After Wednesdays silly season story, todays comes from the Post Office, which has issued a guide to the new phrases people are using in text messages and emails. The Post Office says there are several new terms being used which have been sparked by the economic doldrums. These include the following:

A GOOD Job: A Get Out Of Debt job
A risk-free role which will see you through the storm on a decent salary, used regularly by city boys facing job losses.

Code 35: Broke
This comes from the code which appears on the gates at London Underground stations if you have insufficient credit on your Oyster card.

404: Clueless
Derived from the technical term 404 Not Found, an error message seen on a web page to indicate that a website cannot be detected. In common use, this means that you or the person you are referring to is clueless

RAB: A massive faux pas
Comes from Ross And Brand (as in hes done a RAB) and means committing a massive faux pas, like Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand did on BBC Radio 2

COS: Fat
Comes from the term Customer Of Size, which was originally used by airlines to identify passengers who are likely to need more than one seat. A strange abbreviation this one, since it contains as many letters as the word it is intended to abbreviate.

The guide was written by the Post Office Telecoms team and can be downloaded here. Renowned British lexicographer and Author of The Chambers Slang Dictionary, Jonathon Green, has welcomed the guide, saying:
The emergence of mobile phones and the Internet makes it easier than ever before for us to communicate, be it by text message, instant messenger, email, or via social networking sites. In a busy world, were always looking for ways to save time. As a result were seeing new abbreviations appear almost every day. And when new events come along – such as the credit crunch – new terms spring up left, right and centre as we try to make sense of events by creating a language to describe them.
The Post Offices interest in mobile stems partly from the fact that it is the UKs second largest supplier of mobile phone top-ups. It is also a major supplier of broadband services. Theres more information about the Post Offices services here.