You've got to go here http://www.sweetsuecupcakes.blogspot.com/ and if ever you're in Kuala Lumpur, you probably need to buy some of Sue's products.
I am working with Sue this week and I have ordered a cake for later in the week and I will report back. They look fantastic.
Well done Sue, a new small business that deserves your support I think.
DW
If you are a fly or a mosquito or other such flying object, do NOT read on.
Forgot to tell you about the fantastic tennis racquet I saw in Chiang Rai the other week. Sitting in a massage parlour one evening, having my FEET massaged, we were all being bombarded by flies, mossies and the like. The man of the house came along with a tennis racquet and started wafting it about in my vicinity.
Suddenly, tzzzz! Then again, tzzzz! This tennis racquet was a zapper in disguise! Maybe through evolution flies have become familiar and unafraid of tennis racquets but zappers dressed up as tennis racquets seem to have them fooled.
I want one!
Then again, how about a tennis racquet shaped Swine Flu zapper!
You heard it first!
DW
Apart from the FA Cup all domestic football issues have been settled, bar one: the final promotion place from the Championship to the Premier League.
Burnley is the team in my sights and many members of my family are wending their way to support that self same team at Wembley later today. Here's hoping their journey isn't in vain.
Under Owen Coyle, Burnley is a team transformed. I saw them at Turf Moor shortly before Coyle took over and then again about a year after he'd arrived and what a transformation.
Then there has been the Capital Punishment meted out this season. Now we are Daring to Dream: let's change places with Newcastle United, that grossly over bloated FORMER Premiership team.
I don't wish any teams' supporters any harm but that oaf Mike Ashley has tried to make many millions out of buying and selling a football club and I am happy to say it back fired on him catastrophically. I was also happy that Alan Shearer, surely the worst football pundit ever, has failed as a manager: the over bloated status bestowed on this man is too much to bear. Now we know Shearer is as clueless as a manager as he is as a pundit. Then again, reports are that he has been rewarded to the tune of £1 million for the eight games he has been in charge so he should worry.
DW
As you travel from one time zone to another and a mobile phone doesn't change the time properly and you KNOW that, make sure you know what you are doing when you use that phone to set the alarm to wake you in the morning
You wouldn't want, effectively, to wake up two hours early would you?
DW
If you insist on wearing trousers you have owned for years and that you know have a slight tear near the back pocket, make sure the seam in the vital area is in tact.
Wouldn't want any embarrassment would you?
DW
I am staying in a good hotel but having been living in hotels non stop since early April, I am in need of my own bed now. Still got around 10 more nights to go before I can crawl into that bed.
Let me show you where I am staying until tomorrow: in Bangkok and in a hotel I have not stayed in before: the swissotel Nai Lert Park on Wireless Road. You will see that it's set in a fantastic garden considering it is smack bang in the centre of the city.
Love the roots
Traveller's palm
Waterfall
Pool
DW
They've done it again, the good old BBC. They ran a series on BBC TV in the UK in which a reporter changed the way he and his family, living in London, were living. The car went, they insulated the loft and all the rest of it, to try to show us what it would be like to minimise our personal carbon foot prints.
So, having done that, they decided, as they usually do, that this programme had so much more to offer but that the UK was just too confined a space in which to operate. So, they send this reporter off, doubtless with a large and/or expensive team, to the USA for him to learn what it's like over there.
They are interviewing hippies who are lobbying Congress, hick farmers sitting on a train for 22 hours at a time as they travel to Florida from Chicago. They were delighted to meet the likes of Darryl Hanna on a train, too, as she was expressing her right to lower her own carbon foot print.
In other words, this reporter is doing NOTHING that he could not do in the UK. If I could I would withdraw my TV licence as I really do not support the way they dash off to the USA at the drop of a hat as they forget that the acronym BBC stands for BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation.
Clots!
DW
Thanks for the messages asking me where I am ... I've not been blogging so often and you are missing me! Aw, isn't that nice?
New Seminar
I am coming to the end of my two months in Thailand now. In about two hours I will begin my two day assignment here. Looking forward to it as it is one of the best chances I have had to run a seminar where the delegates really will be at the centre of their own world.
The seminar is on cash flow and working capital management. I have prepared everything on the assumption that the delegates are coming to talk about THEIR cash flow and THEIR working capital management problems. So that's what's going to happen.
Bridge Over the River Kwai
Such a beautiful setting and such a nasty piece of work. I went to the River Kwai for the first time on Monday and it's difficult, impossible for me, to walk through the museum of the death railway with feeling really sad for the men whose plight we cannot in any way empathise with. Moreover, revulsion at the people, yes people, who made our men and boys live and work in such conditions. Humans doing this to humans.
Anyway, here are two photos of me for your consumption: one of me on the iron bridge over the river and the other of me with one of the railorries they built: lorries converted into railway trucks.
Overall the trip I was on lasted a whole day, 13 hours from door to door and was a good experience: the cemetries are fantastic and a lasting tribute to the men of many nations who suffered so much.
The Future
From early June I will be spending a couple of weeks at home <gasp> and can hope, horrible word that, that I will put my photos and videos together in some semblance of order. Lots to see.
Moving to Thailand
I have been asked if I am thinking of moving to Thailand to live and the answer is yes, I have been thinking about it. Might still think about it. I will reflect on that over the next few months so let's see what happens.
Thanks again for the support I get via this blog and thanks for thinking about me!
DW
Ever lived in dread of hearing someone belching out the words, or something similar, in the title of this post?
It happened a couple of weeks ago as I was having breakfast in my hotel in Chiang Rai, Thailand. My partner Tar and I were the only two people in the restaurant when another couple arrived and sat themselves at the table next to ours.
We were eating and chatting and they were organising themselves.
Suddenly, out of the blue, "Hello, we're from Florida. Where are you from?" Well, for Tar it's a bit of a give away as she's definitely a Thai lady!!
