Helping the Natives with their Sums

The Ministry of the Rest of the World has displayed an uncommon enthusiasm for helping the United Nations with its paperwork. It appears that the United Nations Compensation Committee miscalculated payments to certain British citizens, whom the Ministry has now given thirty days to pay back the difference. The sum involved is £391,000, divided between a hundred and thirteen people, which means that the average repayment will be something like three thousand, four hundred and sixty pounds and seventeen point seven pence.

The difficulty is that the payments were made seventeen years ago. The people involved were held by the late and, thanks to our brilliant adventure in Iraq, increasingly lamented Saddam Hussein, during the First Great Iraqi Freedom Turkey Shoot in 1990. Still, better late than never, what? We might be rather a duffer at keeping up with international law; we might not be terribly brainy about peacekeeping and torture and so forth; but as bailiffs we're the best.