I went to a school presentation evening last night and it went well enough although it was held in the gym and was decidedly parky (that's nippy, chilly or even cold if you've not heard that expression before!). The headmaster stole the opening part of the show with his yellow shirt and brown tie: can't imagine who his style guru is but they must have been having a night off. The kids were reasonably smartly turned out on average but I did find it surprising that some parents and children think it's suave to turn up to a formal presentation evening in torn jeans, horrifically untidy hair or wackily masticating chewing gum as they collected their awards. These events are often the highlight of a person's life in many ways and who needs someone else to make some kind of poxy statement and lower the tone? The senior girl's choir did well but I did wonder why they had chosen to sing nothing but songs from across the Pond: as if we don't have enough of our own songs to celebrate. They also had a large painting by the stage that included a prominent version of the Stars and Stripes: I don't get it. I do know that if this had been an American school or even a French or German one there would have been our own national flag in a prominent place of display. Not in good old modern Britain, you don't. Apart from that it was interesting to see that the most successful children at that school excelled both academically and as people: they spent a lot of their own time volunteering, organising, working in the community AND working hard at their school work. These young people have realised that they are in charge of their own lives: they don't wait for someone to tell them what to do, they just get up and do it. Ask these people if they are ever bored, if they ever have nothing to do and do they ever just sit at home glued to the television. You know the answers. Well done them! I also believe that if you got to know these young achievers well enough you would find that they aren't especially privileged: they're not necessarily super smart either. Clever enough of course but the important point is that they drive themselves: they are smarter than the average for that reason. They will beat many of their contemporaries in many of life's races because of their positive attitude and they deserve it. The lesson is, get off your @rse and get on with it! DW

I thought I'd cracked this archiving lark by finally getting Blogger.com to accept my full archive path ... I have done the same thing many times but this time it worked EXCEPT that it then decided that the files didn't need the .html extension adding to the hyperlink. So I added the extension only to find that blogger then fouled up the name in another way. I will either be giving up on an archive or moving to another WeBlog site. Watch this space. DW

I have just come across two brilliant Christmas/New Year cards and feel the need to share them go to www.cardmaker.co.uk and take a look at Christmas Humour. Here's one of them: DW

A propos the way things happen, here is the copy of a contribution I made to a discussion board to do with Economics and Business Studies Teaching: A couple of issues of interest: well, I think so anyway! On my web site at www.duncanwil.co.uk/solvlp.html I have a demonstration of the use of Excel's SOLVER function: a linear programming maximisation problem. Over the last couple of days I have been in correspondence with a visitor to my site and as a result I have added a useful section on plotting linear programming graphs in Excel. I know a lot of people have difficulties with plotting LP graphs on paper, let alone in Excel so this addition should prove useful for many. Your feedback will be welcome! Tutor2u.net have as their chart of the day a comparison of the GfK Consumer Confidence Index and Base Interest Rates and their headline reads Consumer confidence drops sharply in November following base rate rise. I think this is an excellent discussion case for anyone wanting to draw students’ attention to the development and presentation of an argument. On the face of it there is a high degree of correlation between the fall in the confidence index and the rise in base rates in November of this year. Moreover, go to http://www.martinhamblin-gfk.com/library/news_item.asp?NewsID=118&usa= which is the source of tutor2u.net’s data for the consumer confidence index and you will see this: Roger Wright, Director of Martin Hamblin GfK, commented: 'We are seeing consumer confidence falling again from its peak in July after a period of uncertainty. The increase in interest rates has probably affected how consumers perceive whether it is the right time to make major purchases.' Is this the final word on the subject? No it isn’t! Take a look at the rest of tutor2u.net’s graph and you will see that rises and falls in consumer confidence can be absolutely independent of changes in the base rate: Dec 2001 – Dec 2002 being an excellent example of where this is demonstrated. At other stages you will see that a fall in base rates has apparently led to a fall in consumer confidence: see Jul 2001 – Oct 2001 for evidence of that. So, read more from Martin Hamblin GfK to appreciate more of a balanced view of the consumer confidence index than the headline view from tutor2u.net: Martin Hamblin GfK provide us with a variety of additional reasons why consumer confidence might change in addition to changes in the base rate. Finally, in terms of the presentation of a stilted debate, take a look at the presentation of the value added measures relating to Key Stages 2 and 3 that begins here: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/performancetables/vap_02/docB.shtml Follow the links from page to page and you will find a huge amount of discussion on this topic … but there’s something missing! There are no real comparators to the value added data. All that we see are last year versus this year but there is nothing to help us to appreciate how and why value might have been added to or subtracted from. Get your better students to discuss the additional information needed by parents, teachers and government to provide much more balance to the debate. Otherwise we will all believe that Grammar Schools are the only ones managing their value added effectively: again the headline comments from today’s television and radio. In reality, of course, when all information is taken into account Grammar Schools might be performing badly. Let’s see absolute and relative data, as appropriate, for SSRs, revenue expenditure levels, capital expenditure, levels of administrative support, repairs and maintenance expenditures and more and only then we will see better balance. You could also ask the question of why industry hasn’t reported value added in its annual reports and accounts for a decade or more now. Best wishes DW

