AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH

The management accounts don't agree to the management accounts

(Here) is the original.

Up with a spring in my step and a song in my heart at oh-six-thirty hours this morning, after four and half hours of refreshing sleep following a white knuckle ride through some formatting changes in the current year management accounts which had rendered like-for-like analysis on a comparable basis all but impossible.
Having left the chimplets early (refusing to eat their Cheerios despite their grandparent’s best efforts), I arrived at Big Office House at the unusually early time of 8.40am, presenting a golden opportunity to get a flying start to what will inevitably be a long and painful week.

I practically skipped into the male changing rooms (the only part of the UK currently over 30 degrees C in this most Novemberish of Junes), then suddenly f_cking realised that I’d f_cking left my f_cking shoes at f_cking home.

Imagine a plucky chap in the First World War catching a Jerry bullet through the shoulder before he’d even got to the top of the trench ladder and you’ll sense what I was sensing as the realisation hit me.

Grey suit, subtle checked shirt, discreet tie…sweaty ankle socks, O’Neill trainers. Not quite the ‘appropriate business casual attire’ for the values-compliant office environment.

The next forty minutes (the entire time available to prepare for the first conference call of the day, and then some) were spent pounding the streets in search of a shoe shop that was open – it’s surprising how difficult it is to find one in such a footwear-rich place as London. After 10 minutes, I was jealously eyeing shoe-wearers as they blithely breezed past, inanely unaware of how lucky they were. After 20 minutes, I was actively looking for anyone with size 11 feet and a semi-decent pair of shoes to punch out cold, grab his footwear, and tip his lifeless body into the river. Luckily a local loafer-monger eventually obliged, and I finally made it back to the office by taxi, some 10 minutes late for the entire week.

And I haven’t caught up since.

Right, time for lunch, then I have meeting at Bulge Bracket Trust LLC.

Keep buying. Dilute the sonofabitch. I want every orifice in his body flowing red.

This was originally going to be a grimly ironic post about the longest day (summer solstice, some three days ago), involving some sardonic humour about only getting three hours' sleep a night at present. Trouble is, I haven't had time to write it.

Next week requires me to do a month's work in the space of four days (albeit with a little assistance from a regional junior chimp) whilst the boss is on holiday, which I'm really looking forward to.

I find myself in the unusual position of being whatever the equivalent of 'triangulated' is for four items (squargulated? quadrangulated? Strangulated is perhaps the most apt) between no less than four powerful women at present - one who is covering for me on a project I can't spend any time on, one at the private equity house I'm working for, one who's standing in for the boss, and of course Mrs Chimp, who's less than delighted that I'm not home for 21 hours out of 24 at present.

The problem with powerful women is that they all need constant updates as to what I'm up to. I could easily fill the 35 hours (ha!) of my working week with progress meetings, to do lists and conference calls. Trouble is, I'd never get the work done.

And to top it all off, Gordon Brown will be running the country by the end of the week. Hating to tempt fate, can things get any worse?

Rip their throats out and put them in your garbage compactor.

Two unrelated stories about dogs and bicycles today.

As I rounded a corner on a cycle path on Tooting Bec Common, I was sharply rebuked by a plummy mummy in a Barbour jacket, whose black Labrador was squatting in the middle of the cycle path taking the most enormous dump (this in a 152 acre park, with ample opportunities for less anti-social crapping). Apparently the woman was concerned that by exercising my right to use the cycle path, I might disturb her canine pal in mid, um, movement. Ptchah.

Second dog tale (or tail) – I overtook, with a sense of amazement and respect, a gent clad entirely in tweed, riding a creaky old bicycle with one hand, and holding the lead of his faithful hound, who was trotting contentedly along beside him, in the other. They wouldn’t have looked out of place in one of those bucolic villages one finds in Jeeves and Wooster stories (I seem to remember that Chuffy Chufnell lived in Chufnell Regis – that sort of place). He most certainly did look out of place in the bus lane of the A3036.

Currently engaged with our German, er, colleagues on a couple of projects. I love the fact that absolutely everyone in Germany is a Professor or Doctor. I remember a TS trainee (aged c.32) in Germany a few years ago who had a PhD in something (other than accounting, I should think), spending an entire day looking for operating expenses in the balance sheet.

If you’re an accountant, you’ll understand this. If you’re not – thank your lucky stars.

So what’s on your mind kimosabe? Why am I listening to you?

Cycling home at 1.30am is somehow an exhilarating experience – the streets smell different in the absence of exhaust fumes. There was no-one around other than a startled fox, a couple of chaps in Balham loading money from a van into an ATM, and a couple of other chaps on the other side of the street looking as if they had plans to take the cash back out of the ATM and put it into their own van. Even the chav youths had gone home to bed, happy in a Red Stripe and skunk haze.

Went to a deal meeting this morning, attended by two senior finance dudes rejoicing in the names of Mr Sale and Mr Price. It’s not often that such a golden opportunity for a joke arises in a deal meeting. No-one made the joke, of course. Someone did, however, deliberately and with malice aforethought use the phrase “this is a starter for £200million.”

“The West is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a
bomb on his body he would be right to do so.”

Is anyone else struggling to reconcile the two halves this statement?

Speaking of struggling to reconcile things, I’m heading back to the ‘basis of preparation’ note on page 174 of the VDD report.

If it looks as good as on paper, we're in the kill zone. We lock and load pal...

You have about a month's worth of Gordon Gekko quotes coming up as blog titles. The guy was, and remains, an absolute legend.

A happy evening spent alone in the office, dancing around like a tw&t every 5 minutes when the motion-sensitive lights go out. Really looking forward to riding home at midnight through the darkened streets of the capital.

Still, iPod random has just served up 'Candy Girl' by New Edition (Bobby Brown's pre-pubescent outfit before he got into unwholesome things), so life can't be all that bad.

Are we part of it? We better be, pal, or I'm gonna eat your lunch for you

Above is evidence, should any be needed, that the current fashion of being inclusive and insisting that the consumers of news websites 'have your say' is an utter waste of everyone's time.

Do you have a view on this view? Would you like to 'have your say' about the editorial policy of Excel Chimp? No f*cking chance. P*ss off.

