Pitter Pat

Don't put that pat of butter you took from the restaurant in your trouser pocket in case you forget to take it out until many melted and runny hours later.

Top tip, that! Not that I did that of course. It was a friend.

DW


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Family Tree

I have started the quest to compile my family tree. Only using online resources so far but have made some good progress. I have got back to 1778.

I am aiming at filling the generations up until the start of 19th Century or so, so 1778 is about the limit.

So far they're all labourers with a sprinkling of professional types. No ne'er do wells that I know of!! Apart from me of course.

DW


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Wembley

Did you know that you can see the arch over Wembley Stadium from Heathrow Terminal 1? Maybe other terminals too but I haven't noticed and I'm not going there today!

DW


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Travel Insurance

In the old days we couldn't travel anywhere abroad without travel insurance: we had to have it. We all railed against it because there was no choice about the matter and therefore the cost of travel insurance was ridiculously high. Monopolies for you!

I have been watching warnings on the television all day about the perils of travelling abroad without any insurance: there has just been a piece on Inside Out on BBC 1 showing a few very unfortunate people who have had serious accidents whilst travelling.

The problems being faced by people injured or falling ill abroad include being stranded in a foreign land, possibly alone, in a hospital providing just the basic level of care or even worse in some cases. Alternatively, there are stories of six figure sums having to be spent to repatriate someone.

I have travelled without travel insurance for the last 20 years or so on the ground that I refused to pour far too much money into something I always thought I didn't need. I certainly didn't want to tempt fate!

Following today's knee jerks I bought a year's worth of travel insurance. It wasn't that expensive and it covers a wide variety of problems. It also includes business cover for some of the things that one doesn't need as a holiday maker: loss or breakage of my computer for example.

I really don't want to have to claim on this insurance for any reason of course. Then again, I really don't want to find myself dumped in a hospital bed in a foreign land being treated in only a rudimentary way without the wherewithal of getting home.

Think carefully.

DW

That FSA Chap

The number two man at the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has resigned this morning following a bit of a charade over whether he sacked a prophetic whistleblower at HBOS or not.

Sir James Crosby says he has resigned to protect the FSA since he is innocent.

Reminds me of that poor and uneducated chap on television many years ago who was arrested for some heinous crime. The poor man had no idea what was happening to him but to try to make his life as tolerable for himself as possible, he decided to admit to the crime. He said this, though, as the police started to take him off to the cop shop:

OK, I'm guilty but I didn't do it.

Sir James?

DW

These are fantastic

I have just come across this list in a discussion forum and couldn’t resist sharing them: if they are true they are frightening. In any case some of them are creasingly funny.

 

Disorder in the American Courts

These are from a book called 'Disorder in the American Courts' and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm while  these exchanges were actually taking place.

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he  doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He's twenty, much like your IQ.

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you sh***ing me?

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS : Your Honour, I think I need a different attorney. Can I hire a new attorney?

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I had finished.

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?

And finally:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

Evolution: Darwin or Deity?

Rather a surprising set of results come from The Economist’s Daily Chart for 5^th February, http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=7933596&story_id=13062613:

 

In Iceland about 80% of people believe evolution to be true

In Britain the figure is just under 75%

Germany 70%

Ireland around 65%

 

But

 

The USA around 40%

Turkey about 26%

 

There is a BIG gap between these latter two and the next lowest believing country, Greece, which stands at about 55%.

 

How does one account for that? Is this a sign of strength or of weakness? Does it matter?

 

All of these issues are discussed in the comments section at the end of this short article. Daily Chart view.

 

DW

 

Mad Madoff

Firstly, the relative trivia: have you noticed how the 12 year olds at the BBC are calling this man Bern’ard Madoff as if they were Americans rather than the B’ernard that we know?

