Dumplings ... Ah! Dumplings

You cannot beat a good dumpling.

Now, the Chinese cook dumplings as part of some of their excellent cuisine; but what does anyone but someone from th North of England know about the fineries of a suet dumpling? That was a rhetorical question. Here's my recipe for simple and straightforward recipe for a few dumplings:

100 grammes of self raising flour 50 grammes of vegetarian suet Cold water to mix to a stiff dough (I always find that the exact amount needed varies according to the water content of the flour) Salt and any other flavourings you like (eg pepper, chopped parsley)

Mix the lot together and if it is dry, add a bit more water; if it's too sloppy, add some more flour and suet in the 2: 1 proportion. You don't need to beat this mixture and I use a fork to turn it over for a couple of minutes. Use your hands if you like instead.

Let the mix stand for 10 - 20 minutes before using it. Then shape the dough into golf ball sized pieces and place them on top of a stew that you will be cooking in a covered pan or pot for a further 15 - 20 minutes. These dumplings should swell quite a bit and will be lovely and moist and open textured.

Please note, suet dumplings are BEST if cooked in the oven and if you cook them in the oven, do so on the top of a stew in a covered dish for around 45 - 60 minutes to ensure the dumplings are fantastically swollen, moist, open textured, golden brown and crispy.

Note the vegetarian suet in the recipe: that's because I'm a veggie. There is beef suet, too, if you are an animal muscle eater.

Now, I am using a new method to post this message and am trying to attach some photographs of my latest batch: as it came out of the oven and then shortly after I'd eaten some of them. It should be obvious which is which.

DW

Clowns arrive at the circus

Don't you just know when a clown arrives in the circus ring? Welcome George Osborne!

Osborne is the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer of the UK: a member of the Conservative Shadow Cabinet.

Last weekend this clown went to Uganda and spent the weekend in a village outside Kampala. He came back and went straight from the airport to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme studio to be interviewed by an unsuspecting John Humphrys. I can't think why he bothered.

He blustered into the studio and said that if he became Chancellor after the next election he would spend £500 miilion of our money eradicating Malaria. Yes, Malaria is a sub Saharan Africa curse and yes it needs to be eradicated.

This clown's logic was to provide nets for everyone to sleep under and to provide medicines to cure anyone who catches the dread disease. His further logic was that since everyone would then be well all of the time, productivity would rise and infant mortality would fall. Laudable, Coco, laudable.

What this clown failed to do was to follow this logic:

Where does Malaria come from? Oh, from a certain kind of female Mosquito (the Anopheles) How are the Mosquito allowed to flourish as they do? Oh, it's because of the vast amounts of still and stagnant water that lies all over Africa in the rainy season where the insects breed without let or hindrance So if you control the breeding grounds you control the disease? Yes

If you control the mosquito, you control the disease and then you don't need to cure anyone. Does that mean by controlling the insect and the disease you control things for ever; but if you buy nets and medicines to cure people you need to keep doing that for ever because the Mosquito will continue to thrive, nets will rip, tablets need to be replaced once consumed? Yes, yes, yes ...

By the way, Coco, there is as yet no cure for Malaria other than prevention. This is well known by anyone who has spent more than a weekend in an African village. Moreover, these insects don't just bite at night so nets might help a bit but not all of the time.

Another question sprang to my mind: why did the Shadow Chancellor take this jolly, sorry fact finding trip? After all, shouldn't it at least have been the Shadow Foreign Secretary? Ah, I see, the Shadow Foreign Secretary is the Clown in Chief, William "Billy the Beer" Hague. Good point: no point sending him as he would start by trying to forge a political alliance between warring factions in South America or Europe or somewhere before starting on the African Malaria problem. That alliance would be scheduled to come into effect in, say, 2012 or so ... forget Coco in Chief then. So that should have left the Shadow International Development: erm, who's that? Who knows? Oh!

More misery scheduled for Africa then.

Finally, Coco, take a look at a bit of African history and you will see that THEY USED TO control the Malaria by controlling the Mosquito by controlling the lying water.

These stupid people get on my nerves but there will be countless jollies as these clowns set up yet more circus rings in a trusting and unsuspecting Africa.

DW

Politics

British politics is hitting rock bottom at the moment. Two things stick out at the moment

Criminals not on a database The HNS

We have had yet another Civil Service type scandal as 27,000 criminal records were allowed to sit in various offices and not be entered into the Police database. The upshot being that hundreds of serious criminals were walking the streets and in spite of criminal records checks, could have gone back into the situations where they were putting the public at risk. It really is incompetence of the highest level. The Opposition's response to all of this? Did anyone tell lies about what they knew and when they know it: not, note how to solve the problem and so on.

Sir Gerry Robinson is a wandering business man who was given the job at Rotherham Hospital of reducing waiting times for patients. This was a fascinating programme that showed things in a warts and all perspective. A fascinating insight into decision making in a large organisation. One thing that struck me was that there is a culture of people saying, 'this could only happen in the NHS'; and 'in the NHS ... '. Such sentiments are nonsense and Robinson did demonstrate that solutions to all problems are possible. What is important, he found, is that people talk to each other, leaders lead, managers manage and anyone can have a good idea to solve problems.

Why is the NHS programme a political issue? Well, we now know some of the problems and their solution and yet these lessons will not be generally learned and politicians will be the last to learn them.

Finally, the NHS initiative came from the Open University and you can read more on their web site at www.open2.net

End of mini rant.

DW

Is it me?

I don't wish to speak ill of the dead but I listened to a programme on Radio 4 yesterday on Diana Dors. I know, it shows my age; but she was a Britsh actress from the 1950s and onwards. There were things about her that I didn't know before such as that she died when she was only 53 years old.

However, sex symbol? She was, shall we say, plump. Blonde bombshell? Excuse me, it was bleach blonde. She had a marvellous voice? Erm, only with lots of echo behind it. She was a marvellous actress? So she said!

Forgive me and I know there are greater things to worry about but I felt the need to share it with you.

DW

Puzzle of the year 2

The spoon in the ice cream trick ... how was it done? Leave a 20 year old lad alone in the house for a while. He will NEED and so take the ice cream from the freezer and being completely unable to scoop out what he needs, he will take the entire container into the living room and loll by the fire. As he is entranced by whatever is on the television, he will leave the spoon in the ice cream and will leave the ice cream in front of the fire. After a while he MIGHT appreciate that the ice cream really needs to be back in the freezer. He MIGHT have seen the spoon at the bottom of the container and will probably raise an eyebrow at the very idea of such a thing having happened. He will then be totally unable either to dirty his hands by removing the spoon; or to work out how to remove the spoon A perfectly true story with the answer written with an air of impudence on my part and a massive amount of truth on the other part! DW

Fwd: Happy new year

Did I tell you that I found and repaired the water/coolant leak that has beleagured my car for absolutely ages? I did and it cost me just £7 and a bit of effort to do it.

 

Did I tell you that I found and repaired the petrol leak that has beleagured my car for absolutely ages? I did and it cost me nothing: just had to tighten two circlips. Marvellous.

 

Happy new year to everyone, by the way as I think I forgot to say that before.

 

DW

Puzzle of the Year This will knock your socks off. Take a look at the picture and suggest how the spoon you can see at the bottom of the ice cream could possibly have got where it is. Please note, this is one of our sppons and we didn't just take the ice cream out en masse, drop the spoon in and then put the ice cream back. Oh no! Much less rational than that. Answers to the usual address and I'll reveal the answer in a day or two. DW

Standard Costing Variances Frankie from Canada asked me to have a crack at writing a page about standard costing sales variances so I did. Not the stuff you read in modern books but good old fashioned stuff on how it really works. I used a book from 1966 to help me! It comes as a pdf file in the form of a presentation. www.duncanwil.co.uk/pdfs.html is where you need to go. Then look under the cost and management section of the menu. Marvellous DW

