the clear English award...

does not go this year to HM Revenue & Customs (that's the tax authorities here in the UK) for their "How to fill in your Short Tax Return" guide, which had my head spinning whilst staring at one paragraph in particular.

(Note: the "did you start" in the heading refers to when it was that I started to be self-employed - I started in November 2007 and therefore this paragraph applies to me; the british tax year runs from 6 April to 5 April and the tax return I'm having to complete now is for the year to 5 April 2010.)

here's what they say - clear as mud...

Did you start between 6 April 2007 and 5 April 2008?

If you made up your first books to a date before 5 April 2009, put in boxes 3.7 to 3.10 (or 3.11) the figures for the year beginning on the day after your last end of year date, and ending on the end of year date between 6 April 2009 and 5 April 2010.

If you made up your first books to a date after 5 April 2009, you cannot use this form.

I did eventually manage to understand what I'm supposed to do (I think) but I could have had more hair left on my head if they'd have actually written this thing in English in the first place.

so fed up with all this "93% won't" nonsense!

once again I get an email supporting a good cause but absolutely doing my head in with the emotional blackmail that's added in: 93% of people won't forward this... will you be one of those who... yada yada

if only they didn't include this rubbish, I might have actually read the whole thing, and who knows, I might even have chosen to forward the email. but I'm afraid I get so annoyed when I see these things that I just press Delete.

maybe this is why 93% won't forward it? because 93% are fed up to the back teeth with the amount of emotional blackmail they get from their friends on the email? (not to mention all those facebook status update things.)

how about a slightly more respectful approach? how about emailing and saying: you know, there's this cause which I feel is important, I wonder if you'd like to support it to by forwarding the email to others? I wonder what percentage of people would rise to that...

come back logic, all is forgiven

Again and again I see this stuff in blogs and in replies to blogs: people saying there's no such thing as absolute truth, there's what's true for you and what's true for me... and I find myself imagining this scene:

I'm in the supermarket, standing in the milk aisle, looking at the milk. I can see blue top milk and green top milk, I can see two-pint containers and four-pint containers and one-pint containers of milk.

A man standing next to me says: hey, you want to say it's milk - that's cool. if that's what makes you happy, you go on thinking it's milk. that's your truth. me - I see it as strawberry ice cream. that's my truth.

Another guy comes along and says: that's fine, that's your truth, as long as it makes you happy... to me this is the Eiffel Tower.

I want to know what drugs everybody has been taking.

And I sure hope what I bought in that 4-pint container this afternoon doesn't turn out to be strawberry ice cream, because it won't go that well with my muesli in the morning.