quote:Originally posted by H1ppychick: I just have little patience for all this guff about feeling hard done by for having a laptop nicked when it was never yours to start off with.
Hard done by? Where? Fool.
quote:Originally posted by Waynster: I did exactly the same with my CDs Thorn, specially all the rarities. Not a bad idea to do that.
Heh. A fine idea until they steal the camera and / or computer the photos are stored on.
quote:Obviously I can't provide this for the laptop but i'm fucked if a break-in is going to cost Scrawny her computer.
Not exactly "hard done-by", but "indignant" that an item that you borrowed/nicked has now been nicked/borrowed. (of course, a perk from the job is very different from breaking into someone's home, so I'm not sure how far this parallel can be taken... you arguably had some moral right to ownership of the laptop, having been given it by your employers, perhaps "earned" the right to keep it through the extra work you probably put in for that company, and there is perhaps an understanding, even on the employers' side, that these appropriations of hardware are part of a broader, unofficial payment scheme)
But in fairness Bandy you started the thread because you were annoyed that someone had taken the laptop -- you didn't even care so much about the other stuff, which you could claim on, or the violation, which you were able to live with. You posted because someone had taken an item that strictly speaking you didn't have a right to keep. So I think Hippychick shouldn't be called a fool.
On the other hand, you were posting selflessly because it had been Scrawny's laptop, which puts it in a different light. And possibly you were channeling all your anger and outrage about the break-in as a whole into this single item.
posted
You can store photos on the internet now, meaning the 'device' can't be stolen. I can't believe neither of you web designers knew that. What are you, fucking thick or something.
Also Bandy - do you still want that shaver, or what?
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posted
If it's tasteless to argue the toss about morality on a thread where two people have gone through the awful experience of burglary, then I apologise for that.
posted
Some good has come of this - I now have insurance!
Now wait for some disaster to befall suspiciously quickly after me taking out the policy and watch me get done for fraud....
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: If it's tasteless to argue the toss about morality on a thread where two people have gone through the awful experience of burglary, then I apologise for that.
Yeah, me too. Though it's not often I get called a fool; it's kind of refreshing.
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posted
Sorry to hear about the break in B&S. That's annoying.
On an upbeat note, my friends got burgled recently... had all their electrical goods and designer clothes stolen. They put in a claim through Ensleigh - who paid up really quickly.
They were really chuffed and went out and bought a new widescreen tv, upgraded their dvd player to a recorder, got a much better stereo and new kettle, toaster and iron (yup, all stolen too) and some new clothes.
They said it was one of the best days of their lives because they just went out on the saturday and bought everying in one go - the biggest shopping trip ever - they felt like millionaires!
They went out to dinner with his parents the next night and came home to find they'd been burgled for the second time in a month! Not only had the bastards taken all their new stuff... but also all of the big cardboard boxes and packaging my friends had left in their front yard for the dustmen
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scrawny
One Mojito, two Gin and Tonics, Three Bacardi Lime Sodas, and a couple of pints of Stella please.
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My God, what utter *****. Reminds me of some mates of mine at Uni who were burgled three times by the family that lived opposite them. Their MO was to rob them, wait for the insurance money to come through, wait for them to replace everything, wait for them to go out, then rob them, wait etc.
Yes, the laptop was a freebie, but that doesn't make this any less frustrating, or the work on it any less valuable to me, so this...
quote:Originally posted by H1ppychick: I just have little patience for all this guff about feeling hard done by for having a laptop nicked when it was never yours to start off with
...is bollocks. Of course I feel hard done by. Tell me you wouldn't feel the same.
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posted
I kind of see where Hippy is coming from, but in the real world I think lines are a bit fuzzier. If I picked up a £10 note in the street and was subsequently mugged, I'd still feel pretty aggreived, despite the fact I had no legal claim to the money.
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scrawny
One Mojito, two Gin and Tonics, Three Bacardi Lime Sodas, and a couple of pints of Stella please.
posted
I think I'd see the point if we'd been bitching about the insurance companies, claiming that it was our godgiven right to get it back. It isn't, and we know it isn't. Would be nice though. Given a choice between laptop/no laptop at all, you can hardly be blamed for coming down the sensible side of the divide.