Yorkshire ... Sorry there have been no uploads of my stunning videos yet but I've been away! I went home to the town of my birth to celebrate the family matriarchal birthday: sister Carol, that is. There is a video for that too and that is being uploaded as we speak. It's DVD quality and is large. It will only be there for a while as I don't have an infinite amount of web space to go at unfortunately. An interesting diversion came when 1 the car overheated 2 son Andrew arrived at Todmorden railway station with a Buddhist priest in tow The car is losing coolant at a rapid rate now and is in need of repair. By the end of my 185 mile drive from Abingdon to Halifax (where sister Susan and her family resides and where I lay my bonce!) the engine was overheating a little bit. Andrew trotted over from Salford (where he is at University) for the birthday party and we'd arranged for me to collect him from the railway station. He called to say he'd arrived and asked if I could take someone to Dobroyd Castle. It's not a bother so I said yes. It turned out that he'd met a Buddhist priest at the exit to the station who'd just arrived from Malaysia and was going to Dobroyd Castle for a retreat. Now, I didn't know that Dobroyd Castle was a Buddhist centre and has been for at least 10 years apparently. Still, I got to drive up to the castle (engine overheated again as I had failed on two separate occasions that evening to top up the coolant) and, more than that, got to go inside, something I had never done before: an impressive building that is still in good repair as far as I can see and was warmer than I thought it might be given the size of the hall way and the rooms. I should point out for anyone who has never spotted this sort of thing but these old mansions have fire places all over them: in this case, a fire in the entrance lobby; another one in the hall; at least another one would have been in what is now the mediation room ... Hence the need for a fire place maid. Keeping as many as 20, 30 ... 60 fires going must have been necessary at some times and that would have been a full time job! Had a marvellous time and the following day we took another walk round Halifax and the Piece Hall. Andrew needed a hair cut and we trolled him off to the £3 hair cut barber where they did the decent thing for him. There is an ice rink in the Piece Hall at the moment. What's the Piece Hall you might ask ...It's where weavers and traders would take their pieces of wool and worsted cloth for sale towards the end of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries. If ever you're near Halifax, it's worth taking a detour to take a look round it. The original building is still there in its entirety as far as I know and the various rooms are now home to all sorts of diversions. Thursday evening saw me visiting sister Fiona and enjoying a good cup of tea with her and her family. Then on to Kipling's Indian restaurant in Bradford for an excellent curry with sister Susan and her husband Neville. Another winner, recommended by Andrew who had to return to Salford as we tucked in! We turned up without a reservation and had to wait around 45 minutes but it was worth it. It is a small and popular place to eat. Ready for new year now although I've got to file my income tax return today and have to catch up with lots of other things too. DW

Videos made by me ... Every now and again I get an urge to try to be creative. I do this using a camera and some image maniuplation software. Since my video camera is kaput I am using my new 3.2Mpx phone camera and my 5.3Mpx digital camera to do my work. What I am doing it walking around with a particular aim in mind:

• trees in relief either at dawn or dusk
• Abingdon at Christmas
• the A34 (I know ... why on earth ... ?)

Then I put the entire batch of files through Ulead software and turn a series of snaps into a semi aninated film that has titles, overlays and a backing track. Marvellous! Three files are ready to share and you will be the first to know when I have uploaded them. Size matters of course and I have prodiced a DVD standard version of one file that comes to over 120Mb in size. I won't be uploading that I don't think! Let's enjoy Christmas now. DW

My first time ... This is the first time I have ever logged on to the internet on Xmas Day I think ... and after wishing everyone merry christmas I'd like to say that I spent a successful day yesterday avoiding the result of Strictly Come Dancing, a patheric programme on BBC television in which people described as celebrities learn to dance with people described as professional terpsichorists. We are then invited to gawp at them in awe. Through force of circumstances I watched a few of these a year or two ago and found the following:

• these people don't do badly if you like that sort of thing but who wants to watch it?
• the panel of judges are psycholically interesting subjects
• the audience hoots and bawls at every score given to every couple

Anyway, it's a knockout process and on Saturday they held the final. What I managed to avoid is the result. You won't believe it but this result made headline mainstream BBC news on the telly. Luckily, they they gave warnings that they were about to tell us the result and since remote controls have been invented I was able to press the button sufficiently quickly. Well done! DW

Just in time for Christmas ... I feel you need to know that after paying my mortgage without let or hindrance for five and a half years I came to realise that I have effectively lost £21,000 (around US$40,000) in wasted payments. That is purely from an historical cost convention perspective of course: taking the present value of money into account and it's a lot more. How come? Well, I thought I had an endowment mortgage with an interest only element. It's true that I've got an interest only element but what I thought was an endowment policy turns out to be a very, very expensive life assurance policy. At this stage I am just too shell shocked at this to ask how I got into this situation; but in it I am! The effect of this? I have paid the interest element of the mortgage every month for the five and a half years without fail and what I owed in 2001 I still owe with no diminution whatsoever. As for the endowment element, I have paid this without fail month after month and not only will this give me absolutely no return whatsoever at any stage apart from my death or the death of that woman who is about to leave my life but also the amount it will pay out is reducing as time passes. Can't believe it can you? Me neither. It seems that when I pop my clogs and they have to pay out, they won't even pay out the full amount either in spite of the massive payments I am making. I was caught a few years ago by these people but fortunately the amount of money involved then was relatively small. This time, I have lost five years' worth of payments and you can see the impact of it. Yours in sanguinity DW

A Christmas Carol After a couple of very disappointing Carol services I decided to spread my wings and ended up in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in the High Oxford. I am very glad that I went along last Sunday to their Carol Service: in fact, the service of nine lessons and carols. I sometimes put together a response to a happy event by writing a commentary as if I were an eight year old. I have done the same again for this service and I hope whoever reads it will receive it in the spirit in which is was written. --oo0oo-- A nice carol service I went to the big church in Oxford on Sunday to sing happy birthday to Jesus. Well, we didn't sing happy birthday really but daddy said it was the same thing. There were lots of people in the church and I really liked that because the singing was louder and better. I can read now but there were some things I didn't get. They said that there would be a trollope reading us a story but I thought she looked very nice and smart. I think it wasn't kind to say that Joanna was a trollope. Mr Mountford the vicar wasn't busy either. He put on a big shiny coat and said hello to everyone but then he just sat down all night until he said goodbye to us all. Daddy said he must be a good manager to get away with that. He said to mummy something like make the money work for you. I didn't get it though. I love all of these Carols and am really happy that God was able to write them for us. The stories we heard were a bit odd weren't they because they weren't all about Jesus and the manger and the donkey. Daddy said I'll understand one day. A man called Professor told us one story and daddy said it would have been better if his name had been Stephen instead of Richard. Then he would be called S Pring. I didn't get it but daddy laughed. I liked his silver hair. It's like my grandads hair. Mrs Mountford read us the first story about Jesus and daddy said, keep it in the family Vicar. The handbells were lovely and I have asked Santa to get me a set now. Daddy said you'll be lucky. I hope so! I liked the way the boys all looked very serious when they were ringing their bells. They don't look so serious at school do they? Why did we only clap when the children did something? I wanted to clap when the choir sang but daddy said it's their job so best to keep quiet and not to make a fuss. Mummy said it's because he's from the North. I didn't get that. When we sang o come al ye faithful I did something scary. I sang o come let us adore him all three times every time. I didn't like that Herod man in the stories because he frightened me. Daddy said don't worry as it was all a long time ago and Jesus beat Herod anyway. That was the best carol service I have been to and I'm only eight. I liked the vicar's coat best and I also liked singing once in royal david's city especially when the choir sang the first part. That's why I wanted to clap. --oo0oo-- Well done everyone! Duncan Williamson

Oldest printed document ... and the Abingdon connection Let me shamelessly rip this from our National Archives. This is the first item printed in England. It was made by William Caxton, who introduced printing into England. It is an indulgence - a certificate written in Latin and issued by the Church. It gave the person who received it a reduction in the time that they had to spend in Purgatory (the place where souls were thought to go after death to spend time suffering before going on to heaven). John, Abbot of Abingdon, signed this indulgence for a couple called Henry and Katherine Langley. William Caxton was born in Kent in 1421 and worked abroad as a diplomat and merchant. While in Europe, he became interested in the new technology of printing developed by Johannes Gutenberg during the early 1450s. Caxton returned to England and set up a printing shop near Westminster Abbey. He printed over 100 books before his death in 1491, including Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'. The design of the flat bed wooden hand-press used in Caxton's printing house remained the same, except for minor changes, for over 350 years. In the printing process, ink was spread over the raised surfaces of individual metal letters held within a frame. The printer then pressed this against a sheet of paper, screwing down the press by hand. Printing presses were first invented in the Rhineland in Germany. The craftsmen there were used to building grape presses for making wine and applied the same methods to building printing presses.Printing revolutionised life in Western Europe. Previously, all manuscript books had to be copied out carefully and slowly by hand. This was very expensive. Now it was quick to make lots of copies of books. This meant that books circulated faster. People had easier access to new ideas and new views of the world. Early printing copied the look of manuscript books, which is why Caxton's indulgence looks like it has been written by hand. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/museum/item.asp?item_id=9 DW

She's done it again: well done Fran! Fran's won Gold at the Worlds in Durban. Fastest in the heats and clear winner by 4 seconds in the final. Bloody well done, gel! The medal will look a bit like this one! A proud and doting dad! DW

Fran Pulls it off ... again! Daughter Fran is going great guns in Durban, South Africa, at the IPC Swimming World Championships. Seeded 5, she won the SILVER medal with a cracking time in her first race. Details follow and I hope the layout of the graphics that follow look good: DW

The Straits Times 266 pages in nine parts: a mighty newspaper for a Saturday morning. The adverts caught my eye, I have to say: the news is fine but rather parochial for the most part and of only passing interest for an erstwile nomad like me. 45,000 people have signed up for the free wifi broadband service now opening up across Singapore. 600 hot spots started up yesterday and there will be 4,400 more by September next year. Read about it here. Those adverts, then: digital products are definitely the order of the day. Of the 40 pages in the first section of today's edition

