'Patricia Hewitt' donates £6m to charity

In case you were wondering why your granny couldn't get a hip replacement back in 2006, when Patricia Hewitt was Secretary of State for Health, we reckon we might have discovered where the NHS non-urgent surgery budget ended up: From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] Posted At: 09 …

[Darren B]

That postal address looks suspect to me

I am sure there is no SE37 post code in London or the UK.

Think you might want to check up with the post office first.

[Stuart Castle]

ROFL

" I personally made an over estimation"

So unlike any current member of the government to get their estimates wrong..

:D

[TrishaD]

Oh, Surely Not

I'm sorry but those enterprising Lagos types have gone too far this time....

I'll happily believe that I have an apparently endless supply of long lost cousins living in Nigeria and happy to make me rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

I'm totally up for buying elixirs on line that will at the same time enlarge my breasts and equip me with an unfeasibly large penis (though I'm really none to sure which would be more appropriate in my own case)

And I'm sure that cutprice gemstones constitute a wise investment.

But a serving government minister who's willing to have their snout prised out of the trough and actually give money away?

They're having a laugh, innit?

[The Gritter]

More scam baiter merriment

Check out http://www.ebolamonkeyman.com/

[Secretgeek]

Gorgon Brown's at it too.

I got a similar email from Gordie telling me that due to his secret financial management techniques he was going to scrap the 10p tax rate just for me! All i had to do was pay a little bit more in 37 other taxes to be eligible for this fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime offer.

Oh, hang on a minute....that's not right.

[Chris Hunt]

She's my local MP...

... but she didn't write back when I sent her a letter. Clearly too busy sending emails to her pals!

[Neil Hoskins]

Ironic

I see the irony here, because, IIRC, when she was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, she poo-pooed continuous lobbying to clamp down on spam before it was too late, earning her the contempt of anybody who knew anything about the Interwebs.

[Anonymous Coward]

www.419eater.com

I actually got your contact info via your country's national directory

yes... you aren't in our country are you....

[Alex]

it could be genuine!

...as she now works at BT, perhaps its come from the Phorm PR Dept!

[Secretgeek]

'I actually got your contact info....

...through an analysis of your web browsing....'

Nuff said.

[John Imrie]

O come on

This can't be genuine.

The English and understanding of the brief is far to god for an MP

[Matt Thornton]

national directory

"I actually got your contact info via your country's national directory" - have the ID cards been released then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Employ the man/woman/schoolkid.

Writes better and clearer English than many Government and lawyer types.

nuff said.

yours

Patrician Knewitt

[/etc]

Even John Prescott ...

"Not a bad effort by the Lads from Lagos, who appear to have almost got a long-overdue grip on the English language."

"Almost" is about right.

Here are just a few of the most egregiously obvious howlers:

"... which will be supervised [insert: by my] Attorney ..." [whoever he or she is]

"... the [sc. an] individual in Australia ..." [whichever "individual" that might be]

"... as the fund are [sc. is] getting ..."

"... Kindly relent [sc. refrain] from replying ..."

There must be a score of other slips and other constructions that are simply not idiomatic, in that email, such that any native speaker of English who's more than half awake ought to be suspicious. Even members of the government, with the possible exception of John Prescott, don't write this badly. Mind you, the sheer implausibility of the proposed scenario almost outweighs the language as a suspicion-raiser.

Thanks for posting it -- it gave me a good laugh.

[Anonymous Coward]

And what about the email address?

Is the British Government too tight to issue email addresses that their MPs have to sign up to Yahoo! Hong Kong?

Oh, and Darren B - not only is "SE37" made up, but the rest of the postcode is invalid (the standard format is digit followed by 2 alpha characters)

Still, good effort though. I'm sure one day they'll realise that MPs just don't write clearly and legibly and will be able to save effort by writing rubbish.

[Guy]

Ahh!

So thats where MPs' expenses have been channelled, They have been saving them up, in order to do good deeds in foreign countries. how short sighted of us to think they were lining their own pockets!

[Bob Holness]

Looming towers

I say good on hon_patriciahewitt for this amazing feat, a stack of 6,300,000 Great Britain Pound coins would be, by my fag-packet calculations, about 20km tall – not sure I’ve seen one of those looming over Whitehall recently.

PS: My SI units are a bit rusty, just how big is one standard orphanage home nowadays?

[Pyros]

Amusing

Nice, some globalization of the ol' 419er. Happy to see it immigrate out of Nigeria--the classic money laundering scheme was getting old these days.

I, of course, am waiting on one from Curious George Dubya Bush--especially when he becomes a lame duck* as per the election!

(For the non-educated... Lame Duck: US gov. slang for end-of-term President, as the newly elected doesn't get sworn in until the end of the year. Hence, the rush to "consolidate" their "achievements" before they get shown the gates of the White House by the Secret Service on New Year's.)

Paris, because there's still places some DECENT people still won't go these days...

[StillNoCouch]

I thought that email address looked familiar !

That hose-bag hounded me for months on Yahoo-Personals !

I know, I know -- I'll go back to hiding under my desk now.

[Lyndon Barry]

Wouldn't put it past her

since I used to work under her (Fnar)

And if you saw the amount of money that the Dti & UKTI frittered away, you'd know why tax is high in the UK and why I live in the UAE now.

(Over a 100 quid apiece for pens, 20 quid for "armadillo mousemats" and the like.... and the abortion that was the name change from DTI to Dippy (DPEI)

Glad I left when I did

[Chris Hunt]

There's just one flaw in this scheme...

Patricia Hewitt used to work for Andersens. Then she went on to become a NuLab Minister. And we're asked to believe she brought something in 6 million quid UNDER budget?

Not even Paris would fall for that one!

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh

Whadya mean no SE37, it's between SE36 (Sevenoaks) and SE32 (Dartford).

Personally I'm considering moving to SW116 (Brighton) after a mate of mine moved to NW387 (Wigan).

[Anonymous Coward]

heh

just looks like a standard government IT contract rfi

[Slaine]

A timely warning

Nasty, nasty, nasty. This one is very nearly in English, certainly of a higher quality command over the mother-tongue than many residents and thus considerably more plausible than earlier scam attempts. Further, of course, it is plausible in content since it is so very easy to believe that politicians are unscupulous thieving barstools. However, we are an island, there are no countries around us.

Note to self... Must remember to read my emails more carefully before subscribing to anything with the word "million" in it.

[Duckorange]

As a freelance writer...

...I've always offered to turn the scammers' copy into plain English in return for a percentage. Strangely, nobody's ever taken up my offer.

[Doug]

is this the same ..

Is this the same 'Patricia Hewitt' that visits her constituents in an anti-stab jacket .. :)

[Dalen]

I wonder...

...if this can be traced to a particular IT company and a particular Systems & Networks expert named Simon, who was at that time low on beer money?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a coincidence

Back about 5 or 6 years ago Patricia Hewitt's constituency office moved in to a large unlovely building in Leicester, appropriately enough the previous occupant was "The Bankrupt Warehouse" :-)

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=%22bankrupt+warehouse%22+&ie=UTF8&ll=52.643954,-1.147154&spn=0.000727,0.001931&t=h&z=19

It's just been demolished for some regen project.

Perhaps she's been cashing in her property investments?

[John]

No sympathy

If people actually believe this, and other such, twonk. They deserve to lose their money and IP.