Overheard ...

Standing in the queue at Starbucks in Manchester Airport, the lady in front of me asked if her Latte had any milk in it.

The young lady behind the counter was very kind and with a slight smile on her face said that it was made with milk!

Well done that young lady!!

DW
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The Phone Rang Twice

I live in a mobile world and most of my communication is done by email. The phone rings infrequently!

Today, though, I received a call at 05:53 and then another one from another person at 06:35. One call came from foreign lands and the other from the UK!

How about that?

DW
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Oil price Speculation, the Cat is out of the bag

I have written before about the relationship between speculation and oil prices over the last 12 months or so. We have read in the newspapers that speculation was not to blame for the rapid rise of oil prices to around $150 per barrel. Here is a quotation taken from The Times newspaper dated Tuesday, 28 October 2008, the speaker is Abdulla al Badri who is a senior executive at OPEC:

We just want to balance the market, he said. He blamed speculators for the spike in prices this year to a high of $147 a barrel on 11^th July. Hedge funds were using oil as an asset class, he said. The paper market was out of control will. Nobody was controlling it. We want to see a price that is driven by fundamentals not by speculators, he said.

Mister al Badri said he was not concerned about the risk that high oil prices could ultimately harm OPEC by undermining demand.

So now you know the truth … exactly what I have been saying all along.

DW

Happily Brassed off!

I spent the day in Liverpool for the first time in many years and I came home brassed off!

In a good way, of course.

What happened was that I spent an hour or so in the HMV shop in Liverpool where I found and bought the DVD of the fantastic film starring Pete Postlethwaite, Brassed off!

There are two main themes in this film:

• the closure of over 100 coal mines in the UK thanks to Thatcher and Major; and
• the fantastic brass band music played throughout

A good but simple story with some very fine acting and some excellent brass band music, courtesy of the Grimethorpe Colliery Band.

Brassed off and happy.

DW

Liverpool and M&S

In general I like the centre of Liverpool and have spent today walking around and shopping in it.

The black spot was the entrance to M&S: the word sepulchral came to mind. Sir Stuart Rose probably designed this one himself after seeing how badly he has managed the company's share price.

DW
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Christmas Cake for 2008

Every year since 1975, with only one exception, I have made a Christmas Cake. This year is not an exception and as proof of that here is the cake that I have just made:

Of course, the recipe I use is the Be-Ro Recipe: there is no finer Christmas cake.

As a matter of interest, what does Be-Ro or BeRo stand for?

Look at the picture above and you might just spot that there is a second cake on the right of the main cake. Every time I make a Christmas cake I make what I call a tester. The mixture that is left over having made the main cake goes into making a smaller cake for immediate consumption.

The main cake will be stored as it matures ready for Christmas Day. I will, of course, decorate it for the big day!

DW

Hitler: far too much coverage now

It is axiomatic that Adolf Hitler has had a major influence on the lives of all of us. However, I am becoming rather disturbed at the number of Hitler centric television programmes that continue to be aired these days.

I have noticed over the last week or two that as I flick through the various knowledge channels, that at any one time there is one and maybe two programmes on air that have Hitler as the central theme.

I wonder what the real demand is for these programmes; and I wonder what value they are adding these days.

As I type this they are discussing yet another book on Hitler and the Third Reich on Radio 4.

Time to leave this subject to historians I think.

DW

Edward Stourton, a right regular guy

Everyone following this Blog knows that I am keen to keep AmerEnglish from these shores. Everyone also knows that such a mission is akin to fighting a losing battle.

I took part in a mini squabble yesterday with Edward Stourton, BBC Radio Presenter. He talked in the Sunday programme yesterday about a regular London bus. I wrote and asked,

Dear Mr Stourton,

On your Sunday programme on Radio 4 today, you talked about a "regular London bus". I would be interested to learn what such a bus looks like and what it does.

Duncan Williamson

Halifax, West Yorkshire

Stourton responded with this,

Well they tend to be large and red and ferry people about (and threaten cyclists like me, but that's another matter)

Kind regards,

Edward Stourton

Of course that wasn’t the response that he should have given so I followed up with,

Thanks for the reply but you will appreciate that my main question was to wonder what made them regular ... as opposed to, let's say, irregular.

You might gather I am an anti AmerEnglish activist.

Duncan

I have had no response to that missive so I have assumed that I have either scored a micro victory or that I have been swatted away as an annoyance.