• there are mobile phone adverts on pages 2, 3, 4, 13, 17 (this advert for Sony Ericsson is ruined by including a large mug shot of that odious Robbie Williams), 18, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 35, 36, 38
• there are adverts for other digital products on pages 5, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 29, 30, 32, 34

I must say that there are some really good looking bargains here too. DW

BBC World? Wouldn't give you tuppence for it! The BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation? Don't think so. Along with all other news services that I know of, BBC World has a strapline running across the bottom of the screen that keeps us up to date with latest developments. It's filled with stories to keep us interested or keen to learn more. So, Sport come up and I fully expect the first cricket story to tell us the lastest score in the world's most important match going on at the moment ... The Ashes. No, they start with India and South Africa. So, it's the second story, then: no, that's reserved for the Pakistan WIndies match. Then there is no third cricket story. I really can't believe it. It took them years even to begin acknowledging the English football league so cricket clearly has a long way to go. Singapore's cloudy this morning: just thought I'd tell you that. I'm reading Alan Bennett's Untold Stories at the moment and although it's a tome, a lot of it keeps the interest but I have just read two shocking chapters in which he talks about the art wot he likes. Truly shocking. I should finish the book 'ere long and will review it in full then. DW

The course in Singapore has ended now and it went quite well. Not perfectly as the needs of the delegates and the content of the course didn't match perfectly. However, the spirit in the room was good at all times. Well done and let's hope I'm invited back for more. Went to the local IT mall again and bought a gift for someone. Well done again! I learned that those oafs from the House of Commons blagged their way over here on a "fact finding mission" to study Singapore's ERP, congestion charge system. It has taken me two conversations with two taxi drivers to sort it out. I could have told them all they need to know. Every car and bus and lorry and motor bike is fitted with a card and receiver/transmitter. Every time it goes into the charging zone it clicks off the relevant price: time zoned. If you try to beat the system by "forgetting" to put your card in the reader, your transmitter sends a signal and you are awarded an automatic S$10 fine. Well done! I'm in the middle of receiving almost 3,000 messages for some reason and it will not be stopped. Singapore needs 15,000 extra workers over the next three years so the feelers are out and you will be offered permanent residency if you are suitable and accepted. Civil Servants here are about to be paid a 2.7 month bonus for their hard work and efficiency. Ahem, imagine the bonuses to be paid over in Blighty: negative. Sorry, couldn't resist!! All employees here pay 25% of their salary to pay for their housing when they need it and their pension for later on. So, start paying in when you're 18 and then take out a mortgage when you are ready to put down roots ... If you want to own a car you have to buy a permit and that can cost upwards of S$10,000 (£3,333) and that's just for permission to buy and it's in addition to the car itself. You will then pay the equivalent of £300 - 400 a year road funlicensece. Want wifi for your laptop? Come to Singapore as they have just opened up the first batch of the planned thousands of Statewide FREE wifi hot spots. The freebies will be available to anyone who signs up for three years. After three years the funding runs out but who knows, someone could well pick up the bill from then on. Just a few things I discussed with my taxi drivers today. DW

So what's this then? Well, a prize for the first right anwer: DW

How about this, then? A representation of the wife ... Bangkok Airport Thailand Nov 2006. Three headed monster! Hope I won't be punished for that now! DW

Wouldn't you just want to hear this over the public address system? Welcome to Singapore everyone on Wednesday 29th November where the local time is 2:55 pm and the temperature outside is 32 degree centigrade, that's 89 degrees Fahrenheit. I did, this afternoon, on arrival from Bangkok where I have just presented a successful training course. Doing the same here too. Here's me out on Orchard Road this evening, in front of some of the Christmas decorations that are festooning the city. Firstly, the picture refused to upload even though it said it had! I'm trying again. Secondly, as if to be punished for showing off, I received a phone call last night from someone in the UK who didn't know I am in Singapore ... At 1:40 am. I then couldn't get back to sleep for a couple of hours. Sorry, I didn't mean to gloat. However, there is an IT mall here that would go down a storm anywhere in the UK. Moreover, that mall has a bookshop with the biggest selection of business books I have ever seen anywhere. In another part of the mall there is the biggest and best collection of computer books I have ever seen anywhere too. What a place! Let's try that picture again. DW

My Reading Trip I wrote a long post yesterday on this topic and lost it. Let me try again. Whenever I go to Reading by car I get lost. Always have and probably always will and I can't explain why. Yesterday was no exception and this happened: after an hour of driving around I stopped the car and asked a lady for directions: she was wearing two hearing aids and tried very hard to help me asked a Scottish lady who didn't know where I should be but exclaimed that the layout of streets around there was a disgrace drove on again and asked a security guard: he knew where I wanted to go but I'm convinced he missed out a few turns and I ended up where ... a student type gave me a long list of twists and turns to send me towards a school that had the same name as the House I was going to ... I think he was the nearest ... but most vague a man who told me he'd lived round there for years and have never heard of my destination the porter in a nearby office block who knew where I wanted to go but whose directions I managed to mangle I then drove to and parked at the Oracle: I know it and I thought it gave me a good chance. Decided to call my destination only to find that my mobile phone battery was dead. No phone charger in my car. Set off to find a pay phone: got there to find I'd left the phone number in the car. Went to the O2 shop and bought an in car charger for the phone. Called my destination and the receptionist I was going to see told me that she walked to work and couldn't guide me in. She transferred me to the lady who had organised what I was going there for and she started by announcing that she was in a meeting RIGHT NOW but after asking if I could walk there from the Oracle, she said I could and gave me some landmarks. Now got to the Information desk in the Oracle where another Jock was eager to help. After saying that I was looking for Deloittes the accountatnts he asked what a dee loyt was as he'd never heard of one!! Honestly! Anyway, he set me off on the right track but I still couldn't fnd the building althougha t one time I was within 75 metres of it. I went into another office block and asked another porter for help and even though he was so near he didn't know for certain. He told me to go through a glass arch across the way ... he should have told me to go through the STONE arch a little further down the way! After TWO hours of being in Reading I found my destination and did what I went there to do. All I was doing was collecting some booklets and it took me less than ONE MINUTE to do that. That's life! DW

You can see from the dates on earlier posts just how long it is since I posted on this version of my blogger blog. My intervening blog disappeared about a week or so ago and I decided to come back to blogger since I know it behaves much better now than it used to. I went on a trip to Reading in Berkshire today and it was a nightmare. To cap it all, the long post I wrote about that trip has disappeared into the ether too. It was good as well. Anyway, I'm back with a blog and firing on all cylinders again. DW

Mine

This Blog has been behaving badly. I just want you to know that exciting things are happening but I've not been able to tell you about them. Looks OK now though. Keep reading! DW

HOOOOOORRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY! Daughter Fran's going to Athens to compete for the GB team in the Paralympics in September. Bloody well done girl!! Your adoring Dad DW

Just applied for a job: won't say for what or where since it could scupper my chances; but see if you agree with me that their thanks for applying message could be a tad more friendly and reassuring. First the original then my initial suggestion for change. Thank you for your application for a position with ... We regret that owing to the volume of applications, we will be contacting only applicants short-listed for an interview. The selection process may take up to three months to be completed and no information on applications will be released during this period. However we advise you to check the status of the selection process on our website at the following address ... Why not try something like this instead? Thank you for your application for a position with ... Successful candidates will be invited to attend an interview; but please be patient because our selection processes can take up to three months to complete. Please note that no information on applications will be released; but you can check the status of the selection process on our website at the following address: DW

Dave wrote this: I was reading the combinations/permutations area of your web page and have a query. You mention that if a bank was allocating 4 digit pins then the number of possible pin numbers would be 5040. I don't understand why. If they can have 0000,0001.....9999, then why are there not 10,000 possible numbers? i.e. 9999 + 1 for 0000 any help would be great cheers dave Good question Dave that shows that I didn't explain that bit of that page fully, so I added a couple of examples to help out. Take a look at my Permutations and Combinations page to see the improvements I made. Thanks for helping out, Dave. DW

A problem that arises once a month or so is that someone writes to me with a question or other request which I deal with only to find that the email address they gave me doesn't work. Come on down OEMKY! Oemky wrote to ask for a spreadsheet but when I sent it, whoosh it came back. In case the in box was full at the other end I wrote again to ask them to empty their in box or provide an alternative address but whoosh that came back too. Please provide a valid email address for all replies, please. DW

