BIBLICAL SMITH
The Environment Agency boss Lord Smith visited the Somerset
Levels and whilst there refused to apologise saying “Call this bad, have you
ever been to Venice, or Atlantis?”. Being, or at least looking like, some half
man half toad thing he found the Somerset Levels to be his perfect habitat.
And
resembling what he does the kids who live in the Levels thought Mr Toad from
Wind In The Willows had come to visit them. This kind of disappointed them
though because they’d have much preferred Woody and Buzz Lightyear, or
preferably any character who wasn’t in a very old book they’d never read. Smith
could have at the very least turned up with a bucket, just to take the bad look
off the accusations that he’s doing nothing. One thing he did do however was
refuse to resign. He said he wasn’t resigning because he still has too much
work to do to resolve the desperate situation. Much in the same that Hitler
refused to resign in the spring of 1945 because he still had too much work to
do to resolve the desperate situation of 2 million heavily armed Russians
banging on every door in Berlin. The only difference being that Hitler had
everyone who called from his resignation shot. Lord Smith can’t do that. I’ll
bet he wishes he could though, starting with the angry farmers.
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| LORD SMITH |
So Smith stood there surrounded by thousands of hostile
people all wanting his scalp and there he was insisting that he was doing a
great job and everything would be fine. Yet not one journalist asked him “Lord
Smith, does the name General Custer mean anything to you?”.
David Cameron visited the Levels too and said the scene was
biblical. So biblical that the scene even had what initially appeared to be
Jesus up on a hill crucified to a cross. It turned out that it wasn’t our Lord
Jesus at all, it was how the locals had dealt with the other Lord, Lord Smith. Jesus would be a great Environment Agency member of staff as he ability to walk on water.
On the Andrew Marr Show Eric Pickles the Community Minister
who looks like a thumb completely blamed the Environment Agency for giving the
Government terrible advice. Pickles said “We thought we were dealing with
experts” and signalled that Lord Smith should resign, and when I say signalled
I mean that Pickles also said “Lord Smith should resign because everything is
his fault, the flooding, the Hindenburg disaster, the Titanic disaster, and I heard
that he even donated the sperm that produced Ed Miliband so he is Lord Smiths
fault too”.
In response Lord Smith accused Ministers of playing
politics, and then he sat in a corner sobbing “Why does everyone hate me?”.
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| LORDS SMITHS FAULT |
The Army were called in and how the people rejoiced as if
the Army were a panacea for the flooding. But unless the Army were planning on
drinking all the floodwater away there really wasn’t much they could do other
than help with sandbagging.
On that note, what would have helped would have been to mix
a couple of gallons of whisky in with the floodwater and airlift Charles
Kennedy and Gazza in and the problem would indeed have been solved. Why call
the Army in?, the Navy would have been a much better idea because unlike the
Army the Navy has submarines.
Labour are blaming Tory budget cuts for the flooding, the
Tories are blaming Labour claiming the floods are caused by the tears of Ed
Miliband who cries millions of gallons whenever he sees the results of a poll
on his party leadership. Lord Smith blames the floods on anyone and anything
that isn’t him, the UKIP Councillor David Silvester blames the floods on gay marriage
and everyone who lives in the Levels blames a lack of dredging. Although the
Environment Agency claim that dredging wouldn’t have made that much difference,
adding “and we are sure about that because we have absolutely no idea what
dredging is” .
The BBC have in no way used the floods to promote their
weather app. No wait a minute they have. In completely bad taste the BBC after
every weather report on the situation on the Levels plug their weather app
saying “Stay ahead of the weather with the BBC weather app”.
Their argument being that this ad won’t upset the people of
Somerset because they won’t see the ad as they don’t have any electricity to
power their TV, and they have no power to charge up their mobile phones either.
And anyway it’s far too late for them to stay ahead of the weather, that ship
has sailed. Yes thanks to the floods that ship, or any ship with a low draught
can now sail about anywhere in the Levels.
So what is the Environment Agency doing? Agency is actually
a good word because the Environment Agency staff have now all got themselves
showbiz agents. They need them to handle the fee negotiations for all their
appearances on the news and current affairs programmes. Some of them have been
on the TV so much now that they their very own entourage.
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| THE SOMERSET LEVELS |
But are they doing
anything about the flooding?. No,because they are far too busy getting their
faces on the telly. This is paying off for many of them as they’ve been asked
to appear on Strictly Come Dancing, Dancing on Ice and ironically Splash, live
from the Somerset Levels.