Maureen asked: I was looking at the solver example on your website. Can you tell me how you created the graphical solution. I have been trying something similar using Excel's XY scatter and just can't get it work. Thanks Maureen D I answered by telling Maureen to go back to www.duncanwil.co.uk/solvlp.html to see the addition I have made to the page in which I take you through plotting the graph step by step as LP graphs can be horrible to plot in Excel! In addition, I almost forgot to point out that I prepared a PowerPoint Presentation a while ago to help people to prepare Linear Programming graphs: it's here and it's an animated presentation so all you need to do is to start the slide show then sit back and relax. Another excellent service from yours truly! DW

I know, I know, I rant on about broken links on my site but leave the archive of this blog unreachable. I'm doing it, I'm doing it! I can't fathom it at all so I'm giving it another crack! I've tried to change the path again but blogger.com updates on the batch basis so it could be 24 hours before the changes take effect. Trust me! I have just been correcting a few more File Not Found Errors and can happily reveal that the following pages SHOULD run error free now: spreaddes.html split.html intpiv.html cbeh.html ... although I can run this and couldn't find the error that was in my error log file and I have uploaded the various jpg and gif files that were missing from here and there. Thanks to everyone who reported errors and although I am sure there are more I am working to get rid of them. DW

The postman brought me two copies of an article I have just had published. If you can get to a university or college library or are a member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, take a look at December's issue of Financial Management and on pages 30 - 33 you will see Welcome to Sarajevo: all about some cost accounting work I did in and around Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina and written by yours truly. DW

One of those "eeesh!" moments arrived today. I read an article in a magazine that included some moving average and seasonality calculations. I was interested in working on the data and set up a spreadsheet to replicate the work I had found. I am pretty sure I found a simple but important mistake in the results in the article so I wrote to the author with all due deference to suggest that there may be a mistake in his article or there may be something I didn't follow but I said I think you might check your work. The author wrote back as follows: All the calculations were carried out using an Excel worksheet. I'm fairly confident they are OK but there may be some rounding errors. Astonishing reply in my opinion. I said to him that there were rounding errors in his work, that was obvious but not important; and I pointed out where there is likely to be an error; but to suggest that because the work had been done on an Excel spreadsheet and therefore he is "fairly confident" that it's all OK was a surprise from one so exalted ... not galvanised into checking it to dispel all doubt! DW