Chimping tennis report

So it was Fathers' day (in the UK, at least) yesterday, so in a spirit of family solidarity, we dumped the chimplets with the nanny and spent the day at the finals day of the laughably re-branded 'Artois Championship' at the Queen's Club. I guess they're trying to move away from the violent drunk / wife beater image of 'Stella', which used to be the tournament's name. It's all rather academic at somewhere like Queen's - the ruling classes are more likely to get into a heated discussion about whose son is better at sailing after a jug of Pimms than get into a full-blown-paramedic-requiring punch up after 8 pints of industrial lager.

As for the tennis - the men's final was surprisingly good (Queen's matches are usually 6-2 6-2 walkovers, completed in 40 minutes) - Andy Roddick, who despite, according to my source, being rather unpopular at the Surbiton Lawn Tennis Club for being a bad loser (so terribly British to have a detailed etiquette of losing), overcame a Frenchman in three sets, taking a little over two hours, although it boiled down to a handful of crucial points. Some sort of lesson about the arbitrariness of victory and defeat, but I'm not sure what. We then watched a dull doubles final which included the hilariously-titled partnership of Bryan & Bryan. Simply add 'LLP' to the end, and you have a regional accounting firm.

A new element of circus was added to match by the introduction of 'Hawkeye', some sort of electronic gizmo that tells you definitively whether the ball was in or out. So, if your ball is called out by the line judge and you think they're wrong, you stick your finger in the air to appeal the call. The crowd then looks up in expectant silence at the big scoreboard, which draws a pretty picture of the point, and flashes up whether the ball was in or out.

As an investigative accountant, I applaud the triumph of fact over opinion - it's a peculiarly British approach to sport (I think we invented tennis, didn't we?) that teaches players that it's more important to accept a blatantly wrong decision than to upset convention by challenging it.

The problem is that each player only gets three calls per set if they subsequently turn out to be wrong - which is fine if it stops players chancing it and challenging every call, but what if you challenged three calls which turned out to be very marginally OK (there was literally one pixel between the ball and the line on a couple of the calls yesterday), then don't have the opportunity to challenge a fourth? Stand by for law suits. At least half of the challenges made resulted in the original call being over-ruled - makes you wonder about the quality of the line judges. Why not ditch the lot of 'em and have instantaneous electronic scoring? Think of the payroll cost savings.

A structural realignment resulting in a shifting geographic footprint

If you have more time on your hands than me, here is a list of Excel Chimp’s cousins in the corporate blogosphere. Here also is a good piece on BoJo’s blog about Tony Blair laying into the press. I, too, would much rather be regulated by public scorn than by Tony Blair.

Although not much of an ornithologist, the recent return of the watery English sun has brought the welcome return of the lesser spotted Pendulous Booby to Clapham Common. These wonderful young specimens always travel in pairs, and although nested in layers of cotton and fleece for much of the year, generally spend these warm summer months nestling in their summer home of tight lycra. Several prime mating pairs out and about on the common this morning. Time for a cold shower.

It needs to get done yesterday. Don't laugh, I'm serious.

Two variations of an old joke

#1
Q: Why did the due diligence accountant spend the best part of a month considering crossing the road, analysing in great detail the likely consequences of crossing the road (or not crossing the road, or crossing a slightly different road, or crossing half way across the road and re-assessing what to do next based on current performance), attending endless conference calls about crossing the road, preparing high level summaries of ‘initial thoughts’ about crossing the road, but never actually crossing the farking road, and therefore not actually getting paid for it?

A: Because that’s what the private equity firm told him to do

#2
Q: Why did the due diligence accountant cross the next road?

A: The due diligence accountant is not, repeat NOT crossing any more roads until a signed letter of engagement is in place to underwrite the costs.

Never mind the quality, feel the width

Well, I've been playing the due diligence game since Sultan Hisamuddin Alam Shah, Sultan of Selangor, died after a reign of 55 years, and I've heard a few things in my time. But today, in a meeting with a gang of private equiteers (or equity privateers?), I heard the phrase 'detuned model' no less than four times, without ever previously having heard it in my life. Makes one think of an old piano or somesuch. See if you can get in into your next 'Summary of key findings' - spread the word.

Speaking of private equity, the not-too-subtle class warriors of the no-experience-of-work-outside-government Left have got their teeth into the PE industry at present, to such an extent that the fellow who runs the BVCA is heading for a bit of his own downsizing medicine. I'm not quite clear what 'enjoying tax advantages' actually means. Is it better for a UK-based PE guy to pay 10% of his UK earnings to Gordon Brown, or bugger-all because he's moved to Liechtenstein. At the risk of sounding like a Thatcherite, I don't see the problem with the UK government not cynically pissing about with the law to target bright, profit making people, who'll be on the first Learjet out of the UK in any event on the day the law's enacted.

Had the dubious honour of turning down an interview candidate for a job today. Funny how a mouse-click made in a nanosecond determines the course of another's destiny. In the final analysis, we're all lines in an HR spreadsheet. God knows, I've seen enough.

An amazing site today - one of Ken's 18m long buses which had jumped a red light on a roundabout had managed simultaneously to stop all traffic on each of three main roads in Central London for what seemed like 10 minutes. It's like building a dam across a river. In fact, if I wanted to bring London to its knees, I would only need six or so devoted followers to hijack a bendy bus each and park it across a main approach road to zone 1 to completely paralyse the capital.

Enough for now. Time to get on with the FY07 outturn analysis.

The brand is positioned to alienate non core customers

Well, today’s blog really was going to be a humdinger, sprinkled with a light dusting of the wittiest, most incisive, laugh-out-loud hilariously cutting stories about what goes on behind closed doors in the secretive world of financial due diligence.

Was I write, because as my finger was hovering over the Publish Post button, one of the junior chimplets, having crept up (yes, a toddler can apparently creep) behind me, switched off the plug connected to the adapter connected to the PC and yelled ‘STOP!’ with a flourish. Thus died my meisterwerk. This was no accident. Sinister forces are at work.