Another unsolicited testimonial came in from a satisfied customer yesterday evening. Jerry said: Thank you! What more do I need to say! I have been in test engineering for years now and have been dodging to learn statistical maths for along time now! I have worked with various maths including differential equations and some FFT equations. My previous company was low volume wafer (Research and only program managers who tried to save their programs would do statistical maths) I could simply depend on trouble shooting on a real time bases, one by one real time failures. Now that I am in the Market, Test Engineers like myself have to know statistical maths and bell curve troubleshooting. Even though I could make an argument that they need to depend on common logic (circuit debugging and practical knowledge) for failure analysis. Test engineers in today's world need to analyze failure by measured percentages and how to rectify the numbers. I give in and here is my thanks to you. After reading the simple version on Mr. Niles I ran across your web site and found your problems. Ye old familiar symbol of sigma and found the maths not to complex. It seemed very similar in averaging Impedances in complex conjugates. Anyhow I simulated my own data sets of Currents for applied voltages of VBEE simulating some failures and BAM. I am ready to trouble shoot in series now. Just wanted to thank you for easy explanation. Aw, I've come over all embarrassed and shy! DW

Another gap in my literary ambitions. Here are a couple of things, though. Firstly, yesterday was sunny and fairly warm so I was able to tart up part of the garden. Then it lashed it down and I felt happy that I'd beaten the weather. Today was very wet again, which is just about par for a British Bank Holiday, as was today. Then the sun came out late in the afternoon. At which juncture I took to draining the hot water tank since it has been dripping for too long and I was living in fear of it leading to damp in the living room. Done and dusted now with no perceptible problems! Take a look at this that I came across and put together for a discussion list for teachers of business and economics: Anyone interested in some aspects of real live cost accounting, activity based costing in the Royal Mail in particular? There, that’s got rid of most of them! Here’s an ABC case study that is based on a topical issue, has excellent resources available completely free of charge, will enhance understanding of an ABC debate and can use role play as a central vehicle for learning, comprehension, application, analysis and synthesis. The case concerns the application of cost driver analysis and application at, wait for it, the Royal Mail. Surprised that a State owned organisation is using its information and logistical system properly? Be surprised no more and take a look at this page (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3660571.stm) from the BBC to see how the Royal Mail has realised that the weight based cost driver for letters and packets is no longer appropriate as the basis for calculating selling prices: maybe it was never appropriate. So now they have moved to a volume based cost/price mechanism and this proposal is known as Sized Based Pricing (SBP). Get the students to find out who and what Postcomm is since the Royal Mail applied to Postcomm in August 2003 for them to consider this change. The time frame for this review must be excruciatingly slow for the Royal Mail as it has taken until now for Postcomm to begin the process proper. In this Crown Copyright PDF dated 27 April 2004, http://www.postcomm.gov.uk/documents/competition/SBPsummary.pdf (Royal Mail’s Proposal to Introduce Size Based Pricing A Summary Document April 2004) Postcomm says: Following this further work, there will be a second consultation document, which will set out the responses to the first consultation and give Postcomm’s proposed decision on whether, and if so how, SBP should be introduced. It will also focus on the cost justification for Royal Mail’s proposal. Royal Mail will be required, amongst other things, to demonstrate that implementing its proposal would lead to prices that are more closely in line with its costs than the present weight-based pricing structure. The cost information provided so far by Royal Mail has not been sufficiently robust for Postcomm to reach a decision on this issue. The above PDF sets out the Royal Mail case for change: ideal lesson materials in which the students can be given paragraphs 6 – 10 and then analyse them with respect to the Royal Mail proposals for applying their case for change in paragraphs 11 – 17. Quite simply, the Royal Mail is saying that costs vary more in proportion to volume than they do to weight. You could set up some basic exercises to demonstrate this effect if you wished. There are further resources at Postcomm (http://www.postcomm.gov.uk/Index2.html), such as this Crown Copyright PDF file dated 26 April 2004, http://www.postcomm.gov.uk/documents/Media/042604SBPPN.pdf. (Royal Mail wants size to matter) In that file you can read that the proposed changes are designed to be revenue neutral … there’s some jargon to lighten up your lives. They also say: “These proposals would involve major changes. They mean that light but large mail such as very large greetings cards, CDs, rolls of photographic film, audio cassettes and video tapes, would cost more to post, but that some heavier items – books for example – would cost less. I hope as many people as possible will let us know what they think.” Royal Mail has suggested three sizes for a letter, a large letter and a packet.

• A letter is mail that would fit into an envelope 165mm x 240mm (approx 6½in x 9½in) and not more than 5mm (approx. 3/16 in) thick
• A large letter is mail that would fit into an envelope 250mm x 353mm (approx 9¾in x 14 in) and not more than 10mm (approx. 3/8 in) thick
• A packet is mail that either measures more than 250mm x 353mm or is thicker than 10mm.

If you worry at all about the consequences of interference in State owned organisations, take a look at what I think is an astounding paragraph in the document http://www.postcomm.gov.uk/documents/competition/SBPsummary.pdf (Royal Mail’s Proposal to Introduce Size Based Pricing A Summary Document April 2004) S19. Postcomm recognises, however, that Royal Mail’s proposal is a major change to its pricing structure. Its weight based pricing structure has been in place since the 19th century and many businesses and postal users have evolved their behaviour and business models to fit with this pricing policy. Is Postcomm really saying that because a pricing structure has been in place for over 100 years that it must stay in place irrespective of whether it is, or ever was, appropriate? Could be by the look of it. Postcomm have told us in their SBP Summary document that they have S29. Since Royal Mail’s application, Postcomm has met some trade associations (including the Greeting Cards Association, Intellect, the Mail Order Photofinishers Association, the Mail Users Association and the Periodical Publishers Association) and companies affected by Royal Mail’s SBP proposals. You can set up a three way role play in which students can take the role of

• the Royal Mail’s cost accountant
• Postcomm
• Trade Associations

and see what they can come up with. Marvellous! By the way, it's worth taking a look at the Postcomm pages since there are other reports that are worth downloading relating to this topic. Then there's this that I posted to the same discussion list later on in the same week: Two reports of note on our Public Libraries that will help to explain why the public sector might need a level of reform that is currently beyond comprehension. Tim Coates is a leading light in book selling and he has spent four years researching the ways in which our public libraries, in particular in Hampshire, are working. He tells us that only 9 pence in the £ spent on libraries comes back to us in the form of books: the rest is eaten up in admin and other things, some of which are useful for the end user and others aren’t. Similarly, Coates says that 20% of all money spent on Public Libraries is wasted. See Appendix 2 of the report for the financial data. Be very worried by these extracts from Appendix 3: acquisition costs A total of £2.0m of the total library service budget of £19-20m is probably spent on the Acquisition supply chain. The actual amount spent on books in the year 2003/4 will be £1.4m. Thus, the total cost of books and the various acquisition processes is £3.4m. In simple terms and after allowing for book purchase discounts, Hampshire spends over £24 every time it buys a £10 book. This is broadly in line with figures actually measured in other authorities. It is far too high a cost. Report pages 28 and 29 You can download Coates’ report from http://www.rwevans.co.uk/libri/downloads.htm. One statistic that Coates includes that is a candidate for the rubbish bin can be found on page 5 of his report: for HTML recipients of this message, here’s the graph he presents: Talk about believing all you read in the newspapers! Ask your students to say why the projections contained in this bar chart are probably rubbish. Sorry for the emotive language but I think it’s an irresponsible outburst of hyperbole on Coates’ part! Otherwise, the report is worth skimming for ideas for business and, of course, accounting: there are lots of management accounting ideas buried in this report. For a summary of the report, see yesterday’s Daily Telegraph: sorry I didn’t take a note of the page but I did scan the article for my own purposes should anyone want to borrow it! Charles Leadbeater has also written on the subject of Public Libraries, for Demos this time; and his report, which is nowhere near as comprehensive as Tim Coates’ report, is also available for download free of charge at http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/default.aspx?id=262 DW

Long time no Blog ... two weeks since anyone was able to read my tripe. In that time I have worked long and hard for little reward and received a set back to my career aspirations. No doubt life will add another element either to cover that or not as the case may be. At long last I have reformatted my desktop hard disk and reclaimed the majority of the 40Gigabytes that had just about been lost. Although it took me the best part of a day to secure all email addresses, bookmarks, email messages and other personal files (for me and the family) and then reformat and reinstall the software, it should be worth it. Had a small blip where the blessed thing would only want to boot from the CD-ROM drive in spite of BIOS changes to the contrary; but a good night's sleep and a reading of a book on Windows XP sorted that out. Ab initio, setting up a network is a real breeze: let Windows find the network at installation time and it seems completely free of all stress and nerves. However, trying to access the host computer's Windows Explorer directories from the guest desktop didn't go smoothly yesterday. Reading from laptop to desktop, however, was easy. All users have now been banned from installing anything with my say so: anything I find that I don't like will be deleted immediately. That's for the benefit of young Master D who is guilty of the most massive transgressions in this direction. Mrs W adds about a Kb a day and little more, on average! DW