A question just came in relating to my ratio analysis work hosted by Biz/ed. Here's the question and my response follows: From Mark: I believe there's an error on page: http://www.bized.ac.uk/compfact/ratios/ror3.htm where it says: Did you notice that we use the Equity Shareholders' Funds instead of Capital Employed? In fact, they are different names for the same thing! We could call the ratio the Return on Shareholders' Funds (ROSF) just as easily if we wanted; but generations of accountants and students only know it as ROCE. Isn't it true that Capital Employed is shareholders funds plus long-term liabilities, so that ROCE = ROSF only if a firm has no debt, no gearing, and is 100% equity financed? My reply: There is always a worry when one discusses capital employed and for years now I have tended to solve the problem by giving a very general definition of it, such as the one that Mark has pointed out. For A level, 1st year undergraduate and foundation professional accounting work I think the general definition is fine. For higher level work, 2nd year undergraduate and upwards, I would have no hesitation in defining capital employed much more tightly: maybe this is Mark's problem as he seems to be a university student or lecturer. Just to try to prove my point and to reassure Mark and all Biz/ed visitors, I took a look at three definitions of CE from three books that I often use. Here is what I found: 1. A company's capital employed is shown by taking the figure for total assets from the balance sheet. 2. Capital Employed. A measure of the total value of the operating assets of an equity. different measurements are appropriate for different purposes. In some cases, owners’ equity is the appropriate measurement: in an incorporated company, this will be called ‘shareholders’ capital employed’. In some cases, long term borrowings may be added to owners’ equity, while in others dividends payable by the entity and taxation payable by it may be added. 3. Capital employed (in trading) = Share Capital + reserves + all borrowings including obligations under finance leases, bank overdraft + minority interests + provisions – associates and investments. Government Grants are not included. 4. Capital employed (overall) Associates and investments are not deducted, while the overall profit figure includes income from investments and the company’s share of the profits of associated companies, in addition to trading profit. Sources 1 John Ellis and David Williams Corporate Strategy and Financial Analysis Pitman Publishing 2 Derek French Dictionary of Accounting Terms Financial Training 3 and 4 Geoffrey Holmes and Alan Sugden Interpreting Company Reports and Accounts Prentice Hall It wouldn’t be a problem for me to add the above to the page that Mark refers to and I could revise it a bit to make it fit more seamlessly if you wish. Let me know! Otherwise, I hope Mark has found that section to be useful and I am grateful for the opportunity of discussing this issue with both of you. DW

Accountancy student Andrew and I have been corresponding recently: he's just taken a cost accounting exam with the AAT. Anyway, he's had the life confused out of his with the standard costing volume and related variances so I thought it might be useful for everyone to see my reply. Take a look at this page to see what we talked about. DW

I answered this question today and you can find this information, with live hyperlinks at www.duncanwil.co.uk/pest.html ... I have now got to discuss the limitations of PEST analysis but am finding it hard getting any info on it. Here's what I replied ... sorry but I'm pushed for time and haven't made any of the URLs into live hyperlinks: just copy and paste into your browser to do that. I started by interrogating GOOGLE worldwide for the limitations of PEST and got as many sites to do with greenfly and leaf mould as I did to do with PEST analysis. I then got rid of the limitations of part of the search and fared no better. So, I interrogated pages from the UK section of www.google.co.uk for pest analysis and here is what I think is a sample of the best that can be found there. This is a sweep through the various techniques that are discussed in the standard texts: nothing directly to do with the limitations of PEST analysis but it might spark off a train of thought. http://tbs-home.tees.ac.uk/staff/u0000514/M&S2 Wk 3 03.ppt http://www.netmba.com/strategy/pest/ begins with this "A PEST analysis is an analysis of the external macro-environment that affects all firms. P.E.S.T. is an acronym for the Political, Economic, Social, and Technological factors of the external macro-environment. Such external factors usually are beyond the firm's control and sometimes present themselves as threats. For this reason, some say that "pest" is an appropriate term for these factors. However, changes in the external environment also create new opportunities and the letters sometimes are rearranged to construct the more optimistic term of STEP analysis." and ends with this "... it may be difficult to forecast future trends with an acceptable level of accuracy. In this regard, the firm may turn to scenario planning techniques to deal with high levels of uncertainty in important macro-environmental variables." Some clues, therefore, as to what limitations we might be talking about. There's a relatively comprehensive introduction to PEST analysis here http://www.businessballs.com/pestanalysisfreetemplate.htm It also spends a lot of time comparing PEST with SWOT ... worth a read and might also spark something. IF you have the time and energy here's a real example of the application of PEST analysis http://www.mod.uk/linked_files/wsa/phase1-anx_h-i.pdf 38 pages relating to submarines being withdrawn from service. There's a hint on the potential limitations of this application of PEST analysis on page 3, paragraph 5 "... It should be noted that the costs given take no account of risk, growth, profit or VAT ..." Take a look at this http://www.marketing-intelligence.co.uk/help/Q&A/question14.htm and you will see that the final paragraph discusses some of the limitations of PEST analysis. There is also a link at the end of this page where you are invited to download a more detailed paper on PEST and SWOT analysis: you need to register in order to do that and the paper you will then be able to download is fine but nothing new. Here are two PowerPoint Presentations from Durham that relate to real cases and that again might be useful introductions to the subject: http://www.dur.ac.uk/p.j.allen/smarkets.ppt http://www.dur.ac.uk/p.j.allen/258,3,PEST Analysis The second of the above presentations is a nuisance as the author has left all of the click, click presentation gizmos in that aren’t especially web friendly … you’ll see what I mean when you get there! Happy reading and happy weekend. Hope that’s useful. DW

