It's not unknown for HMRC to patronise taxpayers. *cough!* 'customers' *cough!*

The department's attempt to involve young adults in the new charter process, however, is staggeringly condescending.

Charterpelago is a farcical 'game' aimed at people aged between 16 and 24.

It was created by company called Delib, which styles itself an 'e-consultation and online opinion research' provider but might be better suited to creating digital distractions for pre-school children.

Players are encouraged to first choose the medium on which the charter will be presented: scroll, stone tablet, PC or PDA. No, really.

Then a series of trite, biased, pre-generated opinions can be drag-and-dropped and then submitted along with the player's name, email address and additional comments - many of which, I suspect (or, rather, hope), will not be appropriate for a family friendly charter document.

Oh, and our chum Rebecca Cave tells us that Charterpelago caused her computer to complain of an over-worked CPU.

Well, it ain't gonna exhaust anyone's minds, that's for sure.

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