What's really amazing is that you only have to look at the originating email address to see that they're not from a Government department.
Unfortunately civic life in Britain is still based on a culture where you could trust most people especially those who represented some kind of authority. The people who grew up in that trust-based culture are now getting elderly and one of the effects of age is that the part of the brain that governs belief begins to degrade, making elderly folk more gullible. The internet puts those gullible people within reach of others who are a good deal more desperate and cunning and who don't play by the rules of trust, so we are still living with the consequences of that mix at the moment.
We don't have any understanding at all of how desperate it must be to be living and bringing up a family in a developing country; my colleague in Nigeria and my agent in Pakistan often tell me stories of their brushes with officialdom. In order to achieve most things we take for granted you've got to pay somebody. Education, driving licences, passports, births deaths and marriages, utility bills, local and state tax, you name it; somebody has to receive a "dash" or you are going nowhere in the queue. You live in fear of attack because of your wealth or your ethnic group, there is seldom any electricity, everybody cheats and short-changes you, in Nigeria just about the only aspect of business that works is banking, which is efficient and more secure than in Britain. So it's not surprising that people from developing countries find our systems a pushover.
As a footnote there's a phenomenon in Africa known as "sports age" whereby when you go to the passport office to get your child's first passport, you pay the officer to under-declare the age by a year or two, which gives your child a permanent advantage in school and sports. Consequently my colleague's daughter aged 15 can often find herself playing sports gainst a girl aged 16 or 17 who is bigger and stronger.
). If they really are young and nubile just tell them you are a bit busy.....and send them my way.