Instead, and as a late replacement, I bring you my two year old childrens’ considered opinions on the latest Ralph Lauren advertising campaign, which they came across whilst leafing through The Economist this morning (I wish I was joking):

Somewhat remiss on the blogging recently, for the following reasons:

• Mr A from private equity house 'M' wants me to work full time for him for the next two weeks on project '1', and
  
• Mr B from the same private equity house also wants me to work for him, on a different aspect of project '1'. Mr A and Mr B don't really speak to each other much, and
  
• Ms C from the same private equity house wants me to work for her on project '2'. She has no idea as to what Mr A and Mr B (who sit perhaps ten feet away) are up to, and
  
• Partner AA (my boss on projects '1' and '2') has also signed me up for project '3'. This also involves my full time attention, and
  
• Director AB needs me to take an active involvement in finalising the report for project '4'. This is what I've spent this evening doing, sitting in the garden with a large glass of red (and 'doing a Gordon' as listening to the Arctic Monkeys on one's iPod is now known) as the police helicopters above basked in the Streatham twilight, and
  
• Director AC, who, on the basis of never speaking to me or working with me, seems to have formed the view that I don't do any work, has lined me up for project '5', an IPO of a flaky company which will take me 1/2 way around the world for the best part of a month.
  

So if I take on project '5', projects '1' to '4' will go to hell. If I don't, Director AC will blackball me at the next promotion round for being lazy and incompetent. This is why I spent the cycle ride home wondering whether there's a timesheet code for 'General worrying about work'. There isn't. So 'Admin' will have to take another pounding.

An endless digital forest of mediocrity

Spent most of the day trying to rally sufficient pieces of paper to satisfy the anti-money laundering bureaucracy, which is spiralling out of control. Some 12 emails and 200 sheets of A4 paper later, I may just be permitted to work with a company that has been a client of our US firm for 10 years.

Made the mistake of riding home during jogging rush hour - acres and acres of sweaty flesh encased in lycra wobbling around London's parks. Nice.

My head has turned to spinach having spent the evening reading two Information Memoranda on completely separate businesses, which have somehow become the same thing in my fevered mind. Although modesty prevents me from mentioning actual sectors, it's a bit like reading in quick succession (accompanied by a number of beers) about a sheep farm then a credit card business, and failing to remember whether the fall in mutton output is due to increased repayment deliquency by the lambs, or poor weather affecting the feeding habits of the Buy Now Pay Later customers.

Enough already.

A joke to end with:

Q: What do you call a French solider who chucks a hand grenade into a '70s kitchen?























A: Linoleum Blownapart. Tres drole.

We're not looking to max out on the leverage

Looks as if Dubya’s got a case of the brad pitts at the G8 Summit. Can’t help wondering whether he deliberately ate a bunch of oysters left on a radiator in order to avoid a handbagging (not this meaning, I hope) on climate change from just about everybody else there.

Now we none of us like discussing the painful subject of fees with clients (the product of our labours generally comes in at a bag o’ sand per page, before expenses - all of those Deliverance dinners and 2am cabs). So how about settling them with a game of spoof? Billionaire Mike Ashley did, and he lost. Whereas £200k is a mere bagatelle to Ashley, the dude from Merrill would have had the hell of a meeting with their risk management people (assuming that they have any) had he lost.

There’s very little that hasn’t already been said about this week’s Apprentice – we all knew that Sralan’s East end henchman probably aren’t completely au fait with the requirements of the UK’s sex discrimination legislation, but trust the good old bloody moaning Indie to bring the TUC and the Equal Opportunities Commission into the fray. It all comes down to the old question – what’s wrong with being sexy?

The strange thing was just how much of an unpleasant cow the blonde founder of Ultimo pants was on the aftershow – she seemed to get off on telling everyone what a totally brilliant and successful millionaire she is. Not a pleasant character trait. She also proudly declared that everyone who works for her loves her. Yeah, right.

The boring 2012 logo debate rumbles on. I wonder if any of you remember that the sinister and pointless Wolff Olins who are behind all this have also been let loose a couple of times in our own fair profession.

Firstly, these are the guys who came up with the brilliant idea of PricewaterhouseCoopers (all one word, no punctuation, annoying small ‘w’, capital ‘C’ without a space before it), which I should think is mis-spelt one third of the time it appears in print, some nine years later.

The comble de joie, however, was renaming PwC consulting ‘Monday:’ (don’t forget the “:”) at a cost of £75m. The rebrand lasted a grand total of 50 days (a cool £1.5mil a day) before being re-re-branded to something along the lines of 'IBM Global Services' or something equally dull.

But if you’d like to see an example of a tragically misunderstood branding exercise, check out the logo of the Brazilian Institute for Eastern Studies. It certain rams the message home.

The subject of sore posteriors leads one nicely onto the subject of cycling to work – yes, the chimp bike has been dusted off for the first time in about 8 months. The battle for London’s streets continues unabated – Ken’s latest wheeze at Vauxhall is for cyclists and pedestrians to ‘share space’ when crossing a major road junction. This results in chaos, since both parties, having followed separate cheery diktats from City Hall that walking and cycling are very good things, are filled with righteous indignation that the other party is getting in their way.

In the same way, Wandsworth BC has somewhat undermined its policy of splitting paths between cyclists and pedestrians with a big white stripe by nailing signs saying ‘Cyclists must giveway’ (oneword, apparently) on every lamp post. So if I am on what appears to be a cycle path and a pedestrian throws himself under my wheels, is it my fault for not givingway? Idontknow.

Life was perhaps a little simpler when, in the absence of millions of detailed lists setting out everyone’s rights, people had to behave with common courtesy and consideration towards each other without bleating and reaching for a rule book.

God, it's so boring to spend so much time moaning. Back to drafting initial comments on the SPA.

"Not even the Germans have gone this far, " he said

The proposition seems to be fast inching its way into a preferred position

Today’s column is dedicated to a chimping ex-colleague who was recently stabbed in the leg on his birthday by a gentleman as keen as mustard to relieve him of his wallet and consumer durables. When he reported the crime (I believe that stabbing someone in the leg remains a criminal offence, even in multi-cultural London), he was pulled up by Old Bill for using the phrase ‘mugging’ – apparently this is no longer politically correct – ‘street robbery’ is the currently-acceptable terminology. Anyway, get well soon, me ole mucker.

Back in my counting house after a week spent packing things into boxes, then unpacking them again. Our new street is apparently much smarter (according to Up My Street, anyway), although I’m not so sure. If the cars parked on a London street are a social barometer, our former street was, to use the fib still beloved by estate agents, 'up and coming.' The M-reg Fords and Nissans were gradually being replaced by soft-top Porsche and Audis, whereas in our new street, practically everyone (including ourselves) has a beaten up estate car or MPV equipped with mandatory child seats, cat blinds and single juvenile Wellington boots on the biscuit-crumb-laden floor. Not a low-slung coupe to be seen.

