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Lai See

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Why you can trust SCMP
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What if bad air kills you? Don't worry, you're insured

A reader writes to say he has twice espied a large red van equipped with an internal meeting room parked outside Wan Chai train station on Hennessy Road. The effect of this was to keep out all other vehicles that needed to stop in the area, such as CTS tour coaches, delivery vans and minibuses. The van had the AIA logo emblazoned on its side and was selling life insurance. Naturally its engine was running, contravening the new idling laws.

Fortunately for AIA, this law is not enforced so it could carry on polluting the immediate environment with impunity. Readers will notice the irony in selling life insurance while at the same time adding to air pollution, which, as the Hedley Environmental Index shows, has resulted in an annual average of 3,200 unnecessary deaths over the past five years.

We drew the van's activity to the attention of AIA's Jacqueline Chan, who thanked us for the information and said: 'As a responsible organisation, we have guidelines in place to ensure that our vehicles do not cause pollution by idling and/or create inconvenience for the public. We will conduct an investigation and take appropriate action.'

Risky business

To cocktails with Steve Vickers Associates, the eponymous firm founded by Steve Vickers, who was former senior superintendent with the police force. This is his second start-up company in this field, having sold his previous firm, International Risk, some six years ago. Having completed his earn-out period, he is re-entering the fray with a new venture, which is another specialist risk mitigation, corporate intelligence and security consulting company.

He offered a pithy assessment of various risks around the region for his guests. Politics, property prices, posturing politicians and economic problems, together with the wealth gap between the haves and have-nots, are 'creating greater social tensions than ever before'. He added: 'Threats to our 'one country, two systems' principle are perhaps greater than ever before.'

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