Friday 1 May 2009

Friday 1st May 2009 – Just Pay the Money and Shutup

"I tell you what I'll do for you: nothing.  Mind you, I can't do it straightaway."

 

The more literary among you, thinking of a source for this piece of lunacy, are likely to plump for Lewis Carroll.  But only if you've had the good fortune not to meet the United States Government at home.  Perhaps I shouldn't be unfair: it's likely you could hear it from any government, any time.  Me, I'm hearing it from the American Government at the moment.  And like characters from Lewis Carroll, they're maddeningly nice about it.  "We're glad to have been able to help you", they gush, as the tears of frustration fight the trembling lip for facial priority, "is there anything else we can do?"

The American Government is plotting against me.  For reasons I can't quite fathom, but my be to do with the fact that it's a government, and therefore doesn't care, it refuses to listen to me unless I give it $300.  Of course, they've been threatening for months now to buy Chrysler, and last week, they managed to scrape together the three hundred dollars needed, so maybe I'm the only person in the country with any money left.  They've persuaded the workers to put their pension money into it too, so, at least, I'm not going to come off worst. (When I was a boy, it was considered very foolish to put your savings into the company you worked for, because if the company went bust, you not only lost your job, you lost your savings.)  Mind you, my $300 is real cash money.

I have reached the end of the road with my visa extension.  Either I send them $300 dollars, or the FBI follows me about for six months then chucks me out.  I've taken my number and stood in line for the last time: I've lost.  Of course they always intended for this to happen.  They knew I'd come round to their way of thinking.  They just had to get their people to smile and jolly me along till the idea got through my thick head.

 

I have, however, managed to open a Bank Account.  The difficulties encountered here may only have been a diversionary action by the government.  All that traipsing round the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service was just to exhaust me.  I went into the branch in the local supermarket, just on the off-chance, and it was all done in a moment. 

They did manage to put the wind up me, though.  I have been spending all this time trying to complete my W-7 and W-9 forms.  The lady in the supermarket told me that was wrong: what I needed was a W-8.  I have to say I panicked for a moment.  "Don't worry", she said, "We'll do that".

And so they did.  And, at this very moment, cash is winging it's way from the UK to my pocket.  Via, of course, any number of intermediaries, all of whom are going to put a little bit in theirs.

And I have, grudgingly, found another hero: step forward the Internal Revenue Service.  They were my last visit.  Every government office I've been in, men with guns took off my clothes and looked up my bottom.  I'd got so used to it, I had developed a 'going to see the government' outfit, which I could slip in and out of like a ten-dollar whore.  When I got to the IRS, what was there? Nothing!  I opened the door, and there was a nice young lady receptionist sitting at her computer.  Of course, she still gave me a number, but when I asked for the rest-room, she simply let me into the office, and left me to it.

Now, the only serious threats to the life of government workers that I ever encountered were my father's ritual pay-day threats to take a gun to the tax office, a process he seemed to find simpler than filling out a tax return.  But not for them the airport-style security of lesser wings of government: a simple smile was all they had for protection.

 

By the way, I don't think the quote is Lewis Carroll: I think it's Jonathan Miller.  It's from his TV adaptation of (I think) 'Alice in Wonderland' from back in the sixties sometime.  It sounds just a little too brutal to be actual Carroll.  But it should be the motto of governments everywhere.  What would it be in latin: nolle facere; or, more adventurously, non facis faciendum?

1 comment:

JOSEPH said...

In latin I suggest:

Merda tauri cerebrum vincit

might be more appropriate