I took the bait and responded. A simple conversation took place and it turns out that he's a dermatologist, plastic surgeon he said, from Florida and she's an investor in property in Florida. Quite wealthy between them I think.
I am sure these are good people and no better or worse than anyone else but I have to say I was surprised at a plastic surgeon having brought to the breakfast table a container into which he piled pieces of fruit and into another container bread and meat for their later consumption! Bit tight that with food in the Chiang Rai area being so cheap.
DW
The Owen Coyle Burnley Boys at Turf Moor have done it: they won their last game of the season to secure a place in the Championship play offs. Winning the play offs would see the lads playing in the Premier League next season.
They have played very well this season, albeit not as consistently as everyone would have liked but Owen Coyle has transformed the team in his relatively short spell at the club. Well done that Jock!
At the time of writing I don't know the dates and games to be played but I know there are grown men and women including some famous names who are nervous as kittens now as they wait to see what fate has in store for The Clarets.
Just yesterday I got a text message telling me, "John (around 30 years of age!) a nervous wreck at the Turf." A nervous wreck and they won 4: 0!!
DW
I know there are people on this planet who will have been hiding in their house or office as they live in dread of catching the swine flu virus. I also know that some readers of this post will say the WHO did a good job by creating pandemic style awareness of the virus.
I flew from Doha to Bangkok with Qatar Airways last week and we were all issued with a face mask as we boarded the plane. Every member of the cabin crew wore their face masks throughout the flight, although I can't speak for the pilots, of course, since I didn't see them during the flight.
A friend of mine went a bought his own face mask prior to flying to the UK from Dubai.
So, lots of awareness. I think lots of hysteria. I related a week or so ago that I heard of 170 deaths in Mexico from swine flu. I then heard that this figure had been downgraded by a massive amount to around 100 deaths. Major over reporting of deaths in what was only a minor outbreak by any standards.
Now, I have been sent a slide showing the official classification of risks from the UK Government. Swine flu has not registered on that chart and will not and yet every household in the UK has been targeted to receive what is probably an expensively produced leaflet on the topic.
I just wonder who it was who put the world into panic? Who in the UK Government was so scared that they careened headlong into producing the leaflets I just mentioned?
Are there any real lessons from this minor flu outbreak? I will be talking in a couple of weeks to businessmen in Thailand about the post auditing of projects and I wonder what level of post auditing will be carried out following the nonsense classification of pandemic level 5 of this swine flu outbreak?
Nonsense health administrators and nonsense politicians of the world unite.
DW
This swine flu outbreak is causing me pause for thought. In case it's not the same where you are, BBC News began its first (or very early) report by discussing a pandemic rather than just a problem or an outbreak ... a pandemic means the whole world is potentially engulfed by swine fu.
I have been watching this news unfold as the week has gone by and I am still perplexed as the World Health Organisation has moved the pandemic warning level from 3 to 4 to 5: there's only one level left, 6 and then it's officially a pandemic.
What's puzzling me is that there have been around just 160 deaths in Mexico, where the outbreak has started, one death outside of Mexico, in the USA. However, the current numbers, as at 29th April 2009, are:
Does this represent a level 5 pandemic warning? I am in Dubai this week with a risk manager/practitioner and he would rather point out that in the time it has taken to get to 114 reported cases in addition to the deaths, the number of people KILLED and/or badly injured in car accidents, accidents at work and murder, in addition to rape, robbery and so on are at inter galactic pandemic proportions by comparison.
Of course, I am well aware that this outbreak may become more serious and that prevention is better than cure; but aren't we seeing people on the news who are merely trying to make a name for themselves? Getting themselves in the public eye and wanting to stay there?
Obama the News Boy?
I was also rather puzzled yesterday when I saw President Obama being trotted out to tell people to cover their mouths when they cough and sneeze ... he's the President of the USA. Isn't that a bit of overkill?
DW
The BBC is a massive news gathering and presenting organisation. When I can I watch it wherever in the world I am. Of course, I prefer it to CNN, ABC, EuroNews and so on because now it is more relevant for me. It's not that long ago, however, when BBC World News had NOTHING to say about Britain: not part of the world then, apparently. It's much better now.
This post, however, is a bit of a moan. Odd that!
I have been awake for about 90 minutes already today and I have seen the same news reports on BBC World News at least three if not four times already. Moreover, some of the stories were run over and over again yesterday.
I wouldn't mind if they updated their stories but they don't: they simply run the same tape or articles again and again.
Here's some news for BBC News: it's BORING!
You can tell me to watch something else: erm, yes but my Arabic, Thai, Chinese, Czech, French, Russian, German ... are all rather weak so the local/other channels on offer are usually of little value to me.
DW
Andy Gray on Sky Sports 1 was commentating on the Man Spew v Aston Villa match yesterday and having long admitted that Villa were far the better team for the whole game, he launched into an orgiastic ululation over Renaldo’s second goal of the game.
What happened was that Ronaldo was having an indifferent game and when the ball came to him, on the edge of the Villa penalty area, he almost scuffed the ball which for some reason eluded everyone in the Villa team and trickled into the net.
Gray described it as a magnificent goal: in truth it was the sort of goal that a fifty year old would score.
Secondly, who is it at the BBC who thinks that anyone wants to hear an over excited radio commentator screeching at the scoring of an admittedly good goal by a Man Spew player?
Last week I wrote on Nick Robinson’s Blog (he is a political journalist at the BBC) after he showed his hand when trying to make President Obama think ill of Gordon Brown via a question at a press conference that he shouldn’t have asked. The BBC is supposed to be a public service broadcaster and not a broadcaster that wears its heart on its sleeve: reporting in a balanced manner.
Such wailing and ululation must stop.
DW
I didn't know whether to throw the radio out of the window, write to the BBC as Disgusted Tunbridge Wells or just accept that it was inevitable; but this is what happened on Thursday on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour programme.
Some ridiculous woman felt it important to make a point about Michelle (and that's not Meeshell as they are now pronouncing on the BBC today) Obama: she was being treated during her visit to London as if she were a latter day Diana Spencer. Why do I say she was a ridiculous woman? She is ridiculous because of what she went on to say:
Michelle Obama is the new Diana, intelligent, law school graduate, stylish ...
