Posted: Fri 11 April, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts |
I’m quite amazed by the scale of the scam in this story, about a couple who claimed benefits for no less than sixteen children – all while living in what’s described as a “one-room property”. I don’t know if that means ‘one bedroom’ or was just a unit in a hostel, or somesuch, but either way it’s awesome to be claiming to have eighteen people living in that property.
After all, I assume that they were also claiming some kind of housing benefit for living in that property – so any decent piece of joined-up work would enable the Tax Credits people, or the Benefits Agency (or whatever the hell it’s called this week) to possibly think that the claim might be just a weeny bit fraudulent.
How were they able to claim for so many children? Because the Tax Credits Agency doesn’t (or, one hopes, didn’t) require parents to provide a birth certificate as proof that the children existed.
It’s the final paragraph of the story that drives me crackers, though.
After the case Sarah Bamford, of HM Revenue and Customs, said: “This case is the result of many months of intense and thorough work by a dedicated team of tax credit investigation officers, determined to see that these fraudsters were brought to justice.”
© BBC News website 2008
If the system had been in place initially, there’d have been no sodding need for the investigation, because they wouldn’t have been able to make such a massive fraudulent claim at all. Fucking jobsworth self-serving HMRC doublespeak dickwads.
Posted: Fri 11 April, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Charm School |
You’ve got to love it when a girl asks for “a cab, innit?” and receives a display cabinet rather than the taxi she was expecting…
Posted: Fri 11 April, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Work-related |
Yet again, my impression of Parasol has taken a downturn. Which in itself is pretty impressive, because my impression of them wasn’t all that good to start with.
First of all (and this is going back a bit) I’ve always felt that I was getting over-charged, and not coming out each month with as much money as I should’ve been. Parasol have always strenuously denied this, telling me I was getting all the benefits of a professional umbrella company. (Stop laughing, you at the back) However, I recently received a notification from HMCE that in the 2006/7 tax year, I’d overpaid £1800 of tax – in other words, Parasol had screwed things up to the tune of £150 per month. I’m about 95% certain that they’ve done the same thing this year, too.
Wednesday, though, topped it off.
At 3.30, I got an email from them.
With effect from Monday 21st April 2008, your Parasol admin deduction will be revised to £87.95 (from £79.95) per month. This small increase has been introduced to allow us to continue to provide our unrivalled and market leading services along with improvements to insurance cover.
At 3.45 I got another email from them.
With effect from Monday 21st April 2008, your Parasol admin deduction will be revised to £95.50 per month. This small increase has been introduced to allow us to continue to provide our unrivalled and market leading services along with improvements to insurance cover.
Not bad – a 20% price increase in less than 30 minutes.
There was another communique at about 5pm effectively saying “Ooops, the first one was the correct price” – but all the same, it’s not exactly the most impressive way of doing things, is it?
Thank Christ I’ll be leaving them in a couple of weeks, once the business bank account is set up. Simply changing to letting the accountant do my payroll instead of Parasol is going to save me something like £50 per month. That’s proper money, that is.