Why have I persisted with this matter? Well, Stourton has a 2:1 degree in ENGLISH from Cambridge University no less and since he is just about the same age as me, he has had consciously to learn to use the American usage of the word regular in his every day speech.

I will not stop this campaign.

DW

Mandelson Again

I predicted it but I didn't think it would be this quick.

Peter Mandelson has been back in UK politics for just three weeks and already there are headlines in the papers calling for answers to many questions.

Mandelson has changed his story over the Deripaska affair and whilst I am NOT accusing him of lying, that is an unfortunate turn of events.

Mandelson is not alone, of course, as Tory George Osborne, that sub standard Shadow Chancellor, has been feted by the self same Deripaska.

These politicians: when will we learn? When will they learn?

DW
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UK GDP Analysis of Quarters 2 and 3

Following my earlier post on the me, me, me syndrome, here is my initial analysis of the data from the Office of National Statistics for you. I have converted the text on the page I sent you to into tabular format and from there have prepared two pie charts.

These additional resources will help you with your understanding. There is a further chart on the ONS page that I haven’t included here.

Go to http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=192 for the original data. What follows is my analysis

Analysis of UK GDP: Quarters 2 and 3 for 2008	Analysis of UK GDP: Quarter 3 for 2008	Analysis of UK GDP: Quarter 2 for 2009
	Q3	Q2
GDP Whole Economy	-0.5	0
Construction	-0.8	-0.5
Total Production Output	-1	-0.7
Manufacturing	-1	-0.9
Mining and Quarrying	-0.7	-0.1
Electricity, gas and water	-1	-0.1
Services	-0.4	0.2
Distribution, hotels and restaurants	-1.7	0.2
Transport, storage and communications	-0.6	1
Business services and finance	-0.4	0.1
Government and other services	0.4	0.2
Agriculture, forestry and fishing	0.5	0.4
Source: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=192

DW

Me, me, me ... I said it first ... the sequel

This is a simulcast

 

It's official, the quarter ending the end of September shows that the UK Economy has slowed by 0.5%. Not a massve slwing down of course and such official statistics are subject to major errors but here is my comment on what has then happened.

 

Both the BBC and Financial Times have said that because ONE QUARTER's results have shown a negative return, Britain is therefore entering a recession.

 

The BBC said: recession looms

The FT said: Data confirm UK on brink of recession

 

Firstly, since when does ONE RESULT consitute a trend?

Secondly, whenever I talk to anyone about statistical analysis and forecasting, I advise them to consider a minimum of fiver periods/quartrs/years before they get too excited about anything.

 

We ought to look at the trend rather than sitting smugly at the thought of having said, "Me, me, me ... I said it first." Take a look at where these estimates of GDP rates of change have come from: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=192 You will see here the FULL picture of what is happening. Moreover, do take into account what the FT says, You should take the data on offer there and take a look at what is happening sector by sector. For example,they tell us that manufacturing has fallen by 1%: OK, that's serious; but since manufacturing accounts for only around 12% of the UK's GDP, that's not that serious overall is it?

The data released on Friday are the "flash estimate" of GDP, a number notoriously subject to revision. There was a grain of comfort in the fact that GDP for the second quarter was unrevised and showed zero, rather than declining, growth. (See http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7e9feb8a-a1a4-11dd-a32f-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1)

These people have been desperate to drive house prices down for years, now they are desperate to build us all up for a year of a recession. The me, me, me brigade has, however, already started to doom monger their way to the front of the queue by talking about a slump for the UK. These people. In China, they get it right when they ask their journalists not to behave like this: scare mongering. I think the Chinese are right; and NO ONE is talking about censorship here either.

 

 

DW

Top Tip

It's been a while since I have given a top tip but here's one.

If you find something small on the floor that is deep red in colour, only put it without thinking on your deep red stair carpet if you want to spend ages looking for it.

DW
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Updated BlackBerry OS

I updated my BlackBerry's operating system last night and in spite of the fact that it took about two hours to do it is well worth the change.

Looks better and greater functionality. I've now got a video camera with it. Email messages look different: better style and feel. the band at the top of the desktop has gone so it shows all of a wallpaper image rather than hiding that part of it.

My Lex on FT.com link works at last ... But bot my FT Reader yet.

So far so good.