Anyway, the cat is completely freaking out, and I still haven’t got used to the idea that I now have a ‘wet room’ (“The Modern Way to Shower!”) in my house.

So here’s a strange comment from the Times website yesterday, hidden away in the inevitable ‘have your say’ column appended to a somewhat dull article about computers.

The BBC is struggling to interpret the news that Vlad “Bad Muthaf*cka” Putin is about to point his rusty nukes back in our direction, leading a number of people in the US to suggest that the yanks should pull out of Europe entirely. Why? Well, the Beeb is sometimes rather keen on presenting the US as a bunch of aggressive morons, and the Russians as our somewhat misunderstood best friends. Difficult to put a positive spin on Europe being left adrift in the hands of a bunch of ex-spies from Leningrad hell bent on re-establishing the Soviet-era political system. Still, apparently all Vlad wants is respec’ (as they call it at the other, less smart, end of my new street), which suggests that he’s simply a jumped up mugger (sorry, ‘street robber’) with intercontinental ballistic missiles instead of bling and a shank.

Strange how détente has moved on, though – Russia’s reason for not attacking us is no longer for fear of swift annihilation at the hands of the Americans, but rather that Western Europe is its major energy customer, and therefore a valuable source of wealth. Best to wait until they’ve bled us dry of a few hundred billion more petrodollars until they let the SS20s loose, I guess.

Silly government initiative of the day? ‘Britain Day’. Great idea, but for the fact that the Scots and the Welsh hate the very guts of the English, mainly because we have no idea who or where they are, and really don’t care because it doesn’t matter. Oh, and we pay them millions and millions for sitting around moaning about us. As for Northern Ireland – well, I should think that participation in the celebrations may not be wholeheartedly embraced across the constituency of communities…

You’ve no doubt read that Michael Moore’s latest number (about the failings of the US healthcare system) holds up our own dear NHS as an exemplar of all that is great about healthcare. I don’t suppose that I’m entirely objective - Mrs Chimp has spent two years waiting to be allowed onto the waiting list for the waiting list for a post-birth operation that for bureaucratic reasons is classed as ‘cosmetic surgery’, thereby placing her behind dozens of fatso South London chavs waiting for government-funded boob jobs and tummy tucks (breathe, man, breathe) – but this is perhaps evidence that Mr Moore has finally descended into madness.

I was going to do a moaning piece about the recently launched London 2012 logo, but due to the fact that a gentleman amusingly called Marcel Knobil (a ‘brand expert’, apparently) doesn’t like it, it gets my vote.

And finally, have you ever wished you could have been a Nazi soldier sweeping majestically across the cornfields of the Urals in an open topped Kubelwagen in the glorious summer of ’41, with the wind blowing through your clipped blonde hair as the communist untermenschen scatter before you? Look no further. All you have to do is buy one, get it to the Polish border, and drive Eastwards at speed with a bit of Wagner on the multiplay CD. Sorted.

In a 50-50 deal, he keeps the hyphen

Back from a typical British Bank Holiday Monday – it pis*ed down with rain non-stop for 36 hours, and we went to Ikea in the sensible estate car with the children. Anyone who describes themselves as having a ‘GSOH’ should be required to spend an hour in the Ikea canteen at lunchtime.

The best thing by far was the sight of a disapproving-looking BCBG lady of a certain age (the sort who detests everyone who shops at places like Ikea, despite doing so herself) walking with two cups of boiling tea across the middle of the children’s play area, and stopping to glare and tut angrily at each of the four dozen children who came within 10 feet of her. Not sure how she failed to spot the very large sign reading ‘Children’s Play Area.’

Still, Mrs Chimp got lots of new house stuff, the children managed to blag a Barnslig Flodhäst and a Korall Sköldpadda between them, and as for me, I actually quite enjoyed my lukewarm meatballs in strange beige sauce and adding a " ’ " with a green felt-tip to a toy originally marked “My Dolls Bed.”

Last entry for a while due to impending house move (it will somehow take BT, the Great Satan of UK telecoms, three weeks to re-connect broadband). I'm even more gloomy than usual about the imminent stamp duty bill of more than £27,000, which, being a dull accountant, I’ve worked out will cost one whole year of (very large) mortgage repayments to repay. More depressing still is the cost over the life of the mortgage - £50 fecking grand (including interest) or a fiver a day every single day until 2032, by which time I’ll be knocking on 60 years old. It gives me a warm feeling inside to know that I’ll still be paying Gordon Brown’s bloody tax bill long after he’s enjoyed a long taxpayer-subsidised retirement and turned up his toes.

For those of you who think that the ‘Golden Triangle’ is something to do with blonde girls and waxing, think again. Surprised to see that my own alma mater is included in this list.

Look out Blighty, Wholefoods Market, the yankee-doodle-yuppie-foodie-nirvana, is coming to London. I’ve never been there and therefore shouldn’t judge. That said, all the guff on the website about how green they are is somewhat undermined by the massive number of large trucks parked in front of the store in picture on the homepage. (##STOP PRESS - THEY'VE CHANGED THE PHOTO SINCE LAST FRIDAY - THE TRUCKS HAVE MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARED##)

Have you read the latest Cameronian nonsense about trading permits for 'social bads'? Setting aside (if you can) the use of 'bad' as a noun, can you imagine yet another office in Central London filled with expensive people government employees earnestly establishing the relative value of each ‘bad’? How many jam doughnuts equate to driving a car? Is taking the lift instead of walking better or worse than watching reality TV? How many M&S sea bass fillets ‘from the azure waters of Greece’ would be as ‘bad’ a ‘bad’ as a Jaffa Cake? Only the man in Whitehall knows.

The few remaining Poles that aren’t living in London are embroiled in a very important debate – are the Teletubbies promoting an inappropriate alternative lifestyle choice? If it’s found to be true, expect the Teletubbies, Right Said Fred and Peter Tatchell to get pulped by a bunch of nationalists in camouflage t-shirts and thrown into prison, leaving the nationalists to run riot in Teletubbyland.

And finally, for you dismal scientists out there, The Economist’s screen saver is back!