Which of those three EVER applied to Diana? Yes, just the stylish one. As for intelligent and law school graduate, forgive me for speaking ill of the dead but no, Diana was a nursery ASSISTANT on her engagement to Charles Battenburg and rose to the dizzying heights of ONE O Level, in domestic science, if my information is correct.
I have no doubt that Michelle Obama is far removed from being another Diana: not only intelligent and a lawyer but her moral principles are probably of a much higher order than the woman they are now trying to compare her with.
Far from being a style guru, I would like to add that I didn't think that Mrs Obama was particularly stylish on her trip to London but doubtless there will be copies of her outfits in the shops within the week. Her formal wear looked very good, however.
DW
Good news! Another fantastic blog is to hit the internet: Duncan's Diacritical Discussion.
Clearly this is a new blog from yours truly. The aim of this new blog is to split out the personal from the business aspects of life that I comment on.
Just keep watching and go to the menu on the home page of my web site, www.duncanwil.co.uk, to see the address of Duncan's Diacritical Discussion. It's already been set up, of course, but I will wait until my first substantive post before I reveal it.
DW
I have upgraded to Internet Explorer 8 on my laptop and even though it starts my gmail account it does so with a blip: rendering of the CSS I THINK. I press Ctrl+F5 and the blip goes away.
I installed IE8 on my desktop about an hour ago and gmail won’t load at all now. I installed FireFox and it opened gmail with no problems at all.
When will Gates either get it right or stop interfering with other software that we do actually like to use even if he wants to perpetuate his world domination theme?
DW
He’s in the news again: that ordinary man, Sir Stuart Rose, of M&S.
M&S shareholders would have the chance to vote on whether an independent chairman should be appointed by July next year under a resolution proposed by the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum [LAPFF] on Sunday.
Pressure has been building on M&S to resolve concerns about an eventual successor to Sir Stuart Rose, who was elevated from chief executive to executive chairman of the company last year.
Sir Stuart is scheduled to stay in the post, which combines the role of chief executive and chairman, until July 2011.
But the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum said on Sunday it would file a motion at the company’s annual meeting in July that would call for the appointment of an independent chairman by July 2010.
See: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3ad774e0-1c92-11de-977c-00144feabdc0.html
In an interview on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, the business correspondent asked questions of a representative of the LAPFF questions that suggest it is a good idea to leave Rose alone. Fair enough, the interviewer was trying to provide some balance to the arguments. However, I firmly believe that Rose has flouted corporate governance rules so much and his track record at M&S is so poor that the shareholders of M&S should simply tell the man to resign from one if not both of his posts forthwith.
My reasoning is that Rose has been bad for shareholders and that his track record over the last few years at the helm of M&S have been far from spectacular. Here is further evidence of my case:
See: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2bac61ae-f6e2-11dd-8a1f-0000779fd2ac.htmlSir Stuart Rose, chairman of Marks and Spencer, admitted it had made several “basic shop keeping” mistakes when launching its troubled first store on the Chinese mainland [in Shanghai].
The basic errors are actually fundamental errors and include stocking clothes that are far too big for the target market and a supply chain that failed to deliver the food they wanted to sell.
The fundamental nature of the error they made on the clothing they were selling was that they failed to appreciate that on average an Oriental person is significantly smaller than people from elsewhere. Nevertheless, what they did, under Rose’s leadership don’t forget, was to assume that the people of Shanghai were equivalent to the people of Hong Kong and stock their shops accordingly. After all, they all look the same to Rosie. Clot!
In the second of the FT articles I am referring to here, Rose is credited with:
“We need to get the A to Z of sizing right and we need better market research,” said Sir Stuart
Dear M&S Shareholder, your glorious leader sanctioned the opening of a shop in Shanghai complicit in the knowledge that inadequate market research had been done. A potentially extremely serious mistake.
Rose’s answer to all of this is reported to be that M&S will sit it out in Shanghai. Chairman and CEO, eh?
In the second of the two FT articles I have referred to here, Rose says several times that M&S made basic shop keeping errors. Exactly, Rose is a basic shop keeper who is occupying the strategist’s chair. Time to go Sir Stuart.
DW
Pardon my French!
As I was stumbling through the television channels last night I came across a “cookery” programme called Eating with the Enemy. The theme of the programme is that some amateur “cooks” are supposed to prepare food of restaurant quality and have their efforts assessed by some “experts”.
The host of the programme is James Martin. To my mind, Martin is a very poor cook, although he calls himself a chef. He peppers his words with lovely, nice, my grandmother and so on. For example, I am going to prepare a nice dish of garlic mushrooms using a recipe I got from my grandmother. Lovely! Why should he qualify it by saying nice? After all, we don’t expect crap do we: although invariably that’s what we see. Grossly unhealthy food laced with fat, salt, carbohydrates … rubbish really.
It’s a bit like the signs you’ll see outside the average Pub in England now, Good Food … same applies: we don’t expect bad food do we and wouldn’t pay if they served it!
Anyway, it turns out that Martin is the creative genius behind the main dish these “cooks” have to prepare. Last night he asked them to make a burger. For crying out loud: how many people who go to a proper restaurant, not one of those non restaurants where they serve “fast food”; but a real restaurant, want to eat a burger. You can see what I mean about the quality of the host!
So these “cooks” all nanced around “cooking”. Only one contestant was any good and he was a middle aged Jock. He did well in my opinion. Not like the one who couldn’t even cook a burger all the way through. Then there was the one who rested her burger on a rosti bed. Now, a rosti is shredded or grated potato out of which the liquid is squeezed and then shallow fried until crisp. Note the operative word, CRISP. So this “cook” had also prepared some mushrooms in a white wine sauce. Of course, she poured gallons of sauce all over the burgers and drowned it and the rosti underneath. Meaning there was nothing but soggy rosti.