I've started attacking my lawn again: mown the front lawn twice already and the back lawn once. Sonic came to call, too, last night. Here's Sonic and then the before and after back lawn pics! Sonic, although I hideously badly typed Sonics: Back Lawn before: Back Lawn after: DW

Went to Gloucester today with the family and spent some time in Gloucester Cathedral: Harry Potter is partly filmed in its cloisters. A lovely huge cathedral it is too. Worth a visit if you collect cathedrals! Some pics of the very Harry Potter cloissters for you: DW

The laptop's doing well so far, fingers crossed. A virus got in a wreaked havoc but I sorted it in the end. It was a Trojan that mainstream anti virus programs couldn't cure: CWShredder did for it, though! DW

Guess who came back to stay? My laptop ... hurray! Cost me a small fortune which someone said I should really have avoided by buying a brand new laptop and selling this one for scrap. Had the cost of the repair been just a little bit more, that could have been sagely advice and next time will see me taking that course of action. Laptops are brilliant as they provide oceans of flexibility in a tiny package but when they go wrong: it's really difficult to find someone even prepared to look at them let alone fix them spares are hideously expensive I suppose the expense comes from the idea that most laptops are owned and run by businesses/business people so their repairs are paid for out of business funds and not private pockets. Take a look at the desktop market now where there are full PC systems with Pentium 4 technology for as little as £299 inc VAT. However, the laptop came back with software called Roxio installed and large as life on the desktop and it came along with the wuamgrd.exe laden virus. Instantly I started getting problems and I thought that they hadn't fixed the bloody machine despite having a new battery and Pentium Processor. I ran my anti virus software but it found nothing that could explain what was happening; but then I found that wuamgrd.exe was running. Now I carried out a web search and learned that it was a little known virus that most anti virus checkers don't know about. Decided that it came along with Roxio so uninstalled that software and hey presto, no more wuamgrd.exe. You definitely need your wits about you these days. Speaking of viruses I am pleased now that I have got Office 2003 back as Outlook 2003 deals with viral messages and junk mail really effectively: almost seamlessly. Now I don't even need to look at these pox ridden messages as Outlook does it all for me. Trying to get my backup done with a DVD writer in the desktop, now there's another story! Happy easter! DW

Fingers crossed, knock on wood, don't tempt fate ... the horrific error 404 hits that I was getting on my site seem to have stopped all of a sudden. No idea why but I've been clean since February according to my web stats pages over at my ISP. You should have seen the numbers. When I investigated, though, I found that they came from such things as a spacer.gif file being out of place and miniscule things such as that. I have a nice new 404 page too, by coincidence: I built a couple of nice looking, albeit amateur, graphics for the page. Worth making a mistake just to have a look see! Anyway, I fixed a few and you lot helped me to find other things so well done to anyone who helped. Aaaah the relief! Hope they don't come back, now. DW

Have you noticed, surely you can't have failed to notice, that those inadequate young boys who wear baseball caps indoors and have jeans with crotches hanging round their arses are at it again? Hundreds of viral messages are pouring into my email account every week now. As if I'm really taken in by their convincing and witty entreaties to open their pox ridden files and have my computer flooded with their own version of whatever it is that turns them on. I really don't want to have to change my email addres but I've done it before and may need to do it again. This is all in addition to the spam that tells me I needn't pay a creditor again; how Uncle Sam will provide me with free property; don't I just love Java coffee; Viagra ... it's better than viagra. And so on. They are all dumped before I even see them once I have their subject or email account in my Junk folder. Waste of time and effort I'm afraid. DW

I recently applied for some part time work at a college not a million miles away from where I live. There was a formal advertisement in newspapers and elsewhere and even though I only learned about the job about 18 hours before the deadline for applications, meet the deadline I did. After about 10 days I received a reply to the extent that Unfortunately you were not succesful at this time. What on earth did they mean at this time? Now meaningless as that sentence was, I have latterly been trained to question such decisions so I called the man at the centre of this case to be told that even though the post had been advertised and so on, they had found someone in the meantime so my application had been in vain ... in other words, the whole process had been a sham. Whilst I do not intend to make more of a fuss than I am making here, I do find such cases distasteful as we are dealing with a publicly owned organisation together with a complete waste of resources that include my own time and effort. I listened to the man as he unveiled his side of the story and thanked him for his time. Let it be a lesson to us all: Britain's public services are operated in a questionable way at times and I remember the good old days when such things were unthinkable. The trade union would not have allowed this kind of thing to happen, let alone the rules of conduct of the College and the Local Authority that manages it. Thought I should tell you that! DW

Know what this is? TaTshhhh ... t ... t ... tsk ... tsk ... tsh ... tsh ... t ... t ... tsk ... tsk ... tsh ... tsh ... It's the sound you can hear when sitting on a bus or train or walking down the street and someone in the vicinity is playing music through headphones via their MP3 player, CD player ... they MUST be making themselves deaf. Pardon? DW

I walked from the centre of Oxford to Summertown yesterday and whilst it's only around 20 minutes of a hike, my feet were killing me by the time I got back to tne centre. Just goes to show. I walk rather than drive where I can but I don't normally walk in my office shoes these days. Hence, switching from walking in trainers to my stout shoes was shock to my poor system. The strain of a 40 minute round trip was of no consequence: I'm fit enough for that and more. Hobbledehoy isn't in it! I will persevere and I will win through! DW

This message just came in from a happy reader: Duncan, It's Michael ... from the States. I used the formulas you suggested in your website to create a spreadsheet in excel for my data analysis on my Dissertation. I showed my Major Professor your work and how I created a spreadsheet from what you had posted. Needless to say he was quite impressed. If you do not mind, when I publish my work, I would like to acknowledge you in the acknowledgment section of my dissertation. I do research in the area of hormonal response to stress over time. Your website has made this process much more simple. Thank you again, Michael ... B.S., M.S., CSCS, PhD. candidate Isn't that nice? See the safe hands you're in at www.duncanwil.co.uk? DW

This message speaks for itself: Dear Doug, I found my way to your page and think it’s excellent. I work in education and often come across signs on notice boards like this: PLAGIARISM No All your own work: Yes Then there may be warnings of dire consequences for the plagiarist … but with no guidance on how to work properly and effectively. Your paper takes us a long way from the notice board to a much better deal for student and assessor alike. I will be posting this message on my WeBlog at if that’s OK with you. Best wishes DW

The AQA A level Business Studies resources are selling well and comments recieved include this gem from Tim: OK, got the information and have downloaded the files. I will make a further donation in recognition of your hard work and the useful service provided. Very many thanks, Tim Sue said Chris your cases study sounds really cheap. We'll buy one in a few days. DW

Friday 26 March and I drove up to The Belfry near Birmingham. That's the golf course and hotel complex. Now you know that gold and I are incompatible bedfellows but I was there to present my Product costing system at the ACCA's Spring Update for Accountants. I attracted around 70 of the 83 delegates to the conference with the others attending parallel sessions. I think it went well and having spent ages preparing it, I was happy with the outcome. I timed the session to perfection, too, as I finished with 30 seconds to spare! That's good for me, that is! I took my camera with me but didn't take any snaps. I also stayed for the Beyond Budgeting seminar that ended the day in my stream and that was interesting too. Well done and thanks to the ACCA for inviting me! DW

If you are teaching A level Business Studies with the AQA Board in sight, take a look at this, you NEEEEED it. Duncan Williamson and Chris Sivewright's Business Studies Resources and how to get at them What's here: AQA ScrewLoose Ltd A Level Business Studies Summer 2004 Examination Detailed analysis and commentary on the case study providing you with the following resources: Duncan Williamson's analysis and commentary Chris Sivewright's analysis and commentary Vocabulary and key words Mind Map Graphics: PowerPoint Presentation file If you want to get at these resources you need to go here first and once you have paid and been given your password details, you'll be back! All proceeds from the sale of these resources are going to help people with Dystonia, look here for further details. DW

Good grief, two weeks since I last ranted and blethered here. Did you miss me? Well no one wrote and said they missed me so I asume that you didn't. Won't stop me though. The laptop's still at the mender's but today's good news is that they think it's NOT the motherboard that's causing the problem. Phew! That would have been expensive. Now they think it's a memory problem. Truth is, I bought a new memory chip myself before I sent the thing back last time and it still fell over when I put that in: is that one faulty too? I've been without this laptop so long that I don't miss it any more even though I was using Office 2003 ONLY on that, I was writing another blockbuster book on it, I use it in the evening when young Master D uses this desktop ... When it comes back in full apple pie order I'll still be happy. I now have a new web site ... I'm hosting it on this desktop but I have a non fixed IP address that has to be sorted out so just wait a while longer. I'm thinking of putting this blog on it so that I can keep full control of it. I don't control half of this blog if the truth be told. The weather's warmish for March but sunny then cloudy then chucking it down ... in circular waves! DW

Can anyone answer this for me? When did a Professor of X become a Professor in X? Just curious as it's another language annoyance that's getting my goat! DW

