Hamish Champ: Floods, pubs and insurance companies

I believe there are those who have spent hours arguing that breathing in other people's smoke is bad for you, and an sizeable number condemning such a view as junk science, dreamt up by what one regular 'commentator' on the subject labels the 'health fanatics'.

The only time I've ever actively tried to breathe in someone's exhaled smoke was many years ago in an Amsterdam coffee bar, when I had the choice of spending the few guilders I had left in my pocket on buying either a couple of beers or a joint. I opted for the former, but drank them sat next to a group of dope-smoking hippy types who must have wondered why the British kid in the Motörhead t-shirt was hyperventilating with a smile on his face.

Anyway, enough of my youthful indiscretions. The floods which devastated parts of the North East and have more recently wrought death and destruction to large swathes of the West country, and cost the pub trade millions, have stirred the passions of those who believe they know what lies behind them.

The camps appear to fall roughly into two; there are the climate change theorists, who point the finger at anyone being so irresponsible as to drive a car/ride a big motorbike/fly in a jet aeroplane/run a large factory in Guangzhou province/fart excessively, etc.

And then there are those people who reckon it's a natural cycle of events that mankind can do little about (and who leave the telly on standby all the time, just to wind up their 'green' neighbours).

Since I ride a large, fume-chugging motorcycle maybe I'm partly responsible for the demise of the polar ice cap; or not, depending on which side of the green divide you stand.

Whatever, a thought occured to me at the weekend as I sauntered on two wheels through Lewes, a town all-too familiar with floods over the years. And it's a thought that could, perhaps, benefit nearly everyone.

If the blame for such regular inundations somehow does get officially apportioned to man-kind, surely this then rules out flooding from being deemed an Act Of God by insurance companies.

Which also presumably means that said insurance companies will have to start shelling out when people's homes and businesses are affected with rather less prevarication than has been the case in the past.

Pinning the blame on homosapiens rather than a Higher Being might just do the trick!

True, premiums will doubtless soar - yet again - but at least there'll be no more insurance claim handlers earnestly stroking their chins, gently pointing to the small print and shaking their heads in what they think passes for a sign of sympathy, all the while steering the sodden and homeless client towards the door and back out onto the street.

Man to blame? Seems like a good bet to me. Now, I gotta go find a tree to hug.