'Ich bin ein storyteller', says UK taxman

Ich Bin Ein Plonker!

Easy mistake to make, it must be quite hard to tell the difference between German Fairy Stories and UK Tax Laws.

Won't somebody think of the children!!

Sitting there, excitedly waiting for storytime, glass of milk and bowl of sauerkraut in hand....

ich bin confused

"HMRC's thrice-yearly "Employer Bulletin" ... The CD is updated and mailed out twice per year."

LE QUOI?!

Kanst du mir helfen bitte? your ingerlish ist sehr merde

But think of the children ...

But think of the children who instead of getting some nice story time to send them to sleep instead get tax software!

Minor Shit Happens

Not exactly "OMG Gov.uk screws up again" is it?

Whilst I remain 100% opposed to the Stasi database, this is a mistake by a third party that affected a miniscule amount of recipients.

Come on, there are more important issues than this.

And before anyone suggests it, HMRC never sends any personal or corporate specific info electronically or on disk, so 'No, this is not an example of future mega foul-ups"

Mind you, the next HMRC laptop or USB Flash Drive loss will be a different story.

Major Shit Happens

@ Sergie Kaponitovicz: "mistake by a third party"

Yeah, it's not like vast parts of the British state apparatus and the ID and Stasi databases aren't run by third parties is it?

Oh wait...

mean while in Germany

"Ich bin ein Register"

Is reporting that German Copyright Lawyers are preparing a case against the pirates known as HMRC.

"prepare for boarding, me young buckaroos"

Obviously, it was a mistake.

That CD was presumably intended to have the personal details of half a million random taxpayers. But it got lost on the train on the way to the CD pressers, so they had to make do with a story or two.

Ja bitte

Könnte ich eine deutschsprachige Kinder-CD wenden Sie sich bitte?

YAWN - is this IT?

YAWN - is there nothing more serious to talk about....

So these guys produce some wrong disks..what 100 out of a million? Big Deal, but bravo Chris for making a 'berg' out of a 'molehaufen'

brrr...cold out here, back into my shell..

FACT

Now's the chance to report HMRC to FACT (federation against copyright theft), not the German lawyers.

It doesn't matter what your excuse is, if you distribute stuff without permission, you're guilty. Perhaps they can get a huge fine out of HMRC, enough to cover everyone's taxes? It seems like a good idea, perhaps we can then fight the winner and be rid of both forever?

Neil

@ Ex-IT

>Easy mistake to make, it must be quite hard to

> tell the difference between German Fairy Stories and UK Tax Laws.

German fairly tales usually have a moral element.

@The Mole

"But think of the children who instead of getting some nice story time to send them to sleep instead get tax software!"

It's OK, this is effectively a fail-safe event. If you've ever had to run even a small payroll, not to mention a payroll year end, you will know that the tax stuff will almost certainly get them off to sleep even faster than the stories would have done. God it's tedious...

not toooo bad

Like it. Worth a little laugh. Now something totally different and far more interesting ...

@Chris Williams

"All ist klar?"

that would be "Ist Alles klar?"