from the rooftops that she raised $34.5 million and how it was a record month for her? Turns out only $11.7 million of that could be used in the primary, according to Newsweek. The rest will only become available to her if she gets to the general election. But she needs the money now. The reason nobody noticed this is that candidates aren't required to disclose how much they raise in primary funds and how much in general election funds until 20 days after the month ends. So when she did report the full picture, that only a third of her February total could be used in her battle with Obama, the media didn't take notice. I won't even get into the fact that Clinton closed February with $8.7 million in debt. For comparison, Obama raised $55.5 million in February, $54 million of that can be used in the primary. How can he do this? Because he has over a million small donors (and growing daily) and basically none of them are even close to being maxed out, which means he can keep going back to them for more money.

The Newsweek story also exposes that Clinton, despite plugging her website everywhere and trying to get small donations recently in the same way Obama has been doing, has been unsuccessful and is relying on her usual assortment of wealthy donors who can't give her more primary money but gave her enough money for the general election to delay talk of her campaign running out of money for a few extra days. It doesn't make a difference to these wealthy Clinton donors because she will eventually have to give them all that money back if she doesn't get to the general election. Why does this matter? Fundraising is CRUCIAL in the general election and it's another reason why you'll see superdelegates continue to side with Obama. The old ways of raising money, relying on the extremely wealthy and putting together high-dollar dinners with the rich and famous, is a thing of the past now.

If Clinton only raised $7 million in primary funds in March, a month where she won the Texas and Ohio primaries and Barack Obama got saddled with the negative Rev. Wright story, it may indicate that this race won't end in fireworks and excitement, it'll end in a whimper as Clinton runs out of money.

The $7 million figure could be true because right now, Clinton is letting Obama outspend her 5-to-1 in Pennsylvania even as polls show her lead collapsing in the state. If she had $20 million to spend, she would put it all in PA, as it is a do or die state for her. Instead, what we're likely seeing is her put in everything she has, but that everything is far less than what she wants people to think she has. This is how campaigns usually end. The frontrunner begins to rack up huge financial advantages after cementing himself as the likely winner and it gets to a point where money results in too many advantages for said frontrunner for the other candidate to ever stop the bleeding. And eventually their campaign dies. If this money advantage persists, it'll catch up with Clinton sooner rather than later, if not in PA, then in North Carolina and Indiana on May 6th. A loss in any of those three states will sink her.

If the Newsweek story is true, her only remaining option would be to donate massive amounts of her personal fortune to go on competing in a race that she is almost sure to lose. Her tax returns were released yesterday and showed that her and Bill have amassed over a $100 million since 2000, mostly from books they have written and Bill's speaking gigs. They will need at least another $30-$40 million over the next three months to even think about continuing in a legitimate fight against Obama, because in those same three months, he will likely raise near or over $100 million and already has a huge financial advantage going in. Clinton cannot be outspent 3-to-1 and 4-to-1 in every remaining state and think she stands a chance. She knows that.

Her bluff, reporting her March fundraising total to include general election funds which she will likely never be able to use (and will have to return), is something she had to do because had she come out and reported, say, a $10 million month, it would have completely demoralized her supporters in PA, NC, and IN, and would have accelerated the media's talk of her being finished (even more so than what the media is already talking about, which is that she has almost no chance to win). And I think she realizes that that demoralization has already started. Looking at her huge drop in PA polls, there seems to be a mix of Obama's advantage in ads and some of Clinton's softer supporters starting to lose faith and tell pollsters they just don't plan to vote, not because they don't support Clinton, but because it may no longer be worth the trouble to go vote for her. Again, this is how campaigns usually end.

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