Here we go again. The days grow cold, Christmas hoves into view and pantomime season lurches onto centre stage with a resounding "look out behind you!" writes Justin Hynes.
And, children, we all know what pantomime season brings, don't we? Yes, the by now annual call and response choruses of "oh yes, you do" from the toothless fairy godmothers in regulatory bodies and "oh no, we don't" from wicked stepmother insurance companies.
The latest instalment: the 2003 Insurance Statistical Review by the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority has tut-tutted at insurers for not allowing motorists to drive to the ball for anything less than twice the fare from the previous year.
Kilian Doyle is away on leave.
Oh, yes they did. In 2003, motor insurers doubled their take, upping profits to a whopping £395 million. Boo, hiss, cry the fairy godmothers. Bah humbug, growl the wicked stepmothers.
Phil Hogan, the Fine Gael spokesman on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, said (pertinently but not a little opportunistically, I'll wager) that this was "nothing short of immoral and cannot be tolerated". He was backed up, with a little less interest vested, by the Bar Council, who said the figures showed the industry had been misleading the people and the Government and was "making enormous profits on inflated premiums".
The Irish Insurance Federation - nice chaps, black capes, long, pointy canines, strange taste for human blood - came back with a typically mealy-mouthed response, saying that premiums were now falling in both the motor and general insurance sector. Michael Horan, the non-life manager at the IIF, said the organisation's own study and Central Statistics Office figures showed premiums had fallen by around 15 per cent this year.
Which is a bit like saying: "Well, we robbed you blind before but now we're only going to rob you slightly short-sighted".
Much like pantomime choruses, all of this would be of coma-inducing tedium were it not for the fact that once again we're being presented with statistics showing that insurance companies are asset-stripping motorists while organisations charged with protecting consumers stand by wringing their hands in pained impotence as a feckless government busies itself salivating over projected road tolls and VRT receipts.
And it shows no sign of getting any better. Premiums are coming down, whines the IIF, with Mr Horan adding that premiums started falling during 2003 but that the pace of reduction picked up this year.
I beg to differ. And I can cite this week's phone calls to insurance providers as very relevant (to me) anecdotal evidence.
My insurance runs out soon, so, as advised by hand-wringing consumer groups, whose sole advice on this matter is to shop around for the best quote, I picked up the phone and started dialling.
In 2002, having received a laughable quote from my then provider, I changed insurer and landed a quote of €828 for cover as a 36-year-old male with a full no claims bonus and a full licence.
The following year, the period in which the IIF insists premiums began to fall, I was forced to pay over €1,000 by the same company for the same cover, despite my circumstances being unchanged. Last week - same car, same job, same me - I was quoted €738 with the same company. Elsewhere I got quotes ranging from €750 to over €1,000 for the same cover.
What does all that mean? Well, as far as I can see, it means that insurance companies' premiums go up and down like the Assyrian empire and that the companies impose fees based on collective accounting, statistical manipulation and the casting of runes.
It does mean that my premium fell by a whopping 25 per cent in the space of 12 months, which is good.
But why? Accident rates are the same, road deaths have worsened if anything, I haven't radically altered my driving style to that of a 48-year-old female librarian with a fear of fast-moving objects. What's changed? I'm quite certain the IIF could give me a thousand statistics as to why my premium has plummeted to such a degree, but I defy them to explain why it rocketed by almost 20 per cent the previous year. The variation in pricing just seems too wild to be based on any sane and sensible methodology. And, anyway, their statistics always reek of oil of both the massage and snake varieties.
Ultimately, as overblown 1970s prog rocker Greg Lake so wistfully said of Christmas in his seminal yuletide anthem, with insurance premiums "we get the ones we deserve".
And until consumers, en masse, pressurise government into giving its bleating but ineffectual watchdogs some effective means of control, the pantomime will continue.
The evil stepmothers of the insurance industry will continue to treat us as Cinders and we will be forever forbidden access to the ball while the insurers dance all the way to the bank.