BigWallop wrote:


Brace yourself Rodney !!!!! ROFL. :-)

A lot of people ask why we pay for liability insurance. Here's why. I was
in a mansion house (a very old and very expensive family seat, mansion
house), and I set fire to a rug with the sparks from an angle grinder.

Everything else near to where I was working was covered with boards and
things, to protect them. But haste to finish up and get home caused me to
just kick back the rug before cutting into a metal plate. Not knowing the
rug had just crumpled up behind me when I kicked it, then slid back down
flat to the floor with the vibration of the cutting, it caught fire along
one edge, and only alerted me when the smoke grew to thick to see through.

You think you've thought of everything before you start these jobs, but
there is always something you overlook. Anyway, 3000 quid in compensation
for an antique foreign rug, soon made me realise that things like this can
happen. My next purchase wasn't a fire extinguisher. Oh no. It was a
liability insurance policy with Standard Life. :-)

It may cost a few hundred pounds a years, but when they say they'll cover
you up to the value of 3 million pounds. I think it works out cheaper than
any other alternative.

Indeed. Shortly after I moved here, my next door neighbour..well half a
mile away, nearly burnt to the ground. It was a thousand year old manor
house being restored, and no one is clear on exactly what happened, but
plumbing work was going on at the time. Whether something was left
smoldering, or electrical work was damaged, I don't recall.

But there was a huge tussle between the house insurers and the liability
insurers of the contractors.

I nearly burnt down the North Vietnamese embassy, in London once.

It was emty, except for some pretty high class squatters, who held a party.

It had underfloor warm air heating installed, and grids along the
beautiful wooden floor edges. And I dropped a cigarette down one..

Only my quick thinking and a can of Newcastle Brown saved this valuable
building from destruction ;-)