Last week three clients overcharged by their utility providers hit the news. The first was a North London woman whose water bill for her a bedroom flat was £6,600; the second was a pub owner who was charged £37,000 for his water bill; and the unbeatable record belongs to a Cambridge woman who was charged £90m for her electricity bill.

Nobody takes such huge numbers seriously, and we realise they are errors. We all know that errors do happen and cannot be avoided completely. However, if utility billing systems cannot detect such outrages errors, it is most likely that they don’t detect smaller errors as well. That is, all of us are likely to be overcharged regularly.

Will you know if your electricity bill, water charge, or bank fees are off by 20 pounds? I would not even be surprised to discover that some companies deliberately add a few pounds to every single bill they send. How would we be able to tell?

These huge errors, as ridiculous as they may be, highlight a fundamental problem we all have. Utility companies and service providers can charge whatever they want, and we, customers, will never know. How do you deal with it?

In the middle of a gynaecologist's conference, an English and a French gynaecologist are discussing various interesting cases they have recently treated.

French gynaecologist:
"Only last week, zer was zis woman ooh came to see me, and 'er cleetoris.. et was like a melon".

English gynaecologist:

"Don't be absurd my good man, it could not possibly have been that big, the poor woman wouldn't have been able to walk if it was".

French gynaecologist:
"O la la, you eengleesh, zer you go again, always talkeeng about ze size... I was talkeeng about ze taste..

A good thing that came out of the hike in food prices is that the EU has agreed to ditch the law controlling the curvature of the cucumbers. If you were not aware, until now it was illegal to sell bent cucumbers.

My imagination is working overtime again to try and figure out who put this law in place, and what was going through his or her mind at the time. So the good news is we can now all choose our cucumbers the way we like them.

Let’s not let the EU take away our most fundamental liberties, and well done to the Irish voters.

1. Magna Carta, and the writ of Habeas Corpus, allowing appeal against unlawful imprisonment
2. Hanged, drawn and quartered
3. Apples falling from trees and apple pies (not originally English, but in the local restaurant they serve the very best apple pie ever)
4. Discovering America (OK, not really English but they were not very far behind)
5. Killing natives for not being civilised wherever they were found
6. Sending the best of breed to Australia and giving them independent, thus creating one of the best countries in the world
7. Losing America to the Americans, so they could help us in WWII
8. The first time machine (London underground is the only known creation in which time can stop or even go backwards)
9. Cancellation of the Habeas Corpus for 42 days
10. Privatisation of everything, thus raising generations of governments that don’t know what financial accountability means (or any other accountability).

I hate spams. I hate identity thefts. I am not yet sure how this scam works, but here is what I got today in private bcuk message from captscottduke. How many of you got it ??

I would like to apply through this medium for your co-operation I know my mail to you should be surprising but it\'s not a mistake because I believe that I could confide in you on this business deal which would be highly beneficial to both of us, if you would not disappoint me at the conclusion of this deal. The main reason why I am contacting you today is to seek your assistance but firstly let me introduce myself before proceeding.

I am Captain Duke Scott, a US MARINE OFFICER presently working in Iraq. On 24Th Nov 2007 my troops and I were alerted on the need of some reconstruction works in Haifa Street, a long thoroughfare of high-rise buildings Built and occupied by Saddam Hussein when he was alive here in Baghdad. Immediately we proceeded to the site and as we commence work, we discovered an underground bunker in one of the buildings. On the process of our investigation to the links of the bunkers, we discovered one box safely hidden and sealed. I took the boxes to my camp and forced it open to find out the contents, when I opened the Box I was very astonished to see a full load of American Dollars. The same night I took my time to count the amount, the box contained $24 Million us dollars. Honestly, nobody knows about this till now.

I have airlift the Consignment boxes out of Iraq since last month through the help of a Senior United Nation Diplomat . Presently my duty post has been changed from Hafiz to Muqtada al-Sadr. Actually I did not disclose the contents of the consignment Box to the Diplomat. I told the Diplomat that the Consignment metallic Box Contents some important documented and precious Items , I told him that he should airlift it out of Iraq for me since I am still on duty here and I made him to understand that I will send a friend to contact him for the collection of the boxes.

