The Tax Spider

Having just paid my tax, I was in no mood to read this. Austria, Denmark, Britain and Canada have adopted a Dutch - wouldn't you know it? - technology called Xenon. a reference not to the noble gas but to car headlights. Such poets, these people. This crawls the web seeking out tax evaders, though I am not quite clear how. One odd feature of Xenon is that, unlike Google, it is slow. This means it doesn't draw attention to itself by creating excessive traffic on a site. Clever, very. This creepy crawler could be watching me now, as could one Simon Bird, who works for HM Revenue and Customs. He declined to comment on Xenon's data retention policies. I bet he did. Bird is head of the 'Web Robot Team'. Really. He is, of course, a third generation office 'droid built on the planet Znaaarg and his favourite colour is mauve..