There was a “cook” who was presented as someone who could prepare excellent choux pastry but for some reason she decided to prepare a dish with shortcrust pastry this time and it was rubbish: she had no idea of what to do. In the middle of her pastry nonsense, Martin shuffled up and showed her a “Chef’s trick” of how to roll out pastry between two sheets of cling film: a tip he got from Gary Rhodes but never admitted to!
I hate to be sizist but one of the “Enemy” was morbidly obese: I missed the start of the programme but I think he is a journalist. He is a good advert for this programme as the food was unbalanced and astonishingly high in fat and calories. However, I really do not think someone who is morbidly obese should be allowed to take part in a food programme.
DW
There was a magical moment on the television last night. It was the day in the year when children are given the chance to present the news and act as reporters for a day.
Some children were given the chance to interview Robert Peston, the BBC’s business correspondent. One child put to Peston a fantastic point:
My mum thinks you are going to be the next Mr Darcy …
The look on Peston’s face was absolutely priceless!
Classic reporting and classic moment.
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings …
DW
An article in this week’s Economist is rather illuminating! Pun intended.
I had a discussion with my neighbour Malcolm recently just after the news broke that the European Commission was going to outlaw incandescent light bulbs in favour of the much more energy efficient compact fluourescent light (CFL). Malcolm told me the things that his friends were saying about the new bulbs: expensive, low quality light, civil liberties and how some of them were hoarding the incandescent bulbs.
In my living room there are six CFL bulbs and one incandescent bulb. The incandescent bulb is in a socket that is attached to a dimmer switch that CFLs can’t cope with!
I was able to demonstrate to Malcolm that six CFLs cost around the same as the ONE incandescent bulb in my living room when operated at full power. I also showed Malcolm the difference in quality of light as between the one incandescent bulb and just two CFL bulbs (my wall lights have two bulbs in each and they cannot be dontrolled independently).
Malcolm was so surprised at what I was able to demonstrate and I can only hope that he shared his new found knowledge with his friends! I will ask him at our weekly coffee and chocolate biscuit session this week!
Well, things are marching on apace in the world of the light bulb apparently:
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13315818&source=hptextfeature
Light emitting diodes (LEDs) are moving in the direction of our living rooms. Currently very expensive at around £40 a bulb they are said to have a life of 45,000 hours: as opposed to the average 1,000 hours for an incandescent bulb and 10,000 hours or so for a CFL bulb.
In my living there are six CFLs and one incandescent bulb. I can put them on in various combinations:
incandescent only
two CFLs … plus the incandescent
four CFLs … plus the incandescent
In my case, by cutting out the incandescent bulb and having just two CFLs I save £24.966 a year in electricity costs assuming I have the lights on for 12 hours a day for 365 days a year. Multiply that the number of bulbs and so on throughout your house and you will quickly appreciate the savings you make, the savings in electricity you make and how the Economist article says that by using LEDs in the ways suggested in the article, 130 power stations in the USA alone would no longer be required.
Here are a few more calculations to help you just in case you think that CFLs are ECONOMICALLY a bad idea: the number at the top of each column is the number of bulbs in use
| Costs and Savings | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Incandescent 100 Watt | 32.85 | 65.7 | 98.55 | 131.4 | 164.25 |
| CFL 12 Watt bulbs | 3.942 | 7.884 | 11.83 | 15.77 | 19.71 |
| Savings | 28.908 | 57.82 | 86.72 | 115.63 | 144.54 |
DW
This is boy talk: you have probably seen those urinals in various places which have a picture of a house fly glazed into them.
Well it’s interesting what one just accepts without questioning why. I have seen these flies in bogs many times and have often meant to ask why they were there; but who does one ask such things? Well, today I discovered an answer.
On a radio discussion programme today an Economist reported seeing the flies at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam (yes, they are there too!) and he said they are there to capture the concentration of the boys and men using those urinals. The main purpose of those flies, however, is that we see these flies as a challenge and will aim to widdle all over them … rather than spraying in the urinal, the floor, the wall, our neighbour’s shoes ...
The result is that floor widdling has been reduced by 80%. Consequently, the floors in the toilets in Schipol and elsewhere are cleaner and less smelly. Whoever thought of that deserves a medal.
It’s a pity this hasn’t caught on here in the UK as we have what rank as some of the smelliest public toilets in the developed and much of the developing world.
Is there an equivalent for girls I wonder? Over to you ladies!! Not necessarily toilets either, ladies.
DW
I have just read this in today's Financial Times:
Bankers on Wall Street and in Europe have struck back against moves by US law makers to slap punitive taxes on bonuses paid to high earners at bailed out institutions.
Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the “anti American” measures smacked of “a McCarthy witch hunt” that would send the country “back to the stone age”.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4ff2f77e-1584-11de-b9a9-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
My responses are as follows:
To paraphrase WS Gilbert
As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list, I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed, who never would be missed!
There's the pestilential bankers who contract for bonuses
All financiers who have grubby hands and act like callouses
...
The operative part of that quip from The Mikado is that these bankers "never would be missed".
I would like a few bankers to write here and explain why they feel they deserve their massive salaries and bonuses ON THE BASIS OF THEIR PERFORMANCE. I also want them to exclude any reference to contractual obligations. After all, I am sure I am right in saying that no contract exists which includes the phrase, in the event of the collapse of the bank, no bonus is due or even, in the event of a forced Government bail out of the bank, no bonus is due.
Plonkers they are!
DW
What I am about to say is controversial on the one hand and simple and straightforward on the other.
There has just been an article on the radio that came from mid Wales: on the unofficial border between North and South Wales, they said. Sorry but because of my unfamiliarity with the Principality and the accent, I didn't catch the name of the place.
Anyway, the point of this post is that they discussed the air ambulance service. This community is remote and they said that even by the fastest possible car, it would take an hour to get from the town/village to the nearest Accident and Emergency (A&E) Hospital.
