Friday 7 December 2012

A Birthday Message from HMRC

My 63rd birthday (yep, me and Tom Waits both - spared for another year), and Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs mark the occasion by sending me a letter headed 'Are you affected by changes to Child Benefit?' My children, I should point out, are in their 30s, and one is living in New Zealand.
A series of questions follow, and if the answer is No (as it was, unsurprisingly, in my case), 'The changes explained in this letter will not affect you. Please ignore it.' It put me in mind of the famous notice saying only 'Do Not Throw Stones at This Notice'... A waste of tax-payers' money, for sure, but it has its up side: clearly 'they' don't know as much about us as we sometimes fear they do. In fact they appear to know nothing.

3 comments:

  1. You could take HMRC's letter as a compliment to your continuing...um....vitality, Mr N.

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  2. Blimey, these things are coming round quick. Many happy returns.

    Yes, conspiracy theorists always overestimate government competence, and paranoiacs overestimate their own importance.

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