Lucky me!

I’ve apparently won a big prize (a million dollars, no less) in a lottery. Which is nice, especially since I did not buy a ticket. The helpful email conveying these glad tidings continues thus…

CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Your fund is now deposited with ourPaying Bank and insured in your name. Due to mix up of some numbers andnames, we ask that you keep this award from public notice untill yourclaims has been processed and the money remitted to your account as thisis part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming of unwarrantedtaking advantage of this program by participants as it has happened inthe past.

All participants were selected through a computer ballotsystem drawn from 25,000 names from Asia, Australia, New Zealand,Europe, North and South America, Middle East and Africa .This programmeis sponsored by EUROPEAN UNION/BILL GATES and WORLD INTERNATIONALLOTTERY ORGANISATION TO PROMOTE and ENAHNCE the use of SOFT WARE IN THEGOBAL WORLD.we hope your lucky name will draw a bigger cash prize in thesubsequent programs. To begin your lottery claims , please contact yourclaims agent, MR GEORGE PRATT on Telephone number:0034-606-742-900or
email:santaluciaseguro@netscape.net orsantaluciamgt@netscape.net,with all your information provided that youare the user of this mail,either your country passport or any otherindentity.

Now my question is this: who would fall for such an obvious scam? Presumably people do — otherwise the spammers wouldn’t do it. You’d have thought that even a half-wit would be put off by the typos and grammatical mistakes. Weird.

Getting his goat

Er, surely this is a spoof?

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after he was caught having sex with the animal.

The goat’s owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

“We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together,” Mr Alifi said.

Thanks to James Miller for spotting it.

Tales from Securitania

Amazing account on Andrew Brown’s Blog of his recent experience in London.

OK, so I looked a bit rough. I haven’t cut my hair in six weeks and I was wearing black jeans, a lumberjack shirt, a North Face jacket, and a rucksack for my laptop. When I came out of the tube at Liverpool Street, I noticed two cops in the main exit from the tube, but I took, as I usually do, the side exit past the shops, where there were two more cops, one black, and one white. I just had time to think this was to reassure us when the black one stopped me. Would I mind being searched under section 44 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act?

It’s worth reading the entire post. It provides a deeply depressing insight into the cluelessness of New Labour’s national security state.

En passant… It also explains why I have stopped bringing my black laptop rucksack to London…