What are you waiting for? I have written a report in defence of the world's richest and most famous football club, Manchester United. They were the subject of a series of questions recently aimed at exposing the club's accounting practices. I looked into some of the questions and found that Man U was squeaky clean. Go to http://www.duncanwil.co.uk/finacc/manu99.html and buy my 11 page, detailed analysis for just £5. You'd be foolish not to! DW

Thanks to Alan Cosgrove, the latest duncanwil.co.uk visitor to find and report one of the site's dead links. Not only did Alan find and report the dead link but when I still couldn't find it he sent me a screen shot and further details. Well done Alan! Anyone who's tried to go to http://duncanwil.co.uk/spread.htm and then my page on Building a Trial Balance using a Pivot Table in Excel but failed, fail no more as Alan has shown the way. The link works now: if you're interested, I'd created the menu item and ended it with .html.html ... obviously only .html was needed! Thanks again Alan and to everyone who reports my dead links. DW

I am now a mega TV star! Well, I spent part of yesterday at Channel 4 Studios in central London being interviewed by the Einstein Network. The topic of my intereview was the work I did in the former Soviet Union on product cost systems development. If I say so myself it went well and I think I acquited myself well enough. I've appeared on the telly before but never in a formal setting such as this and it was an interesting experience, of course. It will be interesting to see how they turn the interview into the finished article: the interview plus a study pack. The interview was taped as if it were live; start, carry on and finish with no interrruptions and then finish. The interviewer was very good as she received her script just before I went in and although she was using a teleprompt for her questions, she put some life and soul into her performance! DW

Are you following the Disney and Dell Top Job split stories? Up until this week both companies had one person doing both Chairman and CEO jobs: Michael Eisner was forcibly ousted from one half of his portfolio earlier this week and now Dell’s founder Michael Dell has [voluntarily] announced that wef 16 July he will hand over the CEO job to someone else. Remember corporate governance? Combining the two jobs is seriously frowned on here in the UK so for students it may be worthwhile reviewing this issue as it’s still fresh: what better background than Mickey Mouse, too? DW

Last week I pointed out that the UK government has announced that it is to let market forces determine the future of executive pay packages but that the EU is considering further investigation into whether it feels that legislation in this area is needed. From the USA now comes this, hauntingly familiar, headline: Will the Government Legislate Executive Pay? Apparently, William McDonough, the chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board warned that the US government could intervene to control executive compensation if company managers do not. Meanwhile in Wednesday’s Daily Telegraph there was the story about the CEO of Bradford and Bingley who is about to move to take charge of Visa International, the credit card company. The DT quoted B&B chairman Rod Kent as saying “This answers the doubting Thomases in the fat cat debate who do not believe there is an international executive pay market. McDonough told a meeting of the Economic Club of Chicago it would be good riddance if a chief executive quit because his or her pay was being cut. I would turn to the directors and point out that there are lots of fine people in America, many of them in this room, who would be happy to be CEOs at more rational levels of income, said McDonough, according to the report. More food for thought! DW

I'm deeply grateful to Ian Baker for this cartoon and hope that everyone enjoys it. DW

Saurabh wrote to me from India last week with a plea for help on calculating machine hour rates. I replied to the efect that she should go to a factory and ask them all about it since she is doing a Master's degree and should be able to cope with that. She replied: Thanks for sending reply. Firstly i was confused about calculating Machine Hour Rate (MHR) as therotical and practical are different.I have collected information about MHR in local indian books. But when i visited one small scale industry I came to the conclusion that it was different to what was written in books. 1] MHR = FIXED COST + VAR COST. Var.cost includes costs like power, heating etc.S ome authors prefer to add wages but some don't consider it. What is the correct way? 2] while calculating fixed costs, how to calculate building cost? In the Books generally final amount is given. Here's my response: 1 Remember that books often seem to be different to real life because books speak very generally about cost accounting whereas a business is very specific. Another problem is that some practising accountants aren't very sure about their theory and they can make mistakes! Look carefully at what you find and check that it really makes sense. Ask the accountant at the factory to explain why they do what they do. When I do real factory work, this is what I do! Some companies have no proper accountant so they do what they can even if it doesn't always make sense. They NEED an accountant but think they can't afford one. To answer the question of what are fixed and what are variable costs you need to consider the situation you are studying. Again, this is a problem with text books. Many authors simply copy what other authors have written and blindly write the same things without thinking about them. Take a look at my site for examples of fixed and variable costs. If you are not sure about the behaviour of costs in a real business, plot their total costs on a graph with output or sales on the horizontal axis and total costs on the vertical axis and it should give you an idea of fixed costs. If you're not sure about this, collect your data, send it to me and I'll show you what to do. Direct wages were always considered to be variable costs and probably they are on a unit by unit basis. However, many companies then realised that even when output if low, they have the same labour costs as when their output is higher ... their direct labour is partly fixed and they don't even realise it. Ask your company's management what really happens to their labour costs. 2 For this question are you asking what comprises building costs? Building costs are made up of such items as rent, property taxes, repairs and maintenance ... anything that you can directly associate with the building in just the same way as you can associate labour costs with labour and material costs with material. I hope these answer your questions. Let me know of any other problems you think I can help you with. Best wishes DW

Don't you just hate it when: you go to a web site for the second time, having set your user name and password on the first visit, only to be asked to input them again ... and again on the third visit ... and again on the nth visit? you go to a supermarket or other self service shop to find that a woman (never a man, note, unless he has tattoos, earrings and is wearing a baseball cap) is blocking the very shelf that you NEED with her body, her trolley (parked longitudinally and not latitudinally) and children if appropriate? That woman will then amble through the things she wants at turtle neck speed until she is comfortable. Don't you just feel like dashing to the local self protection shop to buy one of those 20,000 volt zappers, dashing back to the supermarket and zapping these oh so slow shoppers? The first of these just happened to me at Blogger.com for the umpteenth time and the second of them happened yesterday at Waitrose: not once, not twice but three times in one visit. Mrs W has a cold or flu and is incapacitated hence my reluctant retail experience. End of first rant for a while! DW

I've been busy at eBay recently and almost fell for a scam that could have wiped out all of my assets. I got an email from aw-confirm@ebay.com that asked me to update my eBay registration details. I have to confess that the message is unusual in terms of the grammar they use; but I won't reveal here what it is otherwise the thieves will change it for their own betterment. I did start filling in their online form until I spotted that they asked for my credit card details, eBay does that; but then they asked for the 4 Digit code used in ATMs. I KNOW that no self respecting organisation would ever ask me that: not even my bank does that. So I contacted eBay's security people and sent them the message's header and other information that just might lead to these awful people being put behind bars. If ever in doubt contact eBay's security team and send them everything they need then delete the spurious message and if by chance you have opened any web pages, close them without entering any details. DW

If you don't believe me, believe my customers. Here are two sets of unrelated comments that came in from a couple of my customers over the weekend: Firstly, The reason I like [your Introduction to Management Accounting ebook] is that your explanations are wonderful, even for someone Japanese like me. Secondly, I have had a quick look [at the Financiel statement Analysis ebook] and it seems to be very impressive - so impressive that I decided to buy your case study too. There, well worth the small amount of money they cost. DW

Don't wish to ofend anyone at all but I went to Cranfield University the other day and even though the University has an excellent reputation, it's a desolate looking place. Shoe box architecture and no mistake. Being situated smack bang next to an airfield makes life a bit more interesting I suppose. I had a massive shock the other day when the desktop opened up with all Windows text (icon titles, title bars in dialogiue boxes etc) all showing Wing Dings rather than text ... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhh! Panic, save all of my latest data files ... called Microsoft and found that somehow, some way, the Fonts entry in my registry had disappeared completely leaving the system with just three or four fonts. Couldn't be a virus since I'm well protected, couldn't be an attacker since I have a firewall, couldn't be the family ... or could it? Oh, the laptop died again. I reformatted the hard disk as advised but it died as I was building up my software base again. Still, for a short time it was nice to see 35 Giga bytes of space available on the hard disk! I'll keep you informed. DW