Went with Mrs W to see the Nurse at our local Surgery this week and this caught my eye. In the corridor near the nurse's room there is a wall mounted height measurer. Stand with your back to the window frame in this case as that's where the measure has been attached and slide the scale up and down until it rests on top of your bonce. Take a look at my artistic representation of reality: Notice, the floor immediately beneath the measure is uneven. In order to be measured properly, one needs to lift up one's right leg to counter the slope of the floor that begins immediately below the measure. Alternatively, just stand there and be measured inaccurately. The wonders of modern applied science! Not a massively serious problem but a bit more thought could have been taken! DW

Car insurance renewal time came and I decided that I didn't need comprehensive insurance following my accident of earlier this year when my car was written off and I had to shell out £2,000 to get myself a decent set of replacement wheels. That decision saved me £120 for the year. They suggested that they might be able to help me with my home insurance too and, by jingo, they did: for better cover my broker has saved me 50% of my buildings and contents insurance. Welcome to modern rip off Britain where the unwary simply don't know that the deal that someone did is nowhere near the optimum. As I am now insured for everything with one company, I got a further £20 discount on the car insurance. Still, someone else will now take these savings from me for another and as yet unknowable reason since that's the way of the world! DW

My finger's almost healed now and it's no longer painful, the nail has grown back by about 2 millimetres and the skin has repaired itself by about 50% of what's needed for a full recovery! Good news, eh? DW

The Moral Maze programme on Radio 4 last night was an outrage. We were treated to a long list of angry sounding people discussing whether Europe was becoming more anti semitic, whether the State of Israel should exist and whether anyone who believes that if Israel shouldn't exist they must automatically be branded anti semitic. The people presenting the arguments were all zealots and had clearly come to the programme with completely fixed positions. Some of the "witnesses" were treated badly in my opinion: the problem seems to have been that everyone knew everyone else or they knew everyone else's work and writings on this subject so they were like boxers who had been watching films of each other as they prepared for a fight! At one point someone wondered where the hate of Jewry had come from and likened it to racism ... for all of their learning they seemed ignorant of the fact that the Magna Carta contains references to Jews that are hardly flattering; and that was written in 1215, almost 800 years ago! I wish they could have found a better topic. I have to confess that I am completely turned off by anything to do with this issue as it has been festering for decades and we are, wretchedly and unfortunately, no nearer a solution: billion of Pounds are wasted on this problem, too as the "best" brains in the political world can find no solution. Then the BBC invites these bad tempered people onto Radio 4 to discuss whether the problem's getting worse or not! Waste of time DW

