How many of you risk not insuring your beloved pets? – Verity Lush

What did people do before pet insurance? I read an article recently about how business is absolutely booming – and rarely paying out, especially for folk who have a less costly and more basic policy.
A cute pup - but is it covered by pet insurance?A cute pup - but is it covered by pet insurance?
A cute pup - but is it covered by pet insurance?

So what did people do back in the days when there was less insurance about? Was it a case of taking the tragic decision to have a much-loved pet put to sleep?

No matter how much we adore our pets, expendable money is not easy to come by, particularly when it can run into the thousands per year, depending on what condition your pet may have.

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Who has £5,000 to treat their pet annually? Pets are parts of our families so what a wrenching – yet common – situation to be in.​​​​​​​

Will it take a death for the speeders to slow down?

If there is one road in Pompey that is infuriating to drive down, then it’s got to be Stubbington Avenue, North End. At its worst I have spent up to 15 minutes in a queue that cannot unclog itself due to the congestion.

There are school crossing patrol guys working on the crossroads by Lyndhurst Road (rightfully so of course) because it’s such a busy school route.

Anyone who uses the road between 8.40am – 9am, or 3.05pm – 3.25pm, must have the patience of a saint.

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And it’s pretty pointless to all blame one another for the congestion. Sometimes you do indeed get a driver who ploughs on down regardless of the fact that there is clearly nowhere for anyone to give way, thereby causing a mammoth jam on both sides.

But very often you can’t even see what’s coming behind other vehicles, so you are clueless of the chaos about to happen.

The new one-way system of Crofton Road and Lyndhurst does not help because it’s just one more side road escape-route that’s been cut off, but again this system is necessary due to the schools.

What people can be blamed for, however, is the idiocy of driving down both Crofton and Lyndhurst at speed during the school run times.

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Nearly every day drivers will roar down Crofton Road, despite the fact that the local authority has never replaced the long-standing crossing patrol lady who’d worked outside College Park Infant School for many years until retirement.

Given that there are four school exits and no crossing patrol person, then driving fast down either road is a dangerous and heart-breaking accident waiting to happen.

To put it bluntly, however much of a rush we are in, when is it ever worth killing somebody for?

The lack of replacement has meant that drivers are no longer deterred by the presence of the crossing patrol, nor what used to be an obvious flowing stream of tiny road crossers.

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Instead, children and parents are rightfully crossing at all sections of the road, sometimes from in between cars, as various plonkers fly by at irresponsible speed.

There’s a term for what is happening in politics now…

I would truly love to know what the government has now spent on something I am not naming and have no wish to either hear about, write about, or think too deeply about in the near future.

Thus far, it is apparently costing more than double per week the £350 million that the Leave campaign told us could be saved on EU membership fees that would be put into the NHS.

You may have heard of cognitive dissonance – a term that is used to describe the feelings of discomfort that result when your beliefs run counter to what actually goes on to happen.

This, in turns, means we go on to explain things away instead of admitting we were wrong. Food for thought...

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