 

Secondly, I have just found time to start reading up on some of the technical things that Madoff was or wasn’t doing with the $50 billion that he is supposed to have squandered. He is accused of running a Ponzi Scheme. However, in an article in the FT there is a fascinating piece in which they run through the thought processes of Wall Street wallahs as they studied Madoff and his mad cap work. They ascribed some fancy finance footwork to the man when he was clearly pussyfooting and not cutting a rug at all.

 

For example,

 

Mr Madoff’s returns appeared to many to be too good to be true (see chart below). But advocates claimed they were the result of a “split-strike conversion strategy” that used derivatives to minimise risk, while intelligence from his market-making business allowed him to time investments almost perfectly.

 

The SEC investigated Madoff in 2005 and again in 2007 and found nothing (the chickens in this scenario started to come home to roost this week too! See the whistleblower snippet below) so:

 

Several investors believed he might be front-running – illegally trading ahead of customers of the market-making division – but many stayed with him anyway. “He had a clean record from the SEC and it wasn’t our job to spot this,” says one.

 

Some funds offered a more complex explanation. Split-strike conversion enabled him to profit from periods of rising share prices by setting up what was called a “bull spread”. This involved buying shares in 40-50 companies to mimic the blue chip S&P 100 index, while using put options to protect against falls. The cost of these options was covered by selling call options, limiting the potential upside.

 

My reaction at this point was to think that if only he had been doing this sort of thing, maybe he could really have returned some of the profits that he did pay back albeit within a Ponzi Scheme: a bit like burglars and the like who put huge amounts of effort into their robberies that could just as well be channelled into something legitimate.

 

In a US Congressional hearing this week, a man labelled as a whistleblower in the Madoff case, sorry his name eludes me, made the point that the graph of Madoff’s returns fell on a straight and 45 degree line. This man went on to say that everyone else’s equivalent graph would rise and fall with or against or generally in tune with the market: here’s the link for the kind of graph that gentleman was talking about

 

http://media.ft.com/cms/aa499604-ebd3-11dd-8838-0000779fd2ac.gif You can see what he means and why he said he warned the SEC over a ten year period that there was something rotten in the state of Madoff.

 

There’s a nice time line summary of events here, by the way: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cc1ceb9e-ebd5-11dd-8838-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=b7a8d610-caaf-11dd-87d7-000077b07658.html

 

Regulators, lawyers and Parliamentarians have all tried to make these things impossible to get away with but Madoff is here, Satyam (who??? ... watch this space) surfaced around the new year in a cash reporting scandal in India. The Sarbanes Oxley Act from the US, for example, Corporate Governance rules in the UK for example ...

 

I imagine that a lot of people are wondering how Madoff can still be holding on to his flat in New York, reputedly worth as much as $7 million, when there are probably people who need a mere fraction of that just to live on ... but Madoff stole it from them.

 

Finally for now, you might care to remind yourself of the two basic types of Ponzi scheme I discuss on my web site: http://www.duncanwil.co.uk/ponzi.html Give me time to get back home and put together a summary of what people think they know about Madoff and I will include that on a revised or supplementary Ponzi page.

 

 

DW

 

The Dutch Cap?

Interesting what you can learn and I wonder if this is something that everyone else knew about except me.

 

In my course in Bangkok this week, discussing International Financial Reporting Standards, we talked informally at one stage about the credit crunch, 100% - 125% mortgages and remortgaging.

 

There was a Dutchman on the course and he said that in Holland, anyone taking equity out of their property as a result, for example, of a remortgage and who did NOT put that money back into the property in the form of an extension, new kitchen, new garage, upgrading central heating and so on, would be charged income tax on the money as if it were income and not a capital flow of cash.

 

I wonder why we don’t do that in the UK as I think we don’t; and how effective it is at limiting/controlling equity release schemes. I also wonder if it made matters worse by encouraging borrowers to gross up their requirements so that they effectively borrowed enough for their needs and to pay the tax as well. That is, they want, say, £50,000 but take £60,000 to cover their £50,000 AND the £10,000 tax bill.