Since I am still on my duty here in Iraq, I can\'t leave my duty to travel at the moment, so I need your cooperation in other to receive the consignment boxes from the diplomat on my behalf. Please I want you to provide me with your postal address, telephone E-mail, full name in your reply. If you are going to be honest with me then we can split the total sum into two, 50% for both of us. You may be aware that Gen. David Petraeus, the four-star general who led our troops in Iraq for the past years, has be nominated by President Bush to be the next commander of U.S. Central Command for the purpose of troops cut here in Iraq, so we will soon be back home.

Please do not disclose this transaction to anybody as to protect this money between us, I contacted you with hope that you will understand and cooperate with me in this transaction. My new duty post in Muqtada al-Sadr is Baghdad stronghold of Iraq\'s biggest Shiite militia; it is a hot Zone 24hrs as you can see on television and news. I am happy that the consignment is secured out of Iraq by United Nation Diplomat sealed and lock with a code, the code of the boxes are with me, I will give you the code to open the consignment box when the diplomat deliver the consignment to you. Please Remember that the Senior Diplomat that helped me to airlift this box does not know the real contents of the box is cash.

I will give you the contact email and telephone number of the diplomat to contact him as my friend that I told will come for the claim of the box as soon as you prove your honest cooperation with me. I wait for your urgent reply. Email me to my private email address captscottduke21@ozu.es

Best Regards

Captain Duke Scott
---

Spending a weekend in Spain reminded me of a great difference between the two cultures. In Spanish restaurants the house wine is the signature of the restaurant, it’s cheap, it’s very good, and is the way restaurants attract people and advertise themselves. In the UK, on the other hand, the house wine is normally the cheapest wine the house could find, and quite often the mixed leftovers from the night before. Another interesting difference is that while in Spain beer is served in small glasses, in England its in buckets.

Is it merely a curiosity, and what does it tell us about these two so different cultures?

At last, giraffe milk has been pronounced Kosher by orthodox Jews. If you are not familiar with the term, Kosher is to the Jews what Halal is to the Muslims. That is, a set of biblical rules that define what a Jewish person is allowed to eat.

So now I am planning to establish the first dairy giraffe farm in the UK. Offer for investment are welcome.

"Automated phone system should be brought in to report crimes. This would save money and ease pressure on the police."

In a time when violent crime sores, the question should be how to fight crime effectively, and not how to cut cost. After all, if cutting cost is what we want we should have no problem at all, just get the police off our streets and let citizens defend themselves. Then to justify the money that goes to the legal system, we can arrest all those citizens who harm criminals while trying to protect themselves. Alternatively, we can get rid of the legal system too. After all, if we can’t put in jails those sent there by the legal system, why bother at all?

Another option may be to privatise the police force. This seems to work very well in many third world countries. All you need to do is pay your own policemen and they will make sure you are protected. I just wonder if the government will agree to make it tax deductible, after all we will save government a great deal of money by not spending money on the police force.

On the other hand, why don’t we get rid of the government and use the money wasted on politician to pay the police. At least I know what the role of the police is, something I can’t confidently say about the government any more.

Let’s have no illusion that we, the citizens of the UK, don’t have any privacy. Our details are continuously captured by numerous computers every time we go on-line; when we send our kids to school; when we pay a bill, or fill in a form.

Whenever we carry our mobile, a huge network is monitoring our location at any given moment. Our love to be in touch is us giving up our privacy voluntarily.

But even if you are among the few who don’t carry a mobile, thousand of CCTV cameras capture you image every day, and new face recognition technologies are being developed at this very moment to link those camera images into the huge databases that will know even more about you and your movements.

Despite claims to the contrary, all this information is being collected, analysed and easily distributed to almost everyone who feels they need it and ready to pay for it.

In times when government agencies and financial institutions seem to have made into a habit losing computers with our unprotected data, not much has been done to protect us or compensate us when our identity is stolen and used.

In times when England has become the European capital of identity fraud, not many laws have been put in place to protect the usage of our data. On the contrary, the terrorist act has given everyone with an official title the right to sit with binoculars outside our driveways, and search through our rubbish bins.

We, the citizens of the UK seem to be losing on both fronts. First, we lost our privacy. Then, the private information that can be use to identify us confidently, in a way that will prevent identity theft and frauds, is not used for this purpose either. Just another policy that achieves the opposite of what it should.

16 weapons, including knives, claw hammer, were seized by police from a teenage gang on a bus. Enough with gang crime! Zero tolerance is the only way to clear our street of this type of crime, and I truly hope that this time the will be will get the punishments they deserve – at least an hour detention after school, and maybe even send a note to their parents.