We must either love each other, or we must die

The English summer is upon us, which means that it’s cloudy, there are millions of tourists milling about taking pictures of each other, and of course the office air conditioning is broken. The facilities people have instructed us to sit completely still in semi-darkness until things cool off in October.

I know it's boring to bang on about the nanny state, but it's difficult not to get irritated with the powers that be for pronouncing a complete ban on pre-baby boozing, despite there being nothing as inconvenient as "evidence that a couple of units once or twice a week will do any harm” to an unborn baby. Luckily, today’s advice is “not based on new scientific evidence.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as dull, risk averse and sensible as any middle class chartered accountant; it’s just that I would be very surprised indeed if the small minority of mums-to-be who get bladdered when they’re up the duff have even heard of the Department of Health, let alone paid any heed to their guidelines, irrespective of whether these are based on scientific evidence, or simply the insatiable urge to tell people what to do. Here endeth the lesson.

Not entirely unlinked to the above is Boris Johnson’s article about happiness in today’s Spectator (read by home county Nazis in tweed), which is the journalistic equivalent of foie gras en brioche. Quite simply fabulous. Before you dive in, though, you might need to mug up (well I had to, anyway, what with my patchy state education) on the following:

• reductionist
• The emergence of Athenian democracy
• TRUD
• Nicomachean Ethics
• Aristotle
• eudaemonic (a crisp fiver to anyone who can successfully weave that into their next conference call)
• pseudo-utilitarianism
• jacquerie
• NEET
• Hesiod
• asphodel

One small point, though – I’m somewhat sceptical that the study of advanced mathematics constitutes an “activity that is truly happiness-inducing”, but then the plurality of maths teachers at my school were sarcastic alcoholics.

And finally, how on can anyone at the bloody moaning Indie think that anyone at all would possibly find this picture of a house remotely interesting, let alone front-page fodder? Bloody puritans. Time to bunk off and read some Hesiod, people.

I think we need a 3-way with Philip

Appearing in a reality TV show? Need for a pre-pixellated shirt? Your problem is solved.

I spent an unhealthy amount of time this monring (New York may be a city that never sleeps, but it doesn’t do conference calls before 2pm UK time) choosing a new fridge freezer, which is exactly as dull and irritating as it sounds.

Amongst reams of data on the height, noise levels, number of egg holders, gross capacity and number of thermostats, there’s something called an ‘Energy rating’, which is a fine idea, the only problem is that practically every fridge freezer on earth is rated ‘A’, so why bother? It's a bit like GCSE results. Anyways, the damn thing (salad crisper an’ all) is being delivered next week. So sorry to be so tedious.

Some sort of coke smuggling gag here, but I can’t quite think of it.

A couple of annoying uses of corporate English that keep cropping up around here:

• The verb ‘talk to’ employed to describe anything other than one human being addressing another human being. Example: “These are the slides we’ll be talking to during the debrief.”


• The use of “It’s all about” without bothering to explain what ‘it’ is. Example: “it’s all about celebrating our values”. What is, for heaven’s sake?

Alex in the Torygraph is mid-way through an excellent run of Wall St inspired gags (here, here and here). Always remember friends, “it's not a question of enough. It's a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred from one perception to another.”.

I tried that one with my mortgage company. They transferred £275 from one perception (my account) to another (their account) for the pleasure of allowing me to repay my debt early, the swine.

Next time you’re the bee-atch of some PE guy half your age and he gets all hostile on you, try the following gem from Homer’s Odyssey (c.800BC): “think twice before you challenge me; or once you have roused me, old as I am I’ll dye your lips and breast with your own blood.” At least you know where you are with the guy. Here is the whole lot if you’ve got a moment.

Speaking of warriors, a number of people have recently mentioned a fellow called Dan Millman, who has made piles and piles of cash marketing the concept of the ‘peaceful warrior.’ Not having read the guy’s oeuvre, I can’t comment on it, but it’s fair to say that I will always be slightly suspicious of someone who signs off his blog ‘Good journeys.’

Good adding stuff up and making it into graphs.

It’s seldom difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman and a ray of sunshine

We all know that Gordo is a miserable sod, but this is ridiculous. The most annoying thing about these adverts, currently plastered on every billboard and bus in London, is the phrase ‘go smokefree’ (NB no space). A most unusual verb:

• Q: Good morning, and where are you going this fine day?
• A: I’m going smokefree, of course.

Still, at least the government’s 3,200 press officers are earning their salaries. I’m no public sector accountant, but I love the way in which the £322m paid by me and my fellow citizens in 2006, to tell us what someone else thinks we need to know, is somehow ‘turnover’. In such an opaque world, no wonder no-one has any idea how much the government is spending, sorry, earning.

Apparently the fine city of Leeds "struts across England's urban stage like John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever". Good to see that the British sense of humour is alive and kicking.

A distinctly underwhelming compromise

A moderately diverting piece about randomness and luck from the beeb. It makes you wonder why you bother in life, doesn’t it? But then apparently lucky people make their own luck, so keep at it, compadres.

I’ve had the pleasure of reading a competitor’s financial due diligence report today, which contains the following gems in amongst numerous typos and split infinitives:

• “corporate business generally relates to companies”
• “the company reduced prices to counter declining sales. Unfortunately, this had the effect of increasing sales”

I suddenly realise how painful it must be to be a client of someone like me.

Next time you have a hangover, don’t take any crap from your colleagues, attribute your less-than-stellar performance to ‘brain fog’ brought on by gluten intolerance. You needn’t tell them that the gluten was in fact in the pitta of your 3am kebab.

Our friends at Google are really getting into the habit of banning stuff. This time it’s essay writing websites, although the ban hasn’t quite started yet, it seems. I'm sure that there's far more unsavoury stuff to be banned from Google searches (especially with Moderate SafeSearch switched off) ahead of a bit of innocent exam cheating...

I wonder if there’s a gap in the market for a financial due diligence report writing website? Hmmm.

Macro paradigms, or epoch-making overall constellations

Today’s entry is dedicated to the aggressive fiftysomething lady on the rush hour train out of London on Friday night, who grabbed my brother in law’s seat, stole my newspaper, then spent the duration of the journey eating an offensively strong egg sandwich and yelling down her phone at her poor son in his boarding school … whilst sitting in the ‘Quiet Coach’.

