From Another Planet?

June 3rd 2006

The recent news in all the national dailies that the Inland Revenue are wasting more than a £1 million pounds in tax credits every year doesn’t come as a surprise to me after a recent telephone conversation I had with another Government department.

The Ministry of Pensions, or whatever name they’re calling themselves at the moment, sent me a circular telling me that I may be entitled to extra old age pension benefits, giving me a number to call. I rang them, but not with any great hope that the outcome would be beneficial to the Ravenscroft family purse. The woman on the other end told me that I would have to answer various questions and if the answers to the questions were favourable I might qualify.

The questions were what you would expect: Are you a homeowner?; Do you have any income other that your pension; Are you British: et cetera et cetera. In other words questions to which they already knew the answers if they’d only trouble themselves to look them up. Then, after about ten very boring minutes, when we’d moved from my personal details and onto The Trouble’s, the woman asked: “Does your wife come from another country?”

”No,” I replied. Then, seeking to inject a little light relief into the proceedings, I said: “From another planet maybe……”

There was a long pause, then: “From another planet?”

“Yes.”

Another long pause. “But not from another country?”

”Well I’m not sure. Possibly. Maybe the planet she’s from is more advanced than  Earth and they don’t have countries, maybe they did have countries at one time but they’re all one country now – you know, like the European Economic Community but spread worldwide.”

There was an even longer pause before the woman said: “I think we’ll put that question on one side for a while. Come back to it later.

In the event we didn’t go back to it because a few questions and answers later she decided that there wasn’t any point in continuing  because taking into consideration  the answers I’d given so far it would be most unlikely if I did indeed qualify for extra pension benefits.

So, with staff off this calibre cluttering up the system is it any wonder that the Inland Revenue are wasting £1 billion pounds a year? I’m surprised it isn’t ten billion.

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Razzamatazz

Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things. Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.

3 thoughts on “From Another Planet?”

  1. your problem there old bean, was that they don’t have the same sense of humour in dehli as we do. even if they have been promoted to the call centre and no longer get whipped whilst making shiny new boots for mr beckham!
    heaven forbid you should actually get them to look up your details and send the results to you. you should know that any government work has to be carried out by ourselves these days, and at our own expense!
    lazy bunch of bastards. (sorry, think i have a typing form of turrettes!)

  3. Men are from Mars n women from Venus. ‘Cept Little Caz, who’s from Fulham. Which amounts to the same thing really. The Dragon got a letter like that and rang. They told her she was gettin’ too much. Made my day…week…oh allright then, year.

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