Peter Rhodes: The slums of the future

HERE'S an old email scam I haven't seen for years. Allegedly from the taxman, it begins: "We have received your tax calculation for first six months of 2015 which shows you due a tax repayment of 162.18 GBP." It makes no mention of your name (doesn't that strike you as odd?) but works by appealing to our greed and the chance of getting something for nothing. Don't be greedy. Don't be dim.

I DARE say many of you are as confused as the reader who asks what IS, ISIS, ISIL and Daesh all stand for, and why the BBC refers to "the so-called Islamic State." All these initials are variations on Islamic State in Syria and the Levant, apart from Daesh which apparently includes an element of mockery best understood by Arabic speakers. The BBC uses "so-called" on the grounds that IS is neither Islamic nor a state. This is a bit rich, coming from a United Kingdom which is neither a kingdom nor united.

I HAVE a simple arrangement with E.on. Every quarter the electricity company sends me an email asking for my meter readings. I give them the readings, E.on calculates the bill and I pay it. And then, a few days ago, a final demand suddenly arrived, threatening debt charges and recommending I switch to direct debit. E.on say they emailed the usual billing reminder in mid-September. I have no trace of it. Since then I have had two phone conversations with the electricity company. The first was from a lad who didn't seem to understand what had happened. The second was from another lad asking how the first lad had performed. Then I got a letter from E.on explaining the complaints process. Yet, amid all the bumf and phone calls, I've had no explanation as to why a big national company, having requested payment, does nothing for two months and then issues a final demand. Call me paranoid but I bet the real agenda, not just with E.on but with all the utilities and other big companies, is to get every customer on to direct debit by making the alternatives as awkward as possible. Any similar experiences?

A FEW days ago I referred to the hazards of lead pellets in rabbit which has been shot rather than farmed. A reader writes: "I had rabbit pie once. Yes, it had been shot. I managed to avoid any pellets but almost choked on the blindfold."

STILL on rabbits, I was idly mooching around the foundations of houses on a new estate. The floor area was minuscule. And then I realised this was the floor plan not of one home but of two tiny semi-detached houses. The recent report condemning "rabbit hutch houses" by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is long overdue. Builders know there is an insatiable demand for new homes in a country whose population is set to rise by 20 million in a single lifetime. The result is homes with nowhere to eat, nowhere to study and no storage space. Folk are queuing up to buy the slums of the future.

WRITING about RIBA and suchlike letters after one's name reminds me of a colleague who, as a young reporter, wrote an item about a borough surveyor. In the first paragraph he referred to "Mr Brown, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors." In the second paragraph he called him "Mr Brown FRICS." In the third and subsequent paragraphs, for reasons he could never quite explain, he called him "Mr Frics."