Call me - and pay up!

Now being a foolish old wooden-top and not at the exalted heights of shiny-bummed TDC or anything (!), what do I know about the law?

But I DO watch television.

Not generally rubbish day-time quiz shows admittedly, but I do watch telly. So when I read, and keep reading about TV companies ripping off members of the public, by getting the fools to call in to competition 'phone lines which have already closed, wickle alarm bells start ringing. If the stories are true, these companies are deliberately misleading the public (that their silly competitions are still running and that a winner hasn't yet been picked) and whilst doing so, gaining money for themselves (/the company). Now I'm no great expert on company liabilities and overlaps with the Trades Description Act, Ofcom, ICSTIS or anything like that, but aren't they committing a Fraud?

Look - under the Fraud Act 2006, "(1) A person is guilty of fraud if he is in breach of any of the sections listed in subsection (2)....

(2) Fraud by False Representation:

1. A person is in breach of this section if he:

(a) dishonestly makes a false representation, and
(b) intends, by making the representation—

(i) to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii) to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.
A representation is false if—
(a) it is untrue or misleading, and
(b) the person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue or misleading.

Now, as I say, I am but a mere woodentop, but doesn't it look like these guys in the TV companies are breaking the new law? I expect questions to be asked in the House.

Wee confession

Okay, it's time I came out. I've been blagging it for months now, pretending I was something I'm not; pretending I knew things I clearly didn't. I've tried looking it up, researching in the background so that I wasn't embarrassed talking "professionally" about things about which I knew - exactly - nip.

So exactly what the hell are the "basket of 10" crimes from the British Crime Survey? I spent hours online the other day trying to find this out. I looked up the obvious - looked at the MPS's, Counties' and Home Office's web-sites and all to no avail. I've Googled the obvious links and am now. Totally. Frustrated.

Answers crayoned in a pocket-book please at the address below (Comments).
PC "Frustrated" Bitseach.

Boy, I thought WE were crap!

Blimey, the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy are starting to make the Home Office and Mr Blair look GOOD!

Ooh, we won't let them publish what happened. No, we WILL. Maybe. I dunno. No, they can bugger orf, get their commissions, retire and THEN make money out of their stories like it's always been done (at least by the ruling classes!).

I got my old Latin mistress to translate a good Army expression that often springs into my mind, usually on some crap "Aid" (is there any other sort?). Unfortunately I then immediately forgot the second part and had to look it up, so apologies if the declension (or whatever) is wrong: "Festinate et exspectate!" (tr: "hurry up and wait!"). From the queue for "operational feeding" (/"poisoning") to deployment. Looks like the military is similarly inept, on recent evidence!

However, the better one for this publishing permission débacle would be "On the bus! Off the bus!". This must, of course, be translated into all languages, for fairness. So Latin - or even pig-Latin - translations welcome so that the Home Office and MOD can adopt their new motto - completely fair to everyone as nobody, from ethnic minority language speakers, to dyslexics, to even moderately well-educated English natives can read Latin these days.

[as I get older I find myself becoming less like Colonel Pickering and MUCH more like Henry Higgins - I used to treat flowergirls as ladies, but now I treat ladies as flowergirls!]

More lions led by donkeys? Now, where was that old Latin Grammar?

[Tee hee!]