I think this is something that now needs to be asked: merely because an air ambulance can be provided, should it be? By the same token, merely because very complicated microsurgery and its attendant after care can be provided, should it be?
Some of the arguments, rehearsed in the radio programme, include that without the air ambulance service, someone, say, suffering a stroke or heart attack would miss the golden hour opportunity. Therefore, if a victim of a stroke takes more than an hour to get to A&E, their chances of survival are significantly reduced. Alternatively, if they survive the golden hour they might have a poorer quality of life than otherwise.
The lady in the radio article argued as if there is a right to the air ambulance service. I don't agree: I don't agree that the air ambulance can be provided just because it can be. Why do I say this? I say it because of the opportunity costs: that is, if we provide an air ambulance service then, in the context of finite and limited budgets, something else is either not provided or is provided to a lesser extent than otherwise.
The extreme situation here is that I firmly believe that the National Health Service (NHS) should provide a preventive and primary care service first and foremost. The expensive additional services such as an air ambulance and microsurgery can appear fantastic and can save lives and limbs. However, without a major rationalisation of the budgeting system, the basic services that I have always expected to be provided may no longer be available to me.
I grew up with a General Practitioner service in which my parents could call the GP at any time of the day or night and that GP would attend us at home if necessary or would guarantee an appointment at his surgery. This type and level of service is no longer available.
I have had a limited number of conversations with a GP who defends his resistance to carrying out calls to patients' homes because some patients are perfectly ambulant and should make the effort to get to the surgery. To what extent is the GP here justified in his approach that it should be the GP who makes the assessment of whether to attend a patient on the basis that they can afford the time and effort to get to the surgery? One of the GP's arguments is based on the opportunity cost concept: that he could visit old and infirm people at their homes rather than "wasting his time" attending someone who could get to the surgery under his own steam.
Well, there you are: some of the arguments that came to me as I was listening to that radio programme.
DW
Two worrying articles on the BBC web site concerning the health of British people.
The first article shows the findings of a survey from Britain's fire service. It reveals hundreds and hundreds of cases where firemen have been called out to help to move grossly obese people from home to hospital because ambulance crews cannot cope with them.
Read http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7939630.stm
The second article discusses the feelings of a GP in Scotland who believes that there ought to be a tax on chocolate because of the effect its over consumption is having on the nation's girth.
Read http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7938282.stm
I have responded to this second article by saying that chocolate is the tip of the iceberg. Just take a look at the tens of thousands of rubbish food items on sale in all supermarkets. Processed food, food high in fat, food high in salt and artificial additives and preservatives. Food low in fibre. And so on. Then take a look at the trolleys being pushed around the shop and finally look at the size of the people pushing them. It's a disease now. We really do need our corner shops back: shops that cannot afford to stock massive amounts of the nonsense WE DO NOT NEED. Shops that are owned and managed by people who know what they are talking about and selling.
With proper shops back on the high street, we will spend so much less and all of our savings can be channelled into further enhancing our life styles. We will spend less because we will not buy so many things that we don't need because they will not be available. We will eat less and be slimmer and healthy.
DW
(Which film did that come from?)
The sixth form common room brigade, aka the Conservative Party, is at it again. They have set up a web site which has the sole purpose of writing and sending a letter of apology that purports to have been written by Gordon Brown.
I wonder what these people, who, don't forget, may well be in government before too long, are thinking with their jolly japes.
If Prime Ministers and Ministers were ever required to apologise for their transgressions, we would hear nothing else from them. That is predicated on them being able to tell the truth, of course.
Are we meant to believe that Conservative governments and Prime Ministers have nothing to apologise for? Churchill? (Read Roy Jenkins' dreadful but extensive biography of Churchill for a LOT of evidence. read my review of that book here). Thatcher? From the days when Thatcher was Education Secretary and deprived many poor people of their main source of nutrition in school dining rooms (Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher still resonates) all the way to her dreadful and divisive economic and industrial relations policies while she was PM.
What we are seeing here is a bankrupt political party being led by a marketing man who in turn is leading a group of people who have never done a real day's work in their lives.
Even if you think you are a died in the wool conservative, please think very carefully about voting for this lot. On the other hand, my previous post on GCSE and A Level examinations is a warning to anyone who is thinking about voting back in Brown's Hiberno centric champagne socialists.
DW
Want to gain an unfair advantage in your GCSE and A Level Examinations here in the UK? It’s official now, you can pay a Chief Examiner to come to help you to pass his/her examination.
I have been in correspondence with two MPs over the last three or four years and the upshot is that they have told me that it is official UK Government policy to allow Chief and other examiners to sell their services to anyone for personal private gain.
This means that these examiners can hold private revision sessions with anyone who is about to take one of their examinations.
Imagine the luxury and advantage: the very person in charge of your exam will tell you exactly what you need to do in order to pass his/her exam. Don’t worry, it’s all done behind closed doors and all you have to do is to pay the examiner a fee.
What happens if you can’t afford to pay? Sorry, you’re on your own.
Never mind, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair before him, have presided over this system for years now. The two MPs I have been writing to are Evan Harris, Lib Dem MP for Oxford West and Abingdon and Linda Riordan, Labour MP for Halifax. The final approval for this elitist system came from Sarah McCarthy Fry who is a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools and Learners.
My view of this system? In the letter I have just sent to Mrs Riordan I say this:
On behalf of honest and hard working teachers, parents and pupils I feel unable to support any government, any MP and any examinations system that essentially is supporting the following approach:
It is obvious that there is nothing more for me to say to you on this matter since it is clear that the government is fostering lower and lower standards. Moreover Secretaries of State, Under Secretaries of State, Members of Parliament and those in a position to gain financially from this situation are all quite happy to ensure that the privileged few who can afford to pay will receive a better standard of preparation for an examination than those who can't I cannot see the socialist approach in this system.
While the standard of UK examinations and so on plummet, you are perfectly free to buy your way through the examinations system. I wonder how many people think this is a good approach to end of compulsory education and pre university examinations? I wonder how many people believe that the UK’s schools examination system is now of third world standard? A Professor of an overseas University said that to me, by the way, on hearing about my campaign.