Want a few tips on what to read to mug up on business events and what they mean? Here's a couple of issues you might look at then: The NHS Eurotunnel The NHS This section is in two parts: pricing and then overall management Pricing A cost accountant's dream come true! The NHS has announced its strategy on average cost pricing today and I have put together a brief review of it. Moreover, the NHS has posted a wealth of information on their various sites. You can find my file here: it’s 291Kb in size. The NHS has also published their NHS Costing Manual that has some excellent real live information for cost accountants and for teachers of cost accounting. There's material enough here for hundreds of case studies and I am available to be sponsored (ie paid) to write at least some of them! There are many implications for economists in this initiative too. Anyway, a fascinating topic that could provide hours of endless mirth and merriment! Management There was a fascinating story in the Sunday Times yesterday (9 February 2004) entitled "How the new money is making the NHS sicker”. Although the author of the article spent 11 months shadowing various people in the NHS, including patients, a lot of the evidence seems anecdotal, in style at least. Still, it’s a chilling reminder that throwing money at a problem does not necessarily guarantee results. I think this is a great article for discussion providing you steer it away from the emotional and political side of things. Concentrate on · management · financial management · management structure · management of change · power shifts · tasks and roles within the NHS · and so on and you could have a cracking debate: you could even try role play! This article is available here and for those of you in London you can join the author at this do on Wednesday of this week: She's Not My Patient! Policy Exchange, Clutha House, 10 Storey’s Gate, London SW1P 3AY. Nearest tube stations Westminster and St James’s Park. 18:30, 11 February 2004 Management of the NHS Eurotunnel Eurotunnel celebrates the tenth anniversary of the tunnel itself this year but there seems to be little to shout about even though In the car shuttle business Eurotunnel had 47% of the market in 2002. The truck shuttle had a 41% market share, and coaches a 33% market share. From the Letter to Shareholders, see link below. The BBC reports Eurotunnel, the operator of the Channel Tunnel, has posted a 2003 net loss of £1.33bn after huge asset write downs. The BBC’s report hides the fact that Eurotunnel made a £170 million Operating Profit and a Net Loss of £34 million for 2003. The latest Eurotunnel letter to shareholders can be found here and it is a fascinating mixture of cold, hard business information and this: As you may have heard, a group of French shareholders led by Nicolas Miguet, a financial journalist with a criminal record, and Joseph Gouranton, leader of a small French shareholder activist group, have been attempting to force the company to call a shareholder meeting to dismiss your Board and the Group’s senior management. Good tips for writing endearing letters to one’s business colleagues! Note the barbs: Nationality Criminality Small Activist Forcing Dismiss Take a look at their latest report in PDF/Presentation and easy to read format where accounting buffs can read about an impairment of assets charge in accordance with FRS11 of £1.3 billion. The report explains the effects of the impairment charge and why it came about. Since the company is a British-French joint venture, you can even brush up votre Français as you read along. A bientôt DW

Along with all the other junk mail that hits my inbox, who is it that thinks that I desperately, many times a day, want to know all about 17 rich coffees; 17 flavor experiences? I like coffee but I don't need the stress of these adverts! The car battery died overnight and it cost me to get a man out to start the car for me and it cost me a lot to buy a new battery: well, a 3 litre engine takes some firing up! DW

A cost accountant's dream come true! The NHS has announced its strategy on average cost pricing today and I have put together a brief review of it. Moreover, they have posted a wealth of information on their various sites. They have also published their NHS Costing Manual that has some excellent real live information for cost accountants and for teachers of cost accounting. There's material enough here for hundreds of case studies and I am available to be sponsored (ie paid) to write at least some of them! There are many implications for economists in this initiative too. To download the pdf file I have now prepared go to my PDFs File page and click the relevant links. Anyway, a fascinating topic that could provide hours of endless mirth and merriment! DW

Good news on the computer front. My laptop has been repaired and the problem that caused the whole thing to go comatose? My brand spanking new version of Office 2003. When I get the computer and report I will consider whether to make a claim against Microsoft for time wasting, frustration, stress, loss of earnings ... My desktop has been saved. After numerous crashes over an extended period that seemed to get worse once I started using it (well, what's wrong with a bit of paranoia?) I eventually tracked it down to my Plextor CD R/RW drive. Proces of elimination got me there and whoopee! Can't write CDs until I get the laptop back, though and Master W is being profligate with our hard drive. I delete 1 Gb of stuff and he puts 2 Gb back on. Progress that hasn't spilled over onto the car yet. There's always something! DW

This is supposedly genuine: from a council house tenant to Islington (London) Council's Housing Department: This is to let you know that our lavatory seat is broken and we can't get BBC2 DW

Weekends come and weekends go but some just linger for ever. This weekend has seen this computer crashing every few minutes Mrs W catching a chill Master W losing his wallet/having his wallet stolen the fence between our house and next door blowing down This desktop computer (the laptop is away at the menders itself!) has taken to crashing at will on a very frequent basis now. It just hangs with no warning and no reason discernible as to why it crashes and what's causing it. I invested in System Mechanic and The Ultimate Troubleshooter software packages and given that and what we have noticed I took the following action: I have cleaned up the Registry every day for the last week I have stopped several background running routines I have tried to backup all sensitive data As a result of cleaning the registry I seemed to see that the CD ROM or DVD drives we have are causing more registry problems than anything so last night I disconnected both drives and will monitor progress. So far so good, touch wood, spit three times ... Such a situation leads to frustration on a grand scale and to paranoia. Every major task is under threat. We have wasted a few CD disks as we have tried to backup our data and whilst some disks have been written successfully others have suffered a mid write crash and have been ruined. If I could pin this down to Microsoft I could very well start an action against them for wasting time, for wasting resources, for stress and duress. I think more of us should do that, by the way: take these computer wasters to task more often. As a major victim at the moment I am seething every time we suffer a crash and yet we have no idea of how to resolve the issue. The only good news is that by systematically watching the crashing process, we MIGHT have tracked down the source. If it's a hardware problem that could be relatively OK since there is nothing that new in or attached to this desktop: computer itself is three years old, CD Drive the same, DVD drive two years old, printer two years old, monitor 7 years old ... SOFTWARE is a different story since I run Office and Windows XP with all updates and service packs, I am running the latest anti virus package and many of my drivers are new and up to date. Mrs W is a bad patient so she is on her last legs according to herself! Master W was gallivating with a young lady as he lost his wallet and only realised his problem as he got to the stage of buying her a drink ... Yorkshire or what? Our next door neighbour kindly took the fence issue in hand and rebuilt it for us. I helped by doing a tiny amount of hammering right at the end. Well done Paul! That was the weekend end then apart from having baked yet another glorious ginger cake ... email me for the recipe as it's so simple yet so delicious! DW

Do you ever wonder about how big things can get? Remember when Bill Gates famously said that a computer with 640 kilobytes of memory would be all that we would ever need? He was forgetting about Microsoft's capacity for writing ballooning software and storage routines! Anyway, 1 kilobyte represents 1,024 binary digits (bits) of data and here are some monsters to think about. Bear in mind that people often write 1Kb as 1,000 bytes and to keep things simple and that's what you're about to see here Kilobyte (Kb) 1,000 bytes 2 Kilobytes: A Typewritten page Megabyte (Mb) 1,000,000 bytes 1 Megabyte: A small novel OR a 3.5 inch floppy disk Gigabyte (Gb) 1,000,000,000 bytes 1 Gigabyte: a pickup truck filled with books Terabyte (Tb) 1,000,000,000,000 bytes 1 Terabyte: 50,000 trees made into paper and printed. Petabyte (Pb)1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes 1 Petabyte: 3 years of EOS data (2001) Exabyte (Eb) 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes 2 Exabytes: Total volume of information generated in 1999 See this page for the source of that fabulous information. What next? DW

I'm working myway through a Russian State Television series called The Brigade. The Brigade is a Russian Mafia programme that has the most awful English subtitles I've ever seen and whilst the storyline is not as good as it might be, here are the reasons why it's worth watching it doesn't glamourise gangsterism the life of organised crime is brutal shameless ruthless gangsters are always looking over their shoulders the families of gangsters are, whether they like it or not, part of the gang This series has acquired cult status in the Russian speaking world as far as I can tell and I know of head teachers who have had to go round every class in their school and ask "Is there is Brigade in this room?" in an attempt to quell the quasi gangsterism that early teens can dream up. Thought I'd tell you that. I don't know if it's available in the UK but I'm told that it's going down a wow in the USA. DW

What is Game Theory? That was a question that appeared on a discussion list that I subscribe to. Here is what I replied: There’s a page here that gives a decent review of game theory and it provides links to various other sites around the web. Good for you but will need editing for students. If you’re looking for examples, case studies, relating to the various aspects of Game Theory that students might enjoy, why not take a look at this page that has a series of examples taken from films and television programmes: mostly American but some British and all excellent. The language is definitely undergrad but some editing would sort it out I think. There are online tests and some film and television clips too although I haven’t looked at any of them. DW

Ever heard of the Nebra Disc? Neither had I until I watched last night's Horizon programme on the BBC. This is what it looks like this is an astronomical interpretation of it, albeit still encoded and here is the BBC's page that summarises the issue Follow the links on that BBC page and search www.google.co.uk for other references to the world's oldest known observatory record. DW