 

 

DW

 

Thatcher, the daughter

Good! She's been sacked. Good. She's bleating now, or at least there is bleating in the newspapers on her behalf.

Loud, grating and with a speech impediment, Carol Thatcher gets on my nerves. Whenever she was due to appear on the One Show on BBC1 I changed channels. The same when the likes of Graham Norton appear too.

Would Thatcher be where she is without being her mother's daughter? Doubt it. So, as Harold Wilson would have it, ditch the bitch!!

Good riddance.

DW


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CB/BBC

Panorama on BBC 1 did a programme last week on swearing on the telly etc. I said, good. I said, I doubt anything will change as a result of it.

Well, I have had a good idea for change. I would like the BBC and probably ITV and Sky as well, to set up some new channel:s:

CB/BBC which is Cor Blimey BBC
CB/ITV which is Cor Blimey ITV
CB/Sky ... Cor Blimey Sky

They can put all of their swearing programmes on there, their nonsense "celebrity" programmes and their idiotic "reality" stuff. If people want to speak AmerEnglish they can go there too.

As for BBC 1, BBC 2 etc, they will then be free of low level standards. I don't mean that we need posh TV or anything like that, I mean i want entertainment, news and so on without worrying about anyone effing and blinding at me and expecting me to swoon over stunted gays and other ne'er do wells who exhibit neither talent nor charm.

Radio 4 is also in need of reform as we are now subjected to gratuitous swearing on there at virtually any time of the day or night. I don't want it and their infantile justification of it.

There: another top solution from yours truly.

DW


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Right to Die

There is that poor lady who has been kept in a persistent vegetative state for 17 years. It's been decided to the lady die.

Out of the woodwork people arrive to try to stop the process.

The point is, without artificial intervention there is no life. And the lady has been brain dead for 17 years so what is there to communicate with and to feel with?

Of course, someone with courage should have taken this decision 17 years ago.

DW


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Understanding the Current Credit Crisis

If you want to get some kind of understanding of the current credit crisis, you need to read this article from The Economist of this week.

When a Flow Becomes a Flood http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12972083

The eye opener for me was this graphic: I have to confess that I knew a lot that goes behind that graphic but I didn't have the vision that this simple chart gives. http://www.economist.com/images/20090124/CBB721.gif Turn to the final page of any edition of The Economist and you will see a table Trade, exchange rates, budget balances and interest rates. In that table you will confirm what that graphic says and in the 24th - 30th January 2009 edition, the US Current Account Balance for the latest 12 months is $697.9 BILLION. Fear not, Britain' got the third biggest negative current account balance, albeit at a mere $45.6 BILLION after Spain's $164.1 BILLION.

You will also see quite a bit about the financial side of the developing world and how they have been financing some of the developed world.

The question still remains, however, where on earth has the US put this money? Is it in a depository in the Gulf Of Mexico along with its Oil store? Astonishing!

DW

Dorian Gray, is it me? No!

A client has described me in their marketing literature as a veteran.

Walking down a hospital corridor with niece Jemma the other day someone joyously identified me as Jemma's dad! I said to Jemma here's me thinking I look suave and young ... No offence.

Age, the unyielding parameter.

DW


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Duncan Williamson is a genius and you'd be silly not to get him to work for you. For money. For lots of it, preferably.

Windows Explorer: get a grip!

I am working hard at producing a really high quality learn all and do all type of book for Excel 2007. As part of my work I want to trawl through all of my files and folders to see what I have already done or what might be useful to include and so on.

 

So I went to Windows Explorer* to search folder and files and found that a lot of files were listed but that couldn’t open a preview image and couldn’t open the file. No error message, no warnings given ... just nothing.

 

I repeated that this morning only to find that I was still getting apparently useful materials that I couldn’t access. I dug a bit deeper this time and found that WE was still “finding” folders and files that I had deleted MONTHS if not a year or so ago.

