Father Christmas was arrested yesterday when it was discovered that his "Naughty and Nice" list contravened the UK Data Protection Act.
"After a raid on his home," said Detective Inspector Phil Inne, "we discovered on his computer a large list of all the children in the world categorised into Naughty and Nice. However, there was no evidence that any of the children on the list had given their consent for their information to be used in this fashion. This is a clear breach of the 1988 Data Protection act."
Father Christmas used to hold his records of naughty and nice children on reindeer hide written in elf blood. However, with the burgeoning of the world's population of under tens, coupled with the decline in childhood mortality rates, this had become impracticable, forcing Santa into computerising his records.
Along side each child was an address and a list of presents that they wanted; collected after the children wrote notes, sat on Santa's lap or shouted up the chimney. It was a gold mine of consumer information, that would have given advertisers a wet dream had it fallen into the wrong hands. There was even some cases of children logging onto Santamazon.com to register their gift wish lists, and nowhere on this web site was there any indication of how the information would be used or stored.
Santa has been arraigned to appear in the Old Bailey in July, so there may be some delay in the delivery of presents this year.