drplokta

Bradford & Bingley: retail operations sold to Abbey (owned by Santander), mortgage book nationalised
Wachovia: taken over by Citigroup with an FDIC cap on losses
Fortis: 49% nationalised by the governments of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Glitnir: 75% nationalised by the government of Iceland

One suspects that the US bailout is too little too late -- with Northern Rock and B&B, the UK government has already acquired more duff mortgages as a proportion of GDP than the US bailout calls for, and lending practices were nothing like as bad in the UK as in the US.

[The following is reproduced from the new issue of Plokta, which is in the process of being mailed. Note that we got the year wrong in most of the UK Ploktas, and the con is in 2009, not 2008.]

<plokta.con> Release 4.0 is go! It will be held at Sunningdale Park in Berkshire from Saturday 23 May 2009 to Monday 25 May 2009, which is a bank holiday Monday. We plan to start programming at around 11am on the Saturday, and finish at around 6pm on the Monday. The convention room rate will be available on the Friday and Monday night, and we intend to be sitting in the bar on Friday night.

Sunningdale Park is famous for being the Civil Service College, although it’s now formally the home of the National School of Government. All the facilities are named after famous civil servants; sadly, we couldn't afford to book the Willis Suite, the Kettle Theatre, or the fishlifter Tavern. De Vere Venues have completely refurbished the site, so it no longer has that authentic student feel. For which we’re sure you're very grateful.

It’s a mile or so from the town of Sunningdale, near Ascot, which is half an hour from London Waterloo by train. Our overseas readers should note that it’s about twelve miles from Heathrow Airport (easiest by taxi, but you'd want to book one in advance). The site is a former stately home set in 65 acres of landscaped grounds around a lake. We don't get to use the stately home (think wedding conveyor belt); instead we have the modern purpose-built convention centre at the other end of the site. The accommodation and restaurant/bar are close by, and it's all been refurbished to make it beautiful. There's also an outdoor, heated swimming pool, and diversions such as tennis, squash, giant chess, pool and croquet. And there's free WiFi. Alison's been wanting to run a convention at Sunningdale for years; it's a truly lovely site.

Attending membership is £30 payable either by cheque (payable to Plokta) posted to Mike Scott (email for the address) or by PayPal to mike@plokta.com. Free for under 12s, £15 for 12-17.

The room rate is £80 per twin/double room per night and £60 per single room per night, including breakfast and VAT. Some family rooms are available; check with us if you need one. Booking arrangements will be advised later.

We’ve set up a LiveJournal community (ploktacon4) and a Facebook group, and any news and updates will be posted to both locations.

More information on guests and programme will follow.

Here are a few more photos of the local wildlife( behind the cut (WARNING: contains giant insects) )

I've been out with the camera this weekend, for the first time in a while.

( So there are photos behind the cut. )

(Image may change when it's updated -- I don't know how NOAA's image links work.)

That's Tropical Storm Hanna, heading straight for us, and still expected to be a tropical storm when it's in the North Atlantic approaching Ireland on Wednesday next week.

There's something that no one is mentioning with reference to Google's new web browser. Which is that if you read what the comic says about the browser, that's not a web browser, it's an operating system.

It has a programming language (Javascript). It has a filesystem/database (Google Gears). It has process management. It has window management and display logic. It has permissions-based security. This is not Google trying to compete with Internet Explorer, it's Google trying to compete with Windows -- or rather, make Windows irrelevant.