Shocking!
DW
Well, I hope these people who march under a political banner to sports events are satisfied.
Now that we have had those 12 year olds trying to sabotage the Beijing Olympics and so on, there are murderers in Pakistan who feel that they can target a cricket team with a view to murder. Tragically, some of the people whose job it is to protect the Sri Lankan cricket team have died as a result of a gun attack.
I appreciate that this is an extreme example of political demonstration but then again those Anti Chinese demonstrators were pretty violent in some of the actions they took.
I said last year and I’m saying it again, keep your poxy political hands off our sport: whoever you are. Go and find another politician to fight with not an innocent sports person or team or organisation.
DW
Sir Fred Goodwin is the UK pariah of the moment. I sincerely hope he gets his come uppance and that they take all of that nonsense pension off him. As they said yesterday, it’s not a pension, it’s severance pay. Very generous pay too. I wonder how he has the gall even to think that he deserves that vast amount of money?
There is an excellent article in the Washington Post that’s well worth a read, URL below. A couple of points of interest from that article.
Note the comments about John Thain … a couple of months ago, Wall St Wallahs were saying that Thain deserved his $10 million bonus but the wind has changed now:
Take the now infamous example of the recently ousted Merrill Lynch chief John Thain, who not only splurged on his office decor but also had the audacity to propose a $10 million bonus for himself. In recognition of what? A year's work in which the company continued to make bad business decisions, lost about 80 percent of its value, sold itself to Bank of America to stave off possible collapse and appears to have seriously damaged its buyer's franchise? After a less than heroic performance, Thain's grasping for $10 million, presumably because he thought it could be had, represents what has come to be expected from America's business leaders.
The author makes two more good points worthy of note:
In 1960, the ratio of CEO pay at large companies to that of the President of the United States was about 2 to 1. In 2007, it was more than 20 to 1. In 1980, executives at large companies made about 40 times what the average worker made. Last year, CEOs made about 360 times more than the average worker.
And maybe here is the most telling statistic that possibly underlies everything that has happened in the financial world and at the C level in many companies:
On the NYSE today, the average share is held for less than a year, as compared to about five years in 1960 and two years in 1990.
There’s more, in this well written article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/06/AR2009020602794.html
DW
Can you complete that line from what is possibly one of the most famous poems in the English language?
Well, take a look at this page on the Economist web site and think about your role in man’s consumption of water http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13176056&CFID=44501457&CFTOKEN=26124267
You might find it shocking reading and I recommend you take a look at the comments that follow the article too as they make some interesting additional points. Some of the additional points are healthily sceptical and you should take them into account.
DW
I am now going to take a potentially huge risk as I bare my soul to the world.
I have just finished a lengthy telephone conversation and during that call I did a lot of doodling … as you can see in the graphic that follows. I have hidden the original material on that page because it is someone’s personal contact details.
Any doodle psychologists care to let me know what is going on in my tiny mind?
PLEASE, I know cheap remarks are easy to make but you ought to refrain from making them. Seriousness only is the order of the day.
DW
Is this philosophy? What follows is a variation on something you are almost certain to have seen before.
We’ll be fine but let’s knock these out, and to end a little [Redacted] Zen for you to ponder: If a dog barks in the woods and a tree falls on him, did someone clap their hands?
Source: http://molls.tumblr.com/
I like it anyway!
DW
Let this be yet another one of my most valuable lifetime top tips.
Young Dima told me before I went to visit him in Bristol this week that his computer was running very slowly and that he needed to reinstall Windows. He asked me if he could have my old laptop.
When I got to his place I took a look at the computer and after a bit of digging and delving I realised that there was something starting up when the thing was booted that was going round and round in a loop for as much as 30 minutes. Dima knew the sloth but he never got to understand the reason behind it.
I identified vsmon.exe as the culprit and a simple search online showed that Zone Alarm Firewall software was the cause. To cut a long story short, we uninstalled and then reinstalled ZA Firewall software and bingo, problem solved.
The moral of the story is that it doesn’t take a lot to track down an error like this and the chances are that if your computer suffers, someone else has also already suffered from the same problem. That often means that a solution is also waiting for you. Reinstalling the software is just one option in the case of the well known vsmon.exe problem.
DW
Now, I didn't SEE the news yesterday but am I right in thinking that the Ethiopian resident of the UK who was released from Guantanamo Bay detention centre was flown home in an RAF aeroplane and was accompanied by several immigration and foreign office staff?
If that is true, why did they do that?
I understand he is a free man and so could have been put on a scheduled airline and met at the gate at Heathrow ... he even went to RAF Northolt I think.
Then again, is this part of the boosting of the economy we need now? Increasing public spending so that someone else will benefit too?
DW
This is my message to the world vis a vis the car industry.
Banks fell apart, the housing market is still falling apart and the car market is in serious trouble.
The banks have been very badly managed and essentially unregulated since Margaret Thatcher and Ronal Reagan were let loose on the world.
The housing market was fed by the rotten banking system.
The car market has been fed by the severe inflation that became a normal part of the housing market. Now we are seeing the pay off: many billions of Pounds are being asked by the car industry to prop it up.
For decades, the car industry has suffered from over capacity as every car manufacturer has expanded more and more. GM has to be allowed to fail now as the worst of the worst. One UK car manufacturer may well have to be allowed to fail. Don't worry, any slack that GM and the other one leave behind will be taken up by what's left.
I don't know how many tens or hundreds of thousands of us were encouraged to remortgage our houses to "release the equity" but as they did so, they spent the money on new kitchens, on holidays and on cars. Of course, many people will have used it to pay off (consolidate!) their debts. This is what has kept large parts of the UK economy booming over the last decade or so. Now that these three avenues of the economy have been revealed for what they were, we are suffering now.
Bad managers, bad economists, bad politicians.
DW
We used to ask this question as children, if you could count from one to one million in increments of one second, how long would it take you to get to one million?
