Busy

No time to rave about Stephen Fry's amazing programme about the Gutenburg printing press.

No time to describe my reactions to the shocking "Waiting for the Guards" video on the Amnesty International website.

No time to beg you to make "Mad Men" part of your lives.

No time to regret the passing of Humphrey Littleton.

Like Jean says in Victoria Wood's "Dinner Ladies" :-

"Orgasm? I haven’t blown my nose since Wednesday."

Raking It In

There is a scene in the "Cape Feare" episode of "The Simpsons" in which Sideshow Bob steps on nine rakes in 30 seconds, stumbling from smack-in-the-mouth to smack-in-the-mouth without the wit to break the cycle. It's on YouTube and well worth watching.

Is this the metaphor I've been waiting for to describe the current behaviour of Gordon Brown ?

Rake 1 - Giving up the 10% tax rate he himself invented not all that long ago
Rake 2 - Not spotting he had just made a heap of poor people even poorer ... the week before the local elections.
Rake 3 - Not gaining the support of his back-benchers - not even close to it.
Rake 4 - Steely determination not to do a U-turn gets big laughs
Rake 5 - Initial Compromise proposal to maybe look at possible ways to maybe take some of the pain for some of the people "next year" gets even bigger laughs

As of today, he's beefed up the compensation plan, and is taking flack for being spineless and clueless. It is by no means certain that Sideshow Brown has stepped on his last rake.

iPlayer fix

Allow me to provide a technical solution that I've been working on recently. It's boring if you don't have the problem, but it took a while for me to work out for myself, so the chances are I could save someone out there some time and effort. Who knows, that person might invent a perpetual motion device or a cure for cancer in the time I save them.

It concerns the BBC iPlayer. If you don't know what it is then either :-

(a) You are technologically illiterate : in which case you probably aren't reading this
(b) You don't watch TV : the only one of my readers meeting that criterion works for a broadcasting organisation (go figure).
(c) You don't have decent broadband speeds : Mother & Father Stan being an example.

For the rest of you, iPlayer and the similar Channel4 application are a means of downloading TV programmes so you can watch them on your PC.

It's great for train journeys - on a recent journey on the Manchester to London service, for every suit doing an Excel spreadsheet there were two watching Shameless.

The problem comes when you've installed the BBC iPlayer and also the Channel4 equivalent and one or other other of them stops working as a result. Quite likely, as they are both built on the same technology and use a lot of the same files.

The directory you need to look in is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Kontiki. There is a config file here called zdata.db.

Rename the file to (say) zdata.c4.db

Now you need to stop and restart the zservice service. If you don't know how to do this, you might be safer switching PC off and back on again.

You should find now that the BBC iplayer will work. It will create a new zdata.db file when it starts up. If had a bunch of good stuff downloaded from C4 that you now seem to have lost, you can always just switch the files back.

Let Your Yeah Be Yeah

The title is a reggae song by Jimmy Cliff which sprang to mind as I read a letter from this morning's Guardian newspaper. Mrs. Stan and Stanetta would also point out that it's something that Jesus was reported to have said in the Sermon on the Mount.

Anyway, here's the letter - which is as far from the the ideals of Reggae and Christianity as you can get. It refers to the practice of "gazundering", where you wait to the last minute in a house-buying process before lowering the previously agreed offer in the hope that the seller will be so desperate that they'll accept less money and not punch you in your worthless mouth.

"I have successfully gazundered on the property I am buying. I agreed a price mid-January, with an exchange due next week. With all the reports on property prices falling and, given that I put a large sum of capital into my purchase - which I am buying outright - I had become nervous that I was about to lose a large sum of money on the deal, and at the age of 65 I have no means of recouping losses incurred if markets dip as predicted.

Of course I am now ridden with guilt and have gone against my principles. I certainly do not feel like gloating over the whole episode, but at the end of the day I had to be hard-nosed. I wonder what the vendor would have done in my situation?

Jane Burchell, via email"

Personally, if anyone I was dealing with even hinted that their offer was not final and irrevocable, I would proactively kill the deal myself. Life is too short to deal with people (like Jane Burchell, via email) who reckon that they can make a deal and then break it. I just wouldn't trust such a person not to come back with ever increasing demands and then to change their mind totally at the very last last-minute. I certainly wouldn't want to think of them hosting dinner parties at the house at which they boast of the all extra money they had screwed out of me.

Even if it costs money and hassle, the only rational response to the statement

"The deal is off. Would you accept less ?"

should be

"I'm glad the deal's off. You're a toe-rag. I wouldn't sell to you now even if you offered more. Goodbye."

I have a few things to say to Jane Burchell (and the less publicity-hungry people like her) :-

1. I'm glad you are riddled with guilt. That's what guilt is for - it acts as a deterrent for some, and a punishment for others. I'm just sorry it didn't deter you from hurting the vendor who has done nothing to deserve it.
2. I can understand your nervousness, but if you were nervous, your ethical option was to not buy the house. Sounds more like basic greed (lightly camouflaged) to me.
3. The victim of your scam is also probably at an age where they also "have no means of recouping losses incurred".
4. You have reportedly "gone against your principles" for mere money. They almost don't deserve the name "principles" if they can be so cheaply bought.
5. You didn't feel like gloating, and yet sent your story for publication in a national newspaper. Discuss.
   

The Jimmy Cliff song has the better bassline, but I've got to admit that the Sermon on the Mount has the better lyrics :-

"But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil."

Stan's Three Laws of Finance

Bibble ! Bibble! Bibble!

Good evening. The noise you hear is me making Bibble noises with my finger on my lips as I contemplate the Bank of England's response to the Credit Crunch.

Bibble !

Remember my previous posting where I compared mortgage-backed securities with contaminated meat in the Pie industry ? Well, the Bank of England has decided to allow banks to borrow money from them using this second-hand toilet-paper as collateral.

"Who cares ?" I hear you cry. Before answering, please be aware of Stan's three laws of finance.

• Stan's First Law of Finance : "In any complex financial transaction, someone always gets shafted."
• Stan's Second Law of Finance : "If you don't know who is getting shafted, then it's probably you"
• Stan's Third Law of Finance : "If the Government is involved, it's definitely you"

Put simply - your money will be used to sort out all the bad bets made by banks in the last few years. This is to allow them to carry on making bad bets in the future.

Whatever happened to the quaint notion of letting the markets decide who survives and who fails? It seems if you're a bank then you get all the government help you need. But if you're a private citizen , you're on your own.

There is only one reasoned, sane thought-out response : take your finger, put it on your lips, and everyone repeat after me :

Bibble ! Bibble ! Bibble !