Tickets for my Hudddrsfield gig, on Friday 13th July, can be got here.
The three of us (as in The young’uns) are on a fax finding mission. We have spent the day trying to locate a fax machine. Why? You might ask. Then again, you might not, but for the purposes of fleshing out this blog beyond one sentence, let’s work on the assumption that you’re curious to know.
We’ve got a couple of days off from gigging, and so bereft were we by the notion of being apart, that we’ve manufactured a cunning plan in order to allow us to spend even more time together. Obviously we needed an excuse to placate our loved ones who were expecting us at home, so we’ve told them that unfortunately something important has come up, meaning that we’ll have to spend more time away. We told them that we’ve been COMMISSIONED to present a Dave Gorman style documentary where a British folk band go on a crazy adventure to find as many fax machines in one week as they can. Obviously this isn’t true. Sorry if I got your hopes up there, and you were salivating at the prospect of watching us traverse cities in search of out-dated communication devices. It was just an excuse to spend more time together, and the fax machine based reality TV show alibi was the first thing we thought of.
In reality, the three of us were always scheduled to be together this week, as we’re currently doing performances in schools; it’s our cynical attempt to build a future audience, cleverly disguised as a gesture of altruism. Our hunt for a fax machine is purely utilitarian, rather than a thrill-seeking exercise. It’s all thanks to the Canada Revenues Agency, who, for some incomprehensible reason, refuse to communicate through email, insisting instead on fax.
The Canada Revenue Agency obviously go by the acronym CRA, although, sticking a P on the end of that would provide a much more accurate description, as our dealings with them have been completely farcical. Incidentally, to the best of my knowledge, there isn’t an existing word in the English language that describes the act of insulting an organisation through bastardising the company’s acronym. I think a good word for this could be acronymony (a merging of acronym with acrimony). I’d appreciate it if you’d further the cause to get my word added to the dictionary by simply using this term the next time you find yourself insulting an organisation through their acronym, which I’m assuming you all do probably about once a week.
Trying to locate a fax machine that we can use is proving very difficult, primarily because it’s no longer the 1980s, but try explaining this to the Canada Revenue Agency. They insist that a fax machine is the only way we can send our documents to them. When we suggested that maybe we could use email, there was a long pause before we were placed on hold by a confused and panicky lady who said they’d try and speak to someone higher up. We were then put on hold for half an hour, listening to a mix of Nik Kershaw, Jason Donovan and T’Pau. Eventually they came back to the phone and told us that there was no one who could answer our enquiry right now because they were out of the office,, but not to worry, as they’d get someone to get back to us ASAP, if we could just leave them with our pager number.
Michael has just returned to the van after a trip to the store Office Outlet. They said that they would be happy to send the documents to the CRA as a fax. It turned out that the reason they’d be happy about this is because they were planning on charging us £62 for the privilege. The acronim for Office Outlet is OO, which is the sound that people make whenever someone in one of their stores tells you how much it will cost to send a fax. Partly because of the ridiculously hefty price, and partly due to the visceral thrill that can only be got from a stimulating fax machine hunt, Michael decided to forgo Office Outlet’s offer, and so the search continues.
The whole thing is a pointless exercise anyway, as we don’t even technically have to pay any tax to the Canadian Government, but we still have to fill out a tax waver. In fact, we have to fill out four tax wavers, because they insist that we need three individual tax wavers and then one joint waver as the Young’uns. Then on top of that we need to fill out four tax returns, again, three individual and one for the band, even though there isn’t any tax to be paid. So that’s eight lengthy and painfully detailed Canadian tax documents we have to complete, just to simply state that we don’t owe the Canadian government any tax. And all eight of these documents apparently have to be sent via the medium of fax.
The Canada Revenue Agency clearly didn’t get the memo that tax doesn’t have to be taxing, and nor does it have to be faxing. Presumably the reason they didn’t get the memo is because it wasn’t sent by fax. Or maybe this is all a clever ploy from the CRA: to make the process of not paying tax so laboured and frustrating that you end up just saying, “sod it,” and paying them the bloody tax anyway, just for an easy life.
I don’t feel worried about slagging off the Canada Revenue Agency, as there’s no chance of them ever reading this, given that it requires someone at the tax office having access to the Internet.
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The CRA, eh! Bureaucracy at its best!