Annals of Money

Item One: Seen on a memo on the bulletin board at the CBC in Charlottetown: across Canada, directory assistance charges cost the CBC $150,000 a year. The suggested remedies were “use the white pages” and “use www.canada411.ca.” My own side note: how long before Bell starts charging for access to that site?

Item Two: Norwich Union had, by virtue of its frequent and quite annoying television advertising, one of the most recognized brands in the insurance business (“It’s Patrick, he’s bought life insurance…”). Now they’ve changed their name to AIG Insurance. Does this make sense?

Item Three: I remember being told by my friends in the anti-nuclear lobby in Ontario that if Ontario Hydro replaced the refrigerators of everyone in the province with new energy-efficient models, they would still spend less money than it would take to bring a new reactor on stream. Why don’t things like this every actually happen?

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Alan's picture
Alan on March 14, 2002 - 13:18 Permalink

Norwich Union: I think they created their own antagonists. I would never have bought from them. Just like I will never touch a Kia as long as they run those ads about the swamp. The moment of Partick’s passing — and weren’t the beneficiaries surprised at how small the policy payout was — was a moment of pop culture relief.

Electricity: Bill Bryson says in Notes from a Large COuntry that if all the computers in the US were turned off at the end of the day five nuclear plants could be shut down.