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
I'm not saying that it's not human nature and that you shouldn't feel aggrieved to be deprived of your laptop. I just find it difficult to make a moral distinction between you defrauding an insurance company of money and a toerag half-inching your 15-incher. Therefore when several people piled on with advice on how best to perpetrate that fraud, or seemed to be unable to appreciate the moral ambiguity or even wrongness of such a thing, it just set me off on a tangential rant.
I'm sorry if you think this means I can't see where you are coming from about feeling sorry for losing the laptop or that I'm completely callous and inhuman - this isn't the case, as I pointed out several posts ago.
In these situations, people tend to put forward arguments like "Oh but it's just a faceless corporation, it doesn't matter if I rip it off".
No. That company has shareholders, who are expecting to get a return for investing their money. What if that shareholder is your mum, who has put some of her nest egg into the stockmarket? Or it could well even be you yourself - a significant proportion of public shares are owned by institutional investors like pension schemes - like the one your employer may run. How would you like it if your pension were to be cut because people making inflated or fraudulent insurance claims have knocked the value of your shares or the dividends that they can generate?
Popular argument 2: "Everyone does it, so why can't I? Anyway, it's covered by the premiums that I've paid."
That's bollocks too. If everyone does it, everyone is committing fraud. The premiums that you pay are set at a level which covers an expected level of claims, the company's costs of administration, and should leave enough left over to pay a modest dividend to the people who are funding the company (which may be you or your mum; see above). If people inflate their claims, two things could happen; either the dividend has to be reduced (but stock-markets don't like that) or future premiums have to be increased to cover the shortfall. This is what tends to happen. This is why the cost of insurance goes up and up when inflation remains steady - it doesn't cost you significantly more to replace the goods stolen but someone has to fund the fact that last year Joe Bloggs thought that he'd claim for a laptop that his mate 'liberated' from work.
Sorry, where was I? Ah yes. Insurance is a necessary evil and shouldn't be made more expensive than absolutely required by people inflating claims. Of course, we're not living in Utopia and human nature dictates that people will try for whatever they can get away with. It doesn't make it morally or ethically (or indeed, legally) correct to do so.
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quote:Originally posted by Black Mask: Rick believes in karma..? Now, there's a can of worms.
I did qualify the statement with an open-ended "or something" though... That said, Himmler believed in karma so I am in pretty good company...
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turbo
Gold..... What is it good for? You can't eat it, you can't smoke it, yet everybody wants it.
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When my parents were burgled, the insurance company sent around a man to make an estimate of how much it would cost to replace/repair their things. He estimated their (ripped) curtains at an extortionately high price and my mum, ever the honest one, said they weren't nearly that expensive. The bloke actually winked and said the insurance company didn't know that. ??!! My mum then bought extortionately expensive curtains for exactly the amount the insurance company gave them! Bless.
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posted
I usually don't get involved in such things...but as me and Banders go way back (he has been calling me fat and unfunny longer than any of you other fuckers) I have to say that this whole thing sucks and blows.
Hope you get it all sorted quickly dood - and Scrawners, don't feel too bad - at least they only took something out of your underwear draw, a girlie friend had something 'left' in hers when she was burgled.....
[AMY]Eeeeeeeeeew!![/AMY]
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posted
My work colleague came in today, pretty upset and shaken because four people barged into his flat and stabbed his housemate for a playstaion 2 and a TV/video combo. He was out at his mates at the time.
posted
S...sorry, that isn't very comforting. They live a street away from my new abode though, but I am advised that the guy was a care worker and had a habit of inviting waifes and strays in from time to time. Mix in with the wrong crowd, and that's the payback I guess.
scrawny
One Mojito, two Gin and Tonics, Three Bacardi Lime Sodas, and a couple of pints of Stella please.
posted
quote:Originally posted by H1ppychick: Common sense...
Fair enough mate, I think I agreed with the karma argument earlier on, I just disagreed with the assertion that I shouldn't feel hard done by. Feeling hard done by doesn't mean I'm out to rip somebody else off to make myself feel better.
And NWoD - . That's it, I'm moving to the North Pole.
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posted
I have insurance now! For £3000, which is approximately 10 times the value of everything in my room. Not including CDs and DVDs, but they don't take those, do they?
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