Mark my words, friends, the tyranny of the nearly-retired is upon us. Because they don’t work much, they have plenty of time to vote for the party that promises them a massive pension built from the sweat off our backs. We’ll be working until the age of 90 so that this last generation of state-sponsored layabouts can do the same at 60. And they eat egg sandwiches. Horrific.

Speaking of suspicious smells, did anyone else notice something strange about the BA price-fixing story last week? Notwithstanding BA’s name very deservedly being dragged through the mud yet again, we all seem to have forgotten that it requires two parties to tango around competition rules. Step forward Virgin Atlantic, who acted in an equally dastardly manner, but went to the Feds and shopped their old enemy. A new variant on the ole prisoner’s dilemma.

Wonder if Richard Branson is now living anonymously under witness protection? Somehow I doubt it.

Next time an aüslander bitches about black snot and London pollution in general, you’d do well to remind them that in terms of CO2 emissions, our fine city is in fact “dangerously like some hippie commune”. Perhaps Ken should do his bit about the wretched Low Emission Zone and put a sock in it for once.

Speaking of Transport for London, I would like to take the opportunity to declare a jihad against the City Hall muppet who came up with the idea of reducing the number of lanes by 50% on the Embankment just before Chelsea Bridge. This has had the admirable effect of turning a 30 second breeze into a 25 minute perpetual traffic jam. Always a pleasure when the chimplets are getting restless in the back of the sensible estate car.

Did you know that the English version of the Japanese ‘karoshi’ is ‘work-life balance’?

Of the four transactions currently tracking on my radar, two of them have a profusion of people with the same first names. Transaction A has four Tims, whereas Transaction B has three Anthonys. Not sure that this is significant. Or indeed interesting.

It's better to be wrong than alone

Feeling as if my liver is going to explode today, mainly because of a four hour Menu Gourmand (roughly translates as 'bloated pig') dinner yesterday evening here, which involved six courses accompanied by six different glasses of wine, one of which was memorably called ‘Terre Arse’ (although sadly not pronounced in the correct English manner by our inevitably Polish waitron).

After a little awkwardness during a conversation with our German guest about whether wine from Alsace is German or French (it depends on who's asking, apparently), a fine evening was had by all. Wish I’d eaten less, though. Four courses would have been fine.

Here’s a story about City high flyers out-breeding each other. Makes my own two look rather meagre. If only they were joking about it being “cheaper to run a string of polo ponies than bring up twins.”

Be careful what you look for on Gumtree, however.

Good (ie. brief, and doesn’t contain any bloody ‘random musings’) blog about chatter on the tube. On reflection, this must be made up, as everyone knows that it’s simply not done to talk on the Tube.

Here’s a quick internet poll.

And finally, a Chartered Accountant dancing

See you next, um, Monday

She looks like a horse covered in rice pudding

Grrr

Platinum standard in gender diversity benchmarking

A period of deep gloom and bottomless dubitation

An opening address from our soon-to-be-former premier ministre. For those of you who don’t speak French, Monsieur Blair is announcing that as a last ditch attempt to stop Gordon Brown from taking over, the UK is to be incorporated into the French state forthwith, and that speaking French with a terrible, terrible accent will be mandatory from 28 June. I’m sure at one point he says ‘France and England are the same height.’

Here's a good bit of small print, in case you were in any doubt about copying their advert and racing your car once you've bought M&S insurance:


Next time your train home’s delayed after a long day of run-rate analysis, why not simply let the red mist descend and run riot? Alternatively, you could buy a bottle of Diet Coke and a small bottle of rum at the station, mix them together as you run to catch the train, then drink the lot by the time the train leaves the station, as I saw one of my fellow straphangers do at Waterloo the other night.

Dull property related item – the UK government has fallen out with the entire property industry about something called a ‘Home Information Pack’, which becomes compulsory shortly (after the customary 10 minute public consultation period), despite the fact that they are demonstrably pointless. Despite the endless drivel spouted by government agencies about how great they are, HIPs will really only achieve 3 things:

• It will make moving house £300 more expensive, without actually doing anything useful


• It will result in the seller receiving a patronising report about spending £30,000 on better insulation in order to make savings of £50 per year on fuel bills, and


• It will earn 6,000 freshly-minted, government-mandated (and therefore Labour-voting) Home Inspectors, £48,000 a year (or more than twice the UK average salary) for coming into your house and taking a cursory glance at your windows

For an excellent, surgical destruction of the pointless Yvette Cooper’s windy posturing, take a look at the profession’s view. But then what would the mere property professionals know, eh?

Our Paramount Leader Ken’s pointless posters are back, this time patronisingly telling us to walk for all journeys of 2km or less. Check out the hilarious transcript of the radio ad.

Strange how it doesn’t mention walking in dog turds and chewing gum, getting elbowed by joggers, yelled at by pavement cyclists, knocked down by Chelsea tractor drivers SMSing their nannies whilst shouting at their loathsome children, being intimidated by 12 year old children playing crap tinny rap music on their mobile phones, torrential rain (no umbrella, hole in shoe, all over splashing from heartless bus driver ploughing through a puddle), abused by drunks, hassled by petition wielders, charity direct debiters, Big Issue vendors and free paper distributors, oh, and the fact that on average, Londoners travel more than 10km to work each day, making the entire campaign a waste of time. Still, unsolicited advice from an organ of the state is always welcome.

Burning question of the day – are you a dispositionalist or a situationalist?

With more than 70 million competitors, here are five ways not to describe your blog if you ever want anyone to read it:
1. “General ramblings about stuff”
2. “Musings about my life”
3. “A series of rants about anything”
4. “Writing and stuff”
5. “Random thoughts, posted when I feel like it”

Finally, will you ever get rich? I am apparently heading (glacially slowly) towards ‘High Net Worth’. Apparently I’m missing the ‘X’ factor, though.

Enough random musings about my life and stuff. See you tomorrow.

Eurocorruption War Contest results

If war is a continuation of politics by other means (cf. Von Clausewitz), what on earth is the warbling and prancing of the Eurovision Song Contest?

Notwithstanding Terry Wogan’s increasingly sarcastic (and perhaps inebriated) commentary about tactical voting, there may be something in it.

The map below separates the men from the boys, in terms of the pre-arranged trading of votes with one’s neighbours, based on the final scores on the doors, Isla.