 

No wonder more and more people are desperately trying to find alternatives to Microsoft and its woeful products.

 

I am not sure what version of WE I am using but it searches based on an index of my HDD it has prepared. Clearly, once something gets into the index* , it can never get out.

 

DW

 

Hartlepool Monkey

Just been listening to an interview on the Today programme with the Mayor of Hartlepool. This chap used to be the mascot of Hartlepool FC.

The mascot of HFC is a monkey. The name they gave the monkey?

Hangus ... Now that's funny!!

DW


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Super Burnley From the North

I was one of around 16,000 men, women and children who went to Turf Moor in Burnley last night and had a whale of a time: Burnley supporters. There seemed to be around 3,000 Tottenham Hotspur fans too.

We watched rank outsiders Burnley take on the mighty Tottenham Hotspur of London. Carling Cup semi final game, second leg. Burnley were behind 4:1 from the first leg and they needed to win 3:0 to be in with a shout of qualifying for the final.

Spurs were 100 - 1 ON to win the tie.

A hopeless task!

I said to a few people before the game, Burnley are playing very well at the moment. Spurs are playing badly. Even though Spurs is a Premiership team and Burnley a Championship team, I believed with the wind at their backs Burnley could win.

Playing conditions were atrocious: gusting wind, lashing rain, air temperature of around 4 degrees Celsius.

The game got under way and son Andrew and I had seats near the pitch towards the Sammy McIlroy Stand end. A good view. Spurs were not so mighty and Burnley got stronger and stronger as the game went on. The Spurs fans were in good voice and cocky.

Burnley scored: a cracking free kick that their goalie should have stopped. Half time came, we went inside for a warm and everyone was reasonably happy.

Well into the second half and Burnley scored again, Spurs continued to struggle and their fans went more or less quiet. We were more than content. The second substitution for Burnley saw teenager Jay Rodriguez, local Burnley lad, take the field and within a few minutes he'd scored Burnley's third goal. The goal that the bookies had said could not exist! The Spurs fans never uttered another word for a long time.

We were more than happy. Burnley were playing really well and the massively expensive and ostensibly talented Spurs were just ordinary.

Andrew had to leave to get his bus back to Salford: poor lad; but he saw all three goals! Full time came and extra time beckoned, a further 30 minutes of play.

In the interval between full time and extra time, one of the wittiest/funniest chants I have heard in a while emanated from Burnley throats: 4:1 and you f*cked it up, 4:1 and you f*cked it up, 4:1 and you f*cked it up ...

Extra time began with the crowd expectant. Eagles, Burnley winger, was suffering, his legs had gone but the crowd cheered him on to try to encourage him. He tried!

Burnley held their own in the first half of extra time. No doubt. The impossible was still within their grasp. Andrew came back: he missed his bus by two minutes! Lucky him and where else on earth would he rather be?!

After about five minutes into the final 15 minutes, I got the impression that Spurs were pushing Burnley back. Then they definitely were. Sad to say, as I was about to tell Andrew that Spurs were pushing Burnley back but were ineffective, they scored ... 3:1 on the night and just two and a half minutes left. Gutted. Then within another minute, another Spurs goal, 3:2 on the night and 6:4 on aggregate.

The Spurs fans came alive and the Burnley fans went quiet. Game over. Sorry sight. Sad faces.

Along the way, Burnley had beaten Fulham, Arsenal and Chelsea ... Premiership teams all; and they had throttled Spurs almost to death. Burnley single handedly humbled the Premiership in this Carling Cup competition this season.

Massive respect Burnley.

Andrew came home with me and we got here at around 23:00 - 23:15 hours or so and immediately made a chocolate milk drink and sat down to watch the match again ... cleverly I had recorded it! Watched the first half before bed and was pleased.

Andrew slept in as I watched the rest of the match on Thursday morning and was very pleased with that I saw, on average.