I am horrified at how Britain is fast becoming the country in which we speak American English with a British accent. On BBC radio news yesterday we were told that Birmingham has taken delivery of a temporary Ferris Wheel display. What on earth is a Ferris Wheel? A Ferris Wheel is what we used to call a Big Wheel and we used the term Big Wheel for many decades. All of a sudden the BBC has decided that we need to call it a Ferris Wheel. Today we heard from the Today programme on Radio 4 that Donald Rumsfeld is in Afghanistan today and Louise Ducet reported that there is a problem in part of Afghanistan as certain War Lords make mischief. I wrote to Sky News a couple of years ago about using the term War Lord since I feel it adds a false legitimacy to what is really only mass murder and general mayhem. Sky News wrote back saying that they had changed their wording, that day at least, as a result of my missive, during the rest of that day's reporting. There is no such thing as a war lord in my mind, they are soldiers, terrorists, freedom fighters or what you like but the term Lord should really be reserved for something more sublime than butchery. DW

Went to Brimingham yesterday, an early start to get to my destination by 9 am: did it with 20 minutes to spare. On the opposite carriageway of the M40 as I was wending my way, there was the remnants of an accident: between junctions 12 and 13. That accident had blocked the nearside lane and was causing a blockage of around 5 miles: traffic queuing, at a standstill, for up to five miles. I heard on the radio that this accident had happened at least at 7 am. As I started back they announced on the radio that the problem had gone so I wended my way back and went down the M40 happily. However, I came to join a 4.5 mile slow moving and sometimes stopping queue FOUR HOURS AFTER THE ORIGINAL ACCIDENT. As I got to the place where the accident had happened, I saw that the lorry/ies invovled were then off the carriageway but we we had still been slowed right down. I estimated that I lost 30 minutes of my time. This set me thinking that relatively simple problems such as a motor accident can snarl up an entire motorway for upwards of four hours. By the time I got there the problem was poor but not horrific. Just imagine the people who were trapped by the accident just after it happened ... how many deliveries were delayed, how many people were late for work or dropping off the kids? What were the real costs and knock on effects as a result of what was probably caused by bad driving and/or poor mechanical maintenance. Answers on a postcard please! DW

I went to Swansea last Saturday, 29 November, to see daughter Fran swim in an International Swimming Event. She did well enough but the most important point is that she will remain in Swansea until today, Thursday 4 Dec, with her coach so that he can work on her style and stroke. The National Wales Swimming Pool is a magnificent affair: 50 metre pool together with diving/learning pool and outside there are hockey pitches, rugby pitches ... a marvellous set up. Take a look: The sound system is marvellous too and the "DJ" had my taste in music. Well, until it got to the Tom Jones Fest that is! Then again we were in Wales. Fran was staying at the Marriott Hotel and that's quite a nice affair and we did lunch there! Can't say I recommend the veggie butty but it filled a corner. One rubbishEnglish gripe is that the menu says that the sandwiches come with chips ... when the butty arrived it arrived with CRISPS. Aaaaagh! I wanted CHIPS. If you're watching this, Marriott people, PLEASE help people like me to understand what you mean. This was my first trip to Swansea and it's a breeze to get there: just get onto the M4 and drive for around 2 hours then turn left and you're there. I didn't have much time to look around but there is a massive newly developed central area and a fet old fashioned terraced houses. The setting on the way in is very attractive: at the end of the valleys system of South Wales. It was dark and drizzly all the way down from Abingdon until I got into Wales and then the sun shone brightly and that lightened up the vista! DW

Pleased myself today as I managed to fix the rear windscreen heater in the car today. Courtesy of an online discussion list of fellow Beemer owners I was given detailed instructions of what to do and how to do it ... then did it! Here is photographic proof that I was in there and at it! Happy motoring! DW

A relatively minor problem such as the one I caused myself yesterday just goes to highlight one thing: aren't we normally healthy, mobile people a pile of moaners? My finger is a bit of a mess: I will be slightly incapacitated for a few days as it sorts itself out. There are people whose entire lives are dominated by massive inconveniences that most of us can barely dream about let alone experience. So, if you hear me whingeing about my finger, just remember what I just said! By the way, let's record a hearty well done to those plucky rugby players of ours who have just won the Rugby Union World Cup for the first time ever: beating Australia in the final in Sydney by 20 points to 17. I watched most of the match as it was a decent affair. Well done lads! DW