DW


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Hewlett Packard: the worst after sales service

This is a tale of woe. I am not especially complaining about a poor product although that is bad enough. The HP Pavilion tx1350ee laptop computer I bought last November has suffered from three major problems in its short life. A motherboard has burned out twice, its radio/bluetooth transmitter has failed twice and now it is totally inaccessible for another unfathomable reason.

My gripe is that each time I had a problem I have had a battle with HP’s after sales service to get them to honour the international warranty that comes with the computer.

I don’t intend to set out every single battle I have gone through since last November but I am publishing here the second of two letters I have written to the company over the last three weeks or so. If HP wants to respond to my letters by way of a comment here I will publish it without any editing whilst retaining the full right of reply.

Let me tell you what has happened as a result of these letters before you read them. Following my first letter I received a call from the Customer Services Department. They acknowledged the receipt of my letter and told me they were to send me a recovery CD/DVD in an attempt to solve my problem. They called over a week after I sent my letter and almost two weeks before I wrote my second letter as a result of not having received any CD/DVD.

Today, the day after I posted my second letter, I received another call from the Customer Services Department. In that call they asked me if I had received the disc. I said no. Then I told him I had written another letter to their Director and was considering legal action to recover my losses following their failure to apply the conditions of their warranty.

Well, here is the second letter:

Dear Sir,

On 29^th September I wrote to you telling you that I was at the end of my tether.

I explained how my HP Pavilion tx1350ee laptop had stopped working and that I was unable to resolve the problem on my own. I also outlined the entire day that I wasted in trying to get any sense out of your after sales service people. I went round and round in circles trying to get someone to help me but ended up in long queues on the telephone: of course I was paying heavily per minute for these calls and a cynic would accuse you of creating these queues to bolster your revenues.

I was given unobtainable numbers to call by your staff, I was generally abused and in the end, after about eight hours, 15 calls and no progress I was handed over to your customer services department whose sole recommendation to me was to call again one of the numbers where your staff were particularly unhelpful.

On Thursday 9^th October I received a telephone call from someone purporting to be from your company. They referred to my letter of 29^th September and after a short introduction he told me that he would be sending me the Recovery CDs that I need. Well, why am I not surprised that almost two weeks later I have received absolutely nothing from you?

I am sitting here now looking at an expensive and utterly useless laptop computer. It will not work and you are not helping me in spite of your International Warranty. You are failing in your duty to help me.

Let me explain further: I told you in my letter of 29^th September that the HP laptop is my business computer and that I need it in order to carry out my duties for my clients. Since your service is so bad, so slow; and because you seem to be working in complete contradiction of your code of business ethics of course, I have had to buy another laptop to keep my business working. You alone have caused me to have to spend almost £400 of my own money to bale out HP. Depending on your response to this letter, I am considering taking legal action to recover this expense from you.

I did remind you of your code of business ethics in my previous letter; and here are the pertinent elements of that code again:

• We are passionate about our customers
• We have ... respect for individuals
• We perform at a high level of achievement and contribution
• We act with speed and agility

Can you hold up your hand and claim that you have not broken all of these promises? In my experience you have smashed them all.

This is the third major problem I have had with this laptop and my experience of your customer services is that they are woeful. I really don’t know how many of your customers are suffering in the way that I have or who are prepared to be as direct as I am; but you get my award for the worst customer services organisation of 2008.

Yours sincerely

I told the Customer Services man on the phone today that the service they were offering was rubbish and since I was going on a lengthy business trip starting early on Thursday, I asked him if he could get the recovery CD to me tomorrow, Wednesday. His absolutely uninspiring response was that he would see what he could do.

DW

Yesterday ... all my troubles went so far away!