Strange that Italy and Slovakia didn’t bother turning up this year, but good to see Israel hanging onto its European status though.

At the risk of equating a crappy song competition to regional geopolitics, the dividing line between dubious and scrupulous runs remarkably close to the course of the former Iron Curtain.

No less than sixteen countries happily exchanged the maximum (10 or 12) points with a direct neighbour.

Did these shenanigans in the Balkans make any difference to the result? In a word, yes, although I’m not really clever enough to work out why. For a start, Serbia’s winning margin was 33 points, way less than the 73 dubious neighbourly points it received. Also, four of the top five finishers are coloured a sinister red, whereas the highest ranked green nice guy came in at a poor 15th.

There’s probably a maths project about game theory in all this I should think.

In the manner of a hormone-laden teen disco, there’s a palpable sense of unrequited love in some areas, wherein one smitten nation gives maximum marks to a neighbour, and is rudely given the bird (‘nul points’ in Eurovisionspeak) in return. Here, then, is the list of likely future wars in Europe:

• Bosnia and/or Serbia vs Croatia (rematch of previous local derbies in 1912, 1913, and of course the more recent decade-long affair)
• Serbia vs Montenegro (residual bad feeling following the recent divorce?)
• Russia and/or Latvia vs Estonia (the Russians are furious about a statue, and doing more than withholding votes at present; the Lats are p*ssed off that the Estonians consider themselves to be Scandinavians not Balts)
• Armenia vs Turkey (just a little historical misunderstanding)
• Ukraine vs Poland (no imminent return to the Duchy of Poland, it seems)
  

But then it’s only a bit of fun, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Embrace randomness and come to terms with black swans

Got an email yesterday with the above title. Is there any any such thing as a black swan? Maybe that's the point.

So, back from a week in Greece and raring to go. Back to Greece, that is.

Today’s entry is brought to you courtesy of the Greek variety of the Hyundai Accent, a fine automobile that we had the pleasure of driving last week. Pity, though, that the doors were made from corrugated cardboard, and that it required two people’s grunting efforts to ram reverse gear into place. I guess that the Greek outpost of Europcar has been told that all English take pride in having terrible accents. Ah-ha.

Spent a happy week in a child-friendly holiday compound with a bunch of other London professionals who’ve waited until the brink of middle age to have children. It’s so unceasingly tiring to be a competitive middle class parent, what with proving one’s children’s running, throwing and swimming prowess, frantically singing nursery rhymes to them by way of making up for dumping them in the crèche for most of the day, and of course battle of the camcorders / digital cameras. The latter was a score draw – I counted four Canon EOSs and three Sony High Definition camcorders (including our own stolen one, of course).

Great to see that some clichés of the English abroad are timeless – the bar at the airport (which doubles up as a top secret military airfield and vegetable garden) was full of dozens of surly-looking middle-aged blokes angrily drinking litres of beer at 10am whilst waiting for their delayed flight back to Manchester.

It seems that most of the large accounting firms have been jumping around excitedly about their inclusion in a list of “Companies that count”, drawn up by the fine people at Business in the Community (a fine-sounding if ambiguous name – would drug dealing be classed as a community business?). I should blasted-well hope that accounting firms are companies that count – what the hell else would they spend their time doing?

Reminds me of a competition held at my school back in the ‘80s to devise a new motto. The winner was the memorable ‘Where everybody counts’, until someone helpfully pointed out that surprisingly few people could actually count. Deciding that ‘Where only a small minority counts’ didn’t quite hit the spot, the powers-that-be went for the much more ambiguous (and therefore more appealing) ‘Where everybody matters.’

It seems that Gordon Brown has started campaigning hard. The question is - for / against what? If he does absolutely nothing (or indeed slips away to Greece for a month), he'll still become Prime Minister without the bothersome task of asking the electorate about it, so why fly around the place making vapid speeches? So only a matter of weeks until Brown, Balls and Darling take over the country. My question is this - if the answer is 'Brown Balls, Darling' - what was the question?

Here is the story of an incompetent Credit Suisse guy busted for insider trading. The dude used the office phone to tip off his contact FFS, no wonder he’s a ‘junior banker’ at the age of 37.

Nice to see CS claiming that they ‘immediately informed’ the authorities, when in fact CS hadn’t any idea what was going on, and had to be told by the SEC.

Still, secret squirrel info is part of the game. I sit here in the knowledge that the employer of someone I know well is up for sale, which may result in their losing their job. Should I tell them? No, because it’s illegal. Do I want to tell them? Yes. It’s all down to what my MBA ethics professor would call (with an absurdly overdone French accent) one’s ‘moral compass’.

Ever wish you were young again? Maybe in your middle teens, with the best (and most heavily subsidised) years of your life just around the corner? Think again – take a look into the mind of a 14 year old. I suppose one forgets the hormone-fuelled intensity of those difficult years…

Well, it’s Friday, so why not mix your self a double-oh drink sit back, and enjoy this quite brilliant piece of creative accounting.

I’m following the herd down to Greece for a few days, so hang in there, friends…

My ass is grass and he's got a lawn mower, you dig?

Today’s supercharged entry is brought to you in association with Stephen Seagal’s Lightning Bolt, 'an energy drink as unique as the man who created it.'

If you thought Esperanto was a silly idea, why not try conversing in a new strange new Eurolanguage supported by this blog? I suggest that we cut the crap and start learning Manadarin.

Following yesterday’s global geography quiz, today’s is for those with the arrogant old-European view that US citizens passportless goons who ‘demonstrate a limited understanding of the world’ – step forward and prove your geographical superiority by naming each of the US’ very own states in 10 minutes. I petered out with 4 to go. Goddam Wisconsin.

New copy of The Idler is out, if you can be bothered.

And finally the story of a $65m pair of pants (or trousers, as we backwards Brits stubbornly insist on calling them). I love the idea that a judge is claiming ‘emotional damage’ of half a mil because his trousers went missing, plus another half mil to cover his own legal expenses. Plus 10 years’ rental car fees because he’s being ‘forced’ to drive to a different store. Send him to the tower, but don't for heaven's sake, lose his trousers.