The answer is 11.57407 days.
Now that we are throwing around out billions and hundreds of billion of Pounds, Dollars and so on, answer this question: if you could count from one to one billion in increments of one second, how long would it take you to get to one billion?
The answer is ... probably a shock to you.
The point of this post: I want everyone to appreciate just what one billion really represents. It is a huge number. So, when these bankers and others who are wasting our hard earned cash are prepared to spend it by the billion, you've got some idea of what they're doing now.
DW
The answer is ... 31.07979 YEARS
Of course you don't but just look at this:
A survey commissioned for Love Food Hate Waste suggests that British workers are shelling out £5.5bn on shop bought lunches each year, while they leave almost the same value of perfectly good lunch foods at home to go off.
Ham, bread, cheese, cold meats and other typical sandwich and lunchbox foods such as fruit, crisps and yogurts are forgotten and eventually binned, to the tune of £5.06bn every year**, while we buy sandwiches and take aways at lunchtime.
2.1 million tonnes of food fit for a packed lunch is heading to landfill each year, including:
But the nation seems split on packed lunches. The research shows that nearly a third of workers (28%) say they never bring in lunch from home, while another third (33%) say they take lunch to work every working week day.
See: http://www.wrap.org.uk/wrap_corporate/news/buying_lunch_costs.html
In other words, there are some people who've got some bread, butter, lettuce, ham, cheese and so on in their cupboards and fridges. However, rather than spending just a few minutes a day putting something decent together with the food they have already spent their money on, they throw that away and then go to a shop that sells them something that will include good food together with seasonings and preservatives etc that they do not need.
Who are these people?
Read the rest of that article for more shocking stats on the food that we throw away. You will also see a link on that page to http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/ which is well worth a look even though it's a bit brown rice and sandals in parts. The message is clear. There are people in the world who think they have a right to grab some of our scarce resources and waste them. Some of these people are bleating now because they have fallen on hard times for a while and are looking for someone to help them out with cash and other things. As it says on the love food web site, if only you hadn't wasted all of that food, you could have saved yourself more than GBP300 a year.
On the other hand, as someone who lives alone I need to add that British supermarkets and other shops cater badly for singletons. So, loaves of bread can be too much and the last few slices can go furry before one gets the chance to eat them. In that case, let the birds and other wild life eat them, don't just put them in the bin.
Then again, though, how about the dabbawallas of Mubai: you'll never waste another meal again if you adopt that system. Find a video on that system by taking a look at www.economist/audiovideo/asia (I think you don't need a subscription to view that short video of how the dabbawalla system works). Every day 5,000 dabbawallas deliver 175,000 tiffin boxes to their respective destination with an error rate of just one in 6 million. That's one error every 34 days or around 10 errors a year during which a total of 63,875,000 tiffin boxes will have been delivered. Better than Six Sigma that!
DW
Just before I left for my latest trip, I wrote to the Director of Customer Relations at Hewlett Packard in the UK. I explained how they have got my laptop more than I have etc.
Yesterday I got a call from their complaints department and she assured me that she was monitoring my case personally and that if they keep it more than 8 weeks, I get a new comp. They are waiting for a spare part for my existing machine.
Just in Time? Kaizen? Six Sigma? All of these buzz words and techniques and more must be floating around HP and yet for the want of a button of some sort, they are prepared to give me a brand new laptop ... if I'm lucky ... I've only got to wait another two weeks as they have had my machine for 40 days now. I really don't want that one back as it's a disaster.
What a shower!
DW
In the old days we couldn't travel anywhere abroad without travel insurance: we had to have it. We all railed against it because there was no choice about the matter and therefore the cost of travel insurance was ridiculously high. Monopolies for you!
I have been watching warnings on the television all day about the perils of travelling abroad without any insurance: there has just been a piece on Inside Out on BBC 1 showing a few very unfortunate people who have had serious accidents whilst travelling.
The problems being faced by people injured or falling ill abroad include being stranded in a foreign land, possibly alone, in a hospital providing just the basic level of care or even worse in some cases. Alternatively, there are stories of six figure sums having to be spent to repatriate someone.
I have travelled without travel insurance for the last 20 years or so on the ground that I refused to pour far too much money into something I always thought I didn't need. I certainly didn't want to tempt fate!
Following today's knee jerks I bought a year's worth of travel insurance. It wasn't that expensive and it covers a wide variety of problems. It also includes business cover for some of the things that one doesn't need as a holiday maker: loss or breakage of my computer for example.
I really don't want to have to claim on this insurance for any reason of course. Then again, I really don't want to find myself dumped in a hospital bed in a foreign land being treated in only a rudimentary way without the wherewithal of getting home.
Think carefully.
DW
The number two man at the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has resigned this morning following a bit of a charade over whether he sacked a prophetic whistleblower at HBOS or not.
Sir James Crosby says he has resigned to protect the FSA since he is innocent.
Reminds me of that poor and uneducated chap on television many years ago who was arrested for some heinous crime. The poor man had no idea what was happening to him but to try to make his life as tolerable for himself as possible, he decided to admit to the crime. He said this, though, as the police started to take him off to the cop shop:
OK, I'm guilty but I didn't do it.
Sir James?
DW
I have just come across this list in a discussion forum and couldn’t resist sharing them: if they are true they are frightening. In any case some of them are creasingly funny.
Disorder in the American Courts
These are from a book called 'Disorder in the American Courts' and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He's twenty, much like your IQ.
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you sh***ing me?
ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid
ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS : Your Honour, I think I need a different attorney. Can I hire a new attorney?
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I had finished.
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
And finally:
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.
Rather a surprising set of results come from The Economist’s Daily Chart for 5th February, http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=7933596&story_id=13062613:
In Iceland about 80% of people believe evolution to be true
In Britain the figure is just under 75%
Germany 70%
Ireland around 65%
But
The USA around 40%
Turkey about 26%
There is a BIG gap between these latter two and the next lowest believing country, Greece, which stands at about 55%.
