Mind your manners

I am teaching my children to be polite, to say please and thank you and generally become nice little citizens. But it's difficult in this big rude old world. Sometimes H7 and R5 must think I'm nuts.

Yesterday I had a bill from HM Revenue and Customs for my National Insurance contributions now that I am self-employed. It asks me nicely to quote my NI number, should I need to contact them, and to please telephone them if I am no longer self-employed.

But nowhere does it ask nicely to be paid.

'This bill is now due for payment' it states.

Well obviously. Why else would you have sent it to me?

'NON PAYMENT CAN AFFECT ENTITLEMENT TO CONTRIBUTORY BENEFITS AND TO A STATE PENSION'

Dear HM Revenue and Customs: Please don't shout.

Why not write: 'Please pay this bill as soon as possible'? Why threaten me? Why immediately get my back up by assuming that I'm not going to pay and that you'll have to shout at me. Why preempt that by shouting at me first?

It's like those surveys which ask you to choose a personality that fits a particular company's persona. Hovis, for example is a small boy from Yorkshire with grubby knees, a 1950s haircut and a flat cap.

HM Customs and Revenue is a portly British man in his fifties, wearing a suit, a too-tight tie and carrying a briefcase. His face is permanently red from shouting at everyone, he is always grumpy and he's about to have a cardiac arrest. His long-suffering wife is having an affair with the milkman and always makes her husband eat his sprouts before he can have any pudding.

(But I am going to pay him. Even if he is rude.)