I made the weather sit up and think, then. Last night the snow came heaving down in a way not seen in these parts for a while. All you need to do is moan a bit! There was an immediate but brief thaw and then a refreeze so that made driving and walking a bit tricky! Last night Mrs W openly suggested that I should be ready to give young Master W a lift to school (10 minutes from home on the hoof!) and I suggested it wouldn't be needed. This morning guess who chanced his arm by lolling in bed until 7:50 when he needs to be up and about by 7:30? Well for me the walk would have been OK but he sauntered in to the office straight from his bed and asked for a lift I said it wasn't needed. He came back later when dressed and asked again so I referred him to his mother: she said I could take him. I harumphed a bit and then the roof fell in. Suffice it to say that no one drove anywhere and someone has taken up residence in the house in which a dog normally resides! A clue: it isn't Mrs W or Master W who is sharing the canine quadruped's humble abode. I'm off to the library now. Anyone care to join me? Such is life! I haven't exactly been flooded with offers of work from you lot so where are you? The donation begging bowl is till out, too, so get rid of your loose change by throwing it in my direction. DW

Winter's arrived in some parts of the UK. The weather men have been forecasting howling gales and lashing seas for a while. So far, I can still go outside in my flip flops and cardie! There are pictures coming down from the North showing solid white rain (that's snow!) and slithering vehicles but here in outstanding Oxfordshire we are immune. Mrs W went for a hospital appointment on Monday and you can read the update to my file that has kept a record of her saga here. Want to see my name in other peoples' lights, again? Have a look here then! DW

The UK has a streak running through it that makes me wonder how sane we are. I've mentioned Charles Ingrams before: he's the former army Major who was found guilty of attempting to defraud London Weekend Television out of £1 million by cheating on their Who wants to be a millionaire programme: GUILTY in a court of law. Ingrams was then found to have attempted to defraud an insurance company out of £30,000 I think it was. GUILTY of attempted fraud. In this week's Radio Times I see that Ingrams is being flown out to Australia to appear as a "celebrity" in the ITV programme I'm a celebrity get me out of here. I also understand he will receive £25,000 by way of a fee. Then there is the British student who told security officials at Miami Airport that she had a bomb in her back pack: she said this three times so they whisked her off to jail and kept her there until someone posted bail of £2,700 on her behalf: a businessman I think. This stupid young woman's father went on television to bleat that her treatment was unfair and an over reaction but said his daughter was an immature young girl. Once she had been released the woman herself appeared and spoke with a fake American accent! Then I heard that a British Newspaper has paid her an amount of money to cover her air fare and other expenses ... in return for exclusive story no doubt. I ask: why are these reprehensible people given such status? Ingrams is a fraud and a cheat and now we call him a celebrity. Ronnie Biggs was a thief and complicit in a murder yet people treat him as just a cheeky chappie. Jeffrey Archer was guilty of contempt of court but he is still feted as a lovable rogue. The moral of the story? Get yourself thrown in jail or try to defraud someone out of huge amount of money and you too could become a celeb. DW

I watched the Panorama progamme on Wednesday night about the Hutton enquiry and whilst I thought it wasn't a bad programme I did wonder why they had made and aired it one week prior to the publication of Huton's report. I, along with others, wrote to Panorama with my views and they published part of what I said here. Scroll down to find my incisive comments! What worries me far more than anything the programme said about anything was the aftermath: how the programme has been treated by the media. Here's an example. On this page they say His [David Kelly's] view was at odds with the claim in the government's Iraq dossier that "military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes and to support this assertion they report, later on, Describing Iraq's weapons, Dr Kelly told Panorama: "Even if they're not actually filled and deployed today, the capability exists to get them filled and deployed within a matter of days and weeks. Notice what they have missed out. Kelly started by saying that he agreed that Iraq posed an immediate threat: no doubt, no equivocation, Iraq posed an immediate threat. What journalists have highlighted. however, is what he then said: "Even if they're not actually filled and deployed today ..." Note the Even if qualifier. Isn't it as plain as the nose on your face? There is then this piece of nonsense from the above page Originally, the penultimate draft of the Iraq dossier had also suggested Saddam Hussein was likely to use WMD only in self defence. However, the Hutton Inquiry was told that a paragraph was re-written at the request of Mr Blair's Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, who e-mailed Alastair Campbell and others in Number 10 that it could be "a bit of a problem. It is true that a draft of the dossier did say that if under threat Iraq is likely to use its WMD and they did change the wording to make the phrase more direct. However, what the BBC has reported is tantamount to a lie: I think they have grossly misrperesented what happened. Overall, I thought the programme was interesting and both Andrew Gilligan and Greg Dyke came out of it astonishingly badly: I never trusted Gilligan to be honest and now I think Dyke should resign. Panorama made a relatively impartial programme that should, however, have been aimed at a post Hutton scenario rather than a pre Hutton scenario. DW

Michael Blake has helped me to track down another one of my ridiculous File Not Found errors. Thanks Michael: my site is a better place now that you've been there and held out the hand of friendship. DW

Nicey, of NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown, wrote as follows: I'm very flattered that the Wife and I are 'wackbags', Hoorah! DW

There's web sites and there's web sites! Take a look at this one and be amazed: NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown. This is a web site all about biscuits and it gets my vote! There's a biscuit quiz that will have you reeling. There's a biscuit blog written by the Wife. There's a biscuit of the week feature. There's biscuits you've never heard of but will desperately want to find and try. Well done to the wackbags who thought of all of that: the cracking title's just the start of it. DW

I've been at it again! Following my meanderings on the web and talking to a few people this week I realised that I needed a new page ... and here it is: The Selling of Duncan Williamson You NEED to go to that page to see some of things that I get up to that will convince you that I am the man for that job you want doing to very high standards and in double quick time. Don't forget that you need to pay the going rate for the job too. I'm waiting for you! DW

One of those priceless I don't believe it moments happened last night. Sitting with the family eating away when there was a knock on the door and a tall young chap presented himself by standing a metre away from the door, standing sideways on to me. He blurted that he'd been down at number 111 and he knew that our house was new and he knew that we probably didn't want new windows and he knew that he was probably wasting his time but had we ever considered fitting new windows even though he knew that the house was new and that we probably didn't want anything but had we considered it? Maybe next year? I politely said no and we parted company. Mirth and merriment in the W household. Knock, knock, knock! Hello, not so tall, very thin beard thrusts leaflet at me and says you've probably heard of us, Reg Molehusband (or someone I'd never heard of) soap star advertises us on the telly, we're selling French windows and doors and they will make a lasting impression on the house and he knew that the house was new but had we considered it? I said your friend has just been here ... he stopped for a second ... I said young and tall ... he said short hair, glasses ... I said yes ... he said that's Nick, oh Nick was here ... so are you considering fitting French windows in the near future? I said we've already got them thanks. Oh, thanks for your time anyway! Who sent these people to a brand new housing estate to sell such things? Moreover, having got here hadn't they got the message after around, let's say, six properties? Life's like that as the Reader's Digest says! DW

Christopher wanted to know my views on the application of Max Weber's work to the work of call centres. I told him I'm not an expert but I'd have a look around. Here are some general Weber pages: sorry but I can't be more specific I'm afraid. Let's start here and follow up with more from the same author A lengthy page but it has some useful looking links at the end: some of which follow. Very long page: I didn't read it all! This page argues that Weber's view of the Protestant Work Ethic is fundamentally flawed. From Oz, Weber on Capitalism Also from Oz, Weber on Bureaucracy Bullet points of the major aspects of Weber and his work: could be useful as part of a mind map. The MacDonaldisation of Society Social interaction and social structure: again a bit listy so might be useful as ideas for headings. Is Weber still relevant? Critique of Weber An abstract of Call centre management: is service quality a priority? Looks highly targeted but it needs a subscription. There you are Christopher: hope it provides some nuggets of gold! DW

Tony asked what I know about real life implementation of activity based costing/management. Well, I've done it in real life many times as I designed and implemented my product cost spreadsheet systems in around 90 SMEs. Take a look, too, at my book Cost & Management Accounting ISBN 0-13-205923-1, chapter 7. In there you can read a few examples, albeit old now, of where ABC was tried ... not only successes but failures too. There is also a discussion on the implementation of ABC in the UK, the USA and France: big differences. I give references to many of the original papers in this discussion. However, a trawl of the web has revealed the following useful links: Another one of Chris Lamb's brilliant resource lists at UNL: Chris offers fantastic services in this respect! ABC systems at Anglian Water Several links relating to LYJ Liu at Newcastle Business School. Can't verify them as they need a subscription to read them but if your library has a subscription to them they could prove useful. Another one needing a subscription but here is the abstract: Activity-based cost management in financial services industry Here are some very useful looking PDF files that I've skimmed and that I think are all from the USA but none the worse for that. http://www.mixmbb.org/en/mbb_issues/09/Articles/Activity-Based%20Costing%20and%20Savings.PDF http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1066/MR1066AppD.pdf http://www2.newpaltz.edu/~roztockn/portland03.pdf http://www2.newpaltz.edu/~roztockn/washington00.pdf http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/domestic-finance/usps/pdf/Holsen.pdf http://www.mikon.com/RTCM3.pdf I hope these are useful. DW