How does one account for that? Is this a sign of strength or of weakness? Does it matter?
All of these issues are discussed in the comments section at the end of this short article. Daily Chart view.
DW
Firstly, the relative trivia: have you noticed how the 12 year olds at the BBC are calling this man Bern’ard Madoff as if they were Americans rather than the B’ernard that we know?
Secondly, I have just found time to start reading up on some of the technical things that Madoff was or wasn’t doing with the $50 billion that he is supposed to have squandered. He is accused of running a Ponzi Scheme. However, in an article in the FT there is a fascinating piece in which they run through the thought processes of Wall Street wallahs as they studied Madoff and his mad cap work. They ascribed some fancy finance footwork to the man when he was clearly pussyfooting and not cutting a rug at all.
For example,
Mr Madoff’s returns appeared to many to be too good to be true (see chart below). But advocates claimed they were the result of a “split-strike conversion strategy” that used derivatives to minimise risk, while intelligence from his market-making business allowed him to time investments almost perfectly.
The SEC investigated Madoff in 2005 and again in 2007 and found nothing (the chickens in this scenario started to come home to roost this week too! See the whistleblower snippet below) so:
Several investors believed he might be front-running – illegally trading ahead of customers of the market-making division – but many stayed with him anyway. “He had a clean record from the SEC and it wasn’t our job to spot this,” says one.
Some funds offered a more complex explanation. Split-strike conversion enabled him to profit from periods of rising share prices by setting up what was called a “bull spread”. This involved buying shares in 40-50 companies to mimic the blue chip S&P 100 index, while using put options to protect against falls. The cost of these options was covered by selling call options, limiting the potential upside.
My reaction at this point was to think that if only he had been doing this sort of thing, maybe he could really have returned some of the profits that he did pay back albeit within a Ponzi Scheme: a bit like burglars and the like who put huge amounts of effort into their robberies that could just as well be channelled into something legitimate.
In a US Congressional hearing this week, a man labelled as a whistleblower in the Madoff case, sorry his name eludes me, made the point that the graph of Madoff’s returns fell on a straight and 45 degree line. This man went on to say that everyone else’s equivalent graph would rise and fall with or against or generally in tune with the market: here’s the link for the kind of graph that gentleman was talking about
http://media.ft.com/cms/aa499604-ebd3-11dd-8838-0000779fd2ac.gif You can see what he means and why he said he warned the SEC over a ten year period that there was something rotten in the state of Madoff.
There’s a nice time line summary of events here, by the way: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cc1ceb9e-ebd5-11dd-8838-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=b7a8d610-caaf-11dd-87d7-000077b07658.html
Regulators, lawyers and Parliamentarians have all tried to make these things impossible to get away with but Madoff is here, Satyam (who??? ... watch this space) surfaced around the new year in a cash reporting scandal in India. The Sarbanes Oxley Act from the US, for example, Corporate Governance rules in the UK for example ...
I imagine that a lot of people are wondering how Madoff can still be holding on to his flat in New York, reputedly worth as much as $7 million, when there are probably people who need a mere fraction of that just to live on ... but Madoff stole it from them.
Finally for now, you might care to remind yourself of the two basic types of Ponzi scheme I discuss on my web site: http://www.duncanwil.co.uk/ponzi.html Give me time to get back home and put together a summary of what people think they know about Madoff and I will include that on a revised or supplementary Ponzi page.
DW
Interesting what you can learn and I wonder if this is something that everyone else knew about except me.
In my course in Bangkok this week, discussing International Financial Reporting Standards, we talked informally at one stage about the credit crunch, 100% - 125% mortgages and remortgaging.
There was a Dutchman on the course and he said that in Holland, anyone taking equity out of their property as a result, for example, of a remortgage and who did NOT put that money back into the property in the form of an extension, new kitchen, new garage, upgrading central heating and so on, would be charged income tax on the money as if it were income and not a capital flow of cash.
I wonder why we don’t do that in the UK as I think we don’t; and how effective it is at limiting/controlling equity release schemes. I also wonder if it made matters worse by encouraging borrowers to gross up their requirements so that they effectively borrowed enough for their needs and to pay the tax as well. That is, they want, say, £50,000 but take £60,000 to cover their £50,000 AND the £10,000 tax bill.
DW
If you want to get some kind of understanding of the current credit crisis, you need to read this article from The Economist of this week.
When a Flow Becomes a Flood http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12972083
The eye opener for me was this graphic: I have to confess that I knew a lot that goes behind that graphic but I didn't have the vision that this simple chart gives. http://www.economist.com/images/20090124/CBB721.gif Turn to the final page of any edition of The Economist and you will see a table Trade, exchange rates, budget balances and interest rates. In that table you will confirm what that graphic says and in the 24th - 30th January 2009 edition, the US Current Account Balance for the latest 12 months is $697.9 BILLION. Fear not, Britain' got the third biggest negative current account balance, albeit at a mere $45.6 BILLION after Spain's $164.1 BILLION.
You will also see quite a bit about the financial side of the developing world and how they have been financing some of the developed world.
The question still remains, however, where on earth has the US put this money? Is it in a depository in the Gulf Of Mexico along with its Oil store? Astonishing!
DW
I am working hard at producing a really high quality learn all and do all type of book for Excel 2007. As part of my work I want to trawl through all of my files and folders to see what I have already done or what might be useful to include and so on.
So I went to Windows Explorer* to search folder and files and found that a lot of files were listed but that couldn’t open a preview image and couldn’t open the file. No error message, no warnings given ... just nothing.
I repeated that this morning only to find that I was still getting apparently useful materials that I couldn’t access. I dug a bit deeper this time and found that WE was still “finding” folders and files that I had deleted MONTHS if not a year or so ago.
No wonder more and more people are desperately trying to find alternatives to Microsoft and its woeful products.
I am not sure what version of WE I am using but it searches based on an index of my HDD it has prepared. Clearly, once something gets into the index* , it can never get out.
DW