Being born in a stable does not make one a horse

A quick one today – I have proper work to do. So, using the punchy bullet-point style so loved of due diligence practitioners:

• exchanged contracts on the new chimp enclosure in Tooting today, and if I could give you one piece of advice (or 'value add' as we call it), other than the obvious stuff about never trusting estate agents, it’s that you should never sell residential property to a junior investment bankers – it’s just not worth it.


• one of junior chimp boy’s new words this week is ‘castle.’ Problem is, he can’t quite pronounce the ‘c’, leading a number of my fellow Earlsfieldians to believe they’re being called an ‘arsehole’ by a toddler who they’ve never met. The kid will go far. Heh.


• Is it me, or is this an unpaid advert for a well known mobile operator, not an item of ‘media news’. ‘Golden spot’ my foot.

• Say what you like about Gordon Brown’s support in the country, all of 182 people on Facebook like him. Only another 44,775,003 more of us to win over, and the job’s done. Might be easier to use the more, um, ‘reliable’ system of postal voting. I don't know why we bother to elect our new Prime Ministers at all. Hang on a minute...


• For those Daily Telegraph readers out there feeling the urge to splutter in angry protest about something, why not ally yourself to the Campaign Against Political Correctness. The ‘about us’ page is particularly special - in the same way the devil has the best tunes, the lunatic fringe of the UK right has the ugliest nutters.


• If you’ve got 10 minutes to spare and need some adrenalin to brighten up your day, why not try a high-pressure geography quiz? It's simple - you name each of the 192 member states of the UN whilst a socking great stopwatch counts down your ten minute allowance.

M’aidez, m’aidez

Happy May Day, comrades, and long live the revolution. You can still join the brothers for an afternoon of marching and shouting in the May sunshine if you leave the office sharpish.

And it seems that marching and shouting are just about all the dudes at the PCS (Prop: M Serwotka Esq, controller the pen-pushers in various branches of the government machine) will be doing for a while, since they’ve arranged an unhelpfully titled day of ‘industrial action’, which should perhaps read ‘bureaucratic inaction’ on this very day.

I believe they’re striking because HMG is closing down the Job Centre Plusses (‘Job Centres Plus’?). Maybe they have a point – if the guys who help unemployed people have been made unemployed, who’s going to help them?

Here are some jobs the meaning and purpose of which escape me:

• Visual merchandiser


• Female hygiene operative


• Minister of Excellence


• Head of Proposition Development

Sharper eyed readers will note that the UK Sunday papers picked up on the Abercrombie and Bitch story featured in this very column ten days previously. The writ is in the post, gentlemen.

Out and about for some client drinks last night. The topics of conversation (in chronological order) are listed below:

• Sufficiency of working capital headroom (it’s all down to judgement)


• Impact on the year end audit of the requirement under IFRS to determine fact patterns (makes it much longer and more expensive)


• Likely effect of the new Companies’ Act on directors’ responsibilities (nothing)


• Whether South Africans who live in Putney are posher than South Africans who live in Earlsfield (probably, but there are fewer of them)


• The minimum amount of outside space a rental flat full of South Africans needs to have a braai (about 0.4m2)


• What roasted guinea pig (something of a signature dish in Ecuador, I gather) might taste like (bony chicken, probably)


• Guessing how many Polish dudes there are in London (the assembled conversers came from all corners of London, and they all had a Polski Sklep in the neighbourhood)


• Whether there’s a correlation between personal wealth and the waviness of one’s hair (yes - supported by empirical evidence from the high powered bankers standing at the other end of the room)

Can you guess the point at which the warm chardonnay kicked in?

And finally, next time you get lucky enough to see your London NHS GP and are told that ‘it’s probably a virus, I suggest you rest’, it’s time to get all pushy and North American on their complacent asses – here are three questions to ask them. I sense, however, that the responses will be a brusque (1) Nothing; (2) No; (3) Of course not, please leave immediately.

Enough already, I need to get ahead of the curve on my anchor tailored insights collateral deck. At least I think that’s what he said.

Labouring under an aberration of intellect

Question: what do:

(a) Black Economic Empowerment
(b) Harry Enfield, and
(c) Razorlight

have in common? Simple. As a result of (a), millions of bronzed, athletic, hard-drinking South African gym-bunnies have made London their home. This has led veteran comic (b) to stick the boot in with ‘Pik’, a bone-headed Afrikaaner whose life revolves around boozing and vomiting.

So where does (c) fit in? Well, for some reasons, the gazillions of little ‘Piks’ (or something that sounds like it) who live down my way love nothing better on a summer’s afternoon than drinking 3 dozen Windhoeks and singing along in a sort of strangled drunken yell to ‘America’ by Razorlight. Three separate braais audible from my back garden have pulled this stunt in the last week.

So why is this? Do our SA friends perhaps feel some affinity with Johnny Borrell, frontman of Razorlight, who is linked in the public consciousness with having an elite education, a staggeringly high belief in his own abilities, and a propensity to drink too much? I couldn’t possibly comment.

Like it or not we live in interesting times

Out and about last night (rare enough nowadays at a marginal cost of £8 per hour for babysitting), first to an art gallery (just a buncha pikchurs, innit) then to dinner with friends in Camden.

The dudes we had dinner with have one of these digital music thingies. Needless to say, and despite several patient and clear explanations, I can’t really remember what it is, or how it works. It’s very cool though.

Camden (no ‘Town’ – strictly for the tourists) might as well be on a different planet from little Johannesburg where I dwell. Whereas Planet Wandsworth is filled with Aryans trying to avoid black people, Planet NorfLandan is filled with white undergraduates trying to be black people.

I know it shouldn’t, but there’s something about white guys with dreads that winds me up. It’s all very well about ‘appreciating where you come from’, but most of these guys are from Kingston-Upon-Thames, for feck’s sake, not the other one in Jamaica.

Anyhoo, digital music guy recommended this site – a forum thing for hoody wearing soap dodgers who are old enough to know better, who spend their time breaking into old buildings and taking pictures. Once you get used to the mild whiff of nerdyness about the site, it’s strangely interesting.

Back to dull statistics – here is one of the dullest statistics-based sites I’ve seen for a while. Did you know that 900 trillion tonnes of solar energy has hit the earth this year? Um…no.

Certain of our US readers might want to consider this new model when next upgrading their cellphone / PDA / sidearm.

And finally, a quiz about Canada

Bon weekend à tous.