Spurs scored two good goals but only on the back of the Burnley players having more weary legs than the younger Spurs team. Give no credit to Spurs, they don't deserve it.

On Saturday Burnley take on West Bromwich Albion of the Premiership in the FA Cup! Watch out you Baggies!!!!

DW

Dreadful Service ... Again

On 8th January (two weeks ago) I ordered some computer parts, paid for them and dutifully waited for them to arrive. I have to confess that I meant to pay for express delivery but forgot. No matter, this is an award winning company and they often surprise with the speed of their delivery. I was not unhappy.

A week went by and then I began to consider that I might be waiting too long. So I went online and checked my account with this company and saw my order. In the despatch column it said queued so I decided to call the company to ask what was happening. This company has a good reputation so I happily left a voicemail message when I got through to a robot who told me that all their agents were all busy ...

A couple of days went by but I heard nothing from the company so I sent customer services an email asking for an update. I never got a reply and waited another couple of days when I called again and got the same robot so I left another message and said if I heard nothing within 24 hours I would have to cancel my order. As it happened I waited 48 hours before I acted again.

This time I called their Sales department thinking that I might get through much quicker to them and could ask them to treat me as an exception. I got the robot again but left a message saying that I will wait till close of business that day, after which time I'd cancel my order. Nothing.

I really wanted this company to have my business and they had taken the money from my credit card on 8th January, two weeks ago. I now decided to call again but this time to wait for as long as it took to get an answer from a real person. I waited and waited and waited, 25 minutes in total and got no reply.

I couldn't wait any more so this time I went back to the company's web site and sent an explanatory email to every email address I could find for the company: 10 or 12 of them.

My 1700 hours deadline came with no response from the company so I called my credit card company and asked them to cancel that payment. They told me what they would do ... job done.

I was disappointed because I have dealt with that company before and not been disappointed. They do provide a good product and service but they let me down and there was no way I could solve this problem. Son Andrew suggested I go to their sales outlet but that would have cost me a whole day of a trip ... time I cannot afford to waste as I need to make good progress with my new book.

I wondered, however, how is it that a random distribution of phone calls to this company never actually got me connected to a real live person AND they never responded to any voicemail or email message.

Lo and behold at 1730 or so, I received a phone call from the company who said they had received my email that afternoon ... they were very busy ... couldn't understand why no one had responded to my voicemails and emails. He then assured me that my order had now been despatched and would be with me tomorrow.

I replied that it was too late because I had called my credit card company and cancelled the payment. He asked me if he should recall the order then and I replied, "You can do what you like". He said OK and we said goodbye.

What should happen now? I think the company will do nothing else. I would like an apology from them: a simple email or phone call to apologise for wasting my time and energy. After all, I have now lost an opportunity to do what I wanted to do and may have no time to finish it before I go off to  my next assignment. Moreover, it took me a long time to sort out what I wanted to do and to place the order.

More Great British service. In a recession, too, when everyone needs all the business they can get ... don't they?

DW

Avoidance

I am avoiding the television and radio today for fear of having THAT ceremony in Washington DC thrust at me. It has nothing to do with me, I think it is racist to keep going on about his African roots and the man spent two years and $1.6 BILLION on himself to ensure he got the job.

Eeugh! No thanks.

I willl be listening to the Archers and watching the football and that's it. Come on Derby!!

DW


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How to Write a Request ... NOT

Everyone here knows that if they write to me with a request for help and/or information, I will help if I can. I certainly try to ensure that I reply and explain if I can't help.

Yesterday, I received this message:

hi,

I need the model answers for AQA GCE Report on the examination, january 2006 business nad management (P&O)

THANK YOU

That's it, no how do you do or yours sincerely ...

This morning I did something I have never done before, by replying as follows:

Well, thank you for sharing that with me!

Usually in such cases I reply properly and ask them to introduce themselves and usually they do!

DW