GONE PHISHING
The number of phishing e-mails sent out by fraudsters rocketed 47 per
cent in the last three months compared to the same period last year, HM Revenue
and Customs has revealed.
The taxman has warned taxpayers not to be caught out by the rise in
scammers targeting people via legitimate looking e-mails offering tax rebates
in return for bank account or credit card details.
The taxman said “Especially watch out for Emails offering tax rebates,
because there is no way we’d ever give anyone any money back”.
In the three month run-up to last Friday's tax return deadline,
customers reported 23,247 phishing e-mails to HMRC. Overall, more than 91,000
phishing e-mails were unveiled last year.
HMRC says anyone responding to this type of e-mail risks opening their
bank account to fraudsters and having their details sold on to other organised
criminal gangs.
Bogus e-mails claiming to be from the taxman have also recently been
circulated to employers containing zip file attachments or hyperlinks. These
should not be opened because they include a virus.
This is Money reported last year how a handful of businesses fell
victim to these types of malware scams after opening e-mails claiming to be
from the taxman, including a chain of bakeries which had £20k stolen by
fraudsters.Customers forwarding phishing e-mails to HMRC, the department was
last month able to close 178 websites which it found were the source – up from
65 in January 2013.
During 2013, HMRC closed down 1,476 websites sending these types of scam e-mails. Its action led to websites being closed down around the world, including in the USA, Russia and elsewhere.
A record-breaking 8.48million tax returns were filed online by last
week’s 31 January deadline, HMRC says.
Gareth Lloyd, head of digital security at HMRC, said: ‘HMRC never
contacts customers who are due a tax refund via e-mail – we always send a
letter through the post.
‘If you receive an e-mail claiming to be from HMRC which offers a tax
rebate, please send it to phishing@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk and then delete it
permanently.
‘We can, and do, close these websites down, and do all we can to ensure
taxpayers stay safe online by working with law enforcement agencies around the
world to target the criminals behind these scams.’
HMRC says scam e-mails often begin with sentences such as ‘we
have reviewed your tax return; according to our calculations of your last
year’s accounts a tax refund of XXXX is due.’
Legitimate tax rebate forms (P800s) from HMRC will contain a payment
order and will never ask for credit or debit card details.
Typical details requested in these scam e-mails include – name, address, date of birth, bank account number, sort code, credit card details, National Insurance number, passwords and mother’s maiden name.
As well as phishing scams, Jeff Prestridge from This is Money sister
title the Financial Mail on Sunday, has urged Google to crackdown on tax return
websites being allowed to top the rankings and tract custom when people could
do it for free with HMRC. In response Google said “Yeh, like we care”
One culprit is taxreturngateway.com. It charges fees of up to £1,000
for the filing of a tax return that if done through the official HMRC site
would cost nothing.
Google has continued to allow this copycat website to appear at the
head of searches for key words such as ‘tax return deadline’.
The result is that hundreds of people a week – maybe more – are using
this bogus website and are paying a processing fee as a result.
SOURCE:The Daily Mail.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2553813/Tax-rebate-phishing-e-mails-rocket-47-three-months.html#ixzz2suVTGVSj
LEGO
The new Lego movie has been criticised for being no more than a 2 hour advert for Lego. That isn’t true, it’s only 90 minutes. But a lot of movies are no more than very long adverts, including this coming summers big blockbusters Wonga, Cillit Cillit Bang Bang, and We Buy Any Cars Such As Lightning McQueen.com
SOCHI
The Sochi Winter Games are under way and the Russian Olympic village has been described as slightly better than a Gulag. The Russians dismissed this saying that the village is nothing like a Gulag “For a start the village doesn’t have quite as many sadistic guards as a Gulag, and the potatoes available on the village’s canteen are cooked”.
President Putin made a small speech at the opening ceremony. He said “The Olympic Torch will be kept lit using my body oil”. He didn’t need it his body oil because he didn’t go topless at the opening ceremony. Team GB beat the Russians team in the male curling event even though the Russian team were playing as though their lives depended on it. And if rumours are to be believed in how Putin deals with failures who embarrass Russia they are all now buried in shallow snow covered graves in one of the hills surrounding Sochi.
HAIRY?
As she was being carried along to the hotel no one recognized her and they were disbelieving when they were told “That’s Davina McColl” replying “No it isn’t it, because if that was Davina McColl she be mugging for the camera and making stupid face like Davina does all the time”.
She was later pictured with a hot drink and tweeted “That was hairy” Eh? Did we really want to know that she noticed she needed a bikini wax when she took her wet suit off and had it landscaped by the hotels beautician. No we didn’t.
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