Well, if only the title were true! Not that I am in deep poo or anything despite seeing two single Magpies yesterday. I got my screwdriver out to take a look at the screen on my old Acer laptop (the one I am using for this!): it lurches from normal to garbled at the drop of a hat. When I got to Bangkok the other week, it became seriously garbled. So much so that I thought it would be unusable for my presentations there. Fortunately, the screen is perfectly watchable when linked to a projector, even thought the screen itself remained garbled. So I took the cover of the screen off following advice from a web site and fiddled with wires etc. I was convinced that the problem is a dodgy link or wire. I was right. I found that if I press on part of the gubbins at the top and back of the screen, the image on the screen is stable. I then found that by stuffing something under a piece a little lower down, I can keep the duff connections together. Clearly there is a problem and clearly it is a connection problem. again. It is, however, much easier to set back to normal again.This morning, I am facing a good screen but more frequently than I would like it goes garbled. I will take the back off again and stuff a bit more paper in there to stabilise the screen and then be happier. Apart from that, this Acer TravelMate 3220 is old but a good machine. If I am happy enough with the screen by around midday I will be upgrading the memory to 2Gb from 1Gb and it definitely needs a new battery. A new battery can cost as little as £35 - 40 now. I could replace the screen for around £75 but I don't want to do that: I will be happy with make do and mend for a while yet. I still use this computer because it has my Office 2003 installation on it and when I am demonstrating Excel, for example, the majority of people and businesses I am working with are still using Office 2003. I also use it as backup when ... All of this is in complete contradistinction to my experience with my HP Pavilion tx1350ee laptop. I am going to blog separately on that and I am going to include the two letters I have recently written to them following three major crashes in only 10 months and suffering from their appalling after sales service. DW

Me, me, me ... I said it first

This is a simulcast.

The latest of our "experts" to "confirm" that the UK is already in recession blethered forth today. Ernst and Young did it today.

This nonsense replaces the dash to be first "confirm" the downturn in the housing market.

That's not to say E&Y haven't got it right, it's the littany of reports all making the same predictions that's getting on my nerves.

DW
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Sex, Dad, Getting a Taxi

Sex and the City

I got desperate on the flight home and settled down to watch the Sex and the City film. Well, I know that many of you will disagree with me but after about 10 minutes I realised I couldn’t watch those middle aged women living as if they were 20 year olds. What with their love lives, the houses they were buying,their relationships and priorities.

It was like watching a geriatric version of Friends if you want an analogy. So I switched it off.

Dad

During my last few hours of my latest trip to Dubai I meandered into the Virgin Megastore to see what CDs/DVDs they might have that might be interesting for me. I bought a trumpet music CD and was happy with that. I then saw a CD entitled, Just for Dad. I picked up Just for Dad but when I started reading the names of the groups and the songs I realised that about a third of them were too recent for me. Gulp! That was a bit of a reality check!

Getting a Taxi

Some of the people who travel on aeroplanes have a problem with their mobile phone. These people feel the need to switch them on even whilst the plane is still in the air. For some reason known only to them, they seem to know that nothing bad can happen to the rest of us as they switch on their phone, so they do. Nokia phones are the biggest give away with their unique bing bing message announcement tune!

Well,as we arrived at Manchester, some clot behind me decided that it was safe for him to call his local taxi company as we were coming in to land and this is what he asked, Can I get a taxi … I wondered, how on earth is he going to get a taxi whilst he is still in mid air. Moreover, in what way did he think he could get a taxi? I think he was trying to be some kind of cool American by speaking like that. When someone asks me if they can, for example, get a cup of coffee, I say, no, don’t worry, the waitress will get it for you.

DW

New trend

Just been into Halifax and saw two young ladies walking around in bare feet. Is this a new trend or just a coincidence?

DW
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Singapore Airlines

Is it my eyesight or are the air stewardesses who work for Singapore Airlines tending to lard like the rest of us? Of course I am being a bit sexist as the majority of the cabin crew are female on SIA and I don’t remember seeing a podgy steward yet.

There are many very slim and of course attractive stewardesses working for SIA but I did notice the odd bulging and even split seam on one or two uniforms on last night’s flight.

Last night’s flight from Singapore to Manchester was, let the record show, my longest ever flight. It took us around 13.5 hours and my previous longest was Los Angeles to Hong Kong in 1992.

There you go!

DW

Brian and the Thai Bride

Now I have to be careful here but this story struck me as more of a warning than a happy ending. This story came from someone I met whilst travelling.

Brian went to Pattaya in Thailand and after a few days he met a young lady from the North of Thailand who was working in a bar. No comment or judgement at all, just reporting what was told to me.

At the end of that holiday Brian decided he liked the girl but made no commitment. The girl felt she needed to stop working in a bar and went home as Brian went home.

A year later, Brian went back to Pattaya for more good times with young Thai ladies. The story now says that last year’s Thai girl guessed that Brian would be back at that time and lo and behold was in Pattaya waiting for him when he arrived. Yeah, right!

Still, they did hit it off again and after a couple of years of romance, they got married.

Before you dismiss this as bile on my part together with assumptions and so on, Brian was on the plane at the time I was told the story so I did see him and his young wife. He’s 57 and she’s27.

DW