Monday, July 05, 2010

Tax cheats have less variation in hairstyles than benefit cheats

On Radio 4's The Now Show, Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis recently suggested (series 31 episode 3) that:
"To the British, defrauding the DSS is a crime; defrauding HMRC is more of a sport."
To highlight the difference in approach they referenced the two separate online forms at Direct.gov.uk
"The tax evasion hotline information report form and the 'report a benefit thief online form".
And they then compared aspects of the two forms:
"When grassing up the suspected villain, the tax fraud form asks you to provide approximate age, national insurance number and brief description of the person. The benefit fraud form asks you for: ethnic group, their build, their eye colour, eye wear, hair colour, hair type. It then gives you a separate menu of hair type options which include: afro, bald, dirty, dreadlocks, greasy, long, mohican, pony tail. All the classic hairstyles of the potentially criminal. And, brilliantly, 'wig'. That's right, if you're living next door to a toupee'd ethnic with glasses, get online now."

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