In the world of business, the truth can sometimes be a rare commodity. Last week, Google announced that it would change some key details of its stock option plan. Stock options represent the right to buy a company's shares at some time in the future. The price employees will pay when they buy the shares allocated to them is fixed when the options to buy are granted. Stock options are based on the notion that share prices go up over time.

An employee might, for example, be given the right to buy Google shares at a fixed price of $50 a year from now, on the assumption that the shares will be worth more than that when the year is up. The probable profit is part of the employee's compensation package. Stock options are seen by companies as a way to keep good people: they usually have to still be working at the company when they cash in their options.

Of course, it works both ways. The company has to continue to exist and its shares have to grow in value, if the options are to be worth cashing in (known as "exercising" the options). AIG is the worst case example of what happens when things go wrong. Its employees "earned" a significant part of their emoluments in share options, which in some cases were cancelled if the employees left AIG before retiring. Then AIG started circling the drain. With the trading value of the shares lower than the fixed price at which employees could buy them, the share options wouldn't be worth a dime.

This is often a light-hearted column, but there's no room for levity on this issue. I know some AIG people whose lives have been badly damaged as a consequence of their share options becoming worthless.

What is funny, however, is when senior company executives are caught saying one thing and apparently meaning another. We've had at least two examples in the past few days. One is international, the other local. Eric Schmidt is chief executive of Google, which announced last week that it would lower the price of its employees' stock options.

The right to buy shares of the company at, say, $50, would be replaced with options to buy priced at, say, $30. The reason is that Google's share price has fallen by nearly 60 percent from its November 2007 peak.

Officially, the purpose of this action is to encourage employees to stay with the company. In reality, it is a bribe, plain and simple.

In a conference call, Mr. Schmidt said that 85 percent of outstanding employee stock options had an exercise price higher than the share's current value. The cost of this particular bribe, the hit to be taken by shareholders, would be $460 million.

Then, in a classic example of what George Orwell called Doublespeak, Mr. Schmidt went on to say of the action: "It is a good deal for shareholders and for employees as well".

It is a good deal for employees, no doubt about that. They receive a gift worth $460 million to persuade them to stay with the company, after helping it lose 60 percent of its value. This bribe is a reward for failure. And let's not forget that millions of people are losing their jobs and would kill for a chance to work at Google for half what the present bunch makes.

Contrary to Mr. Schmidt's comments, however, this is an exceptionally bad deal for Google shareholders.

Then look at the case of Terry Roberson, the general manager of Cablevision. You may recall that Cablevision last week gleefully cut off the two American networks carried by the Bermuda Broadcasting Company. Cable channels 7 and 9, two of the channels for which Cablevision's customers are already paying, were unilaterally removed, with no refund planned for the discontinued services.

Defending his actions, Mr. Roberson was quoted as saying: "The entire basis of our position is to protect the interests of our customers ..." From whom? Er, from Cablevision.

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Speaking of telling the truth, as I sit here typing, tears gush down my face, caking my mascara. Like Tammy Faye Bakker and every other third-rate preacher, I have set myself up as a moral arbiter, only to be caught in flagrante delicto in dereliction of my moral responsibilities.

Last week, readers may recall that I chastised many broadcasters of the Presidential inaugural for their confusion of the words 'historic' and 'historical'. In so doing, I set myself up as a know-it-all. "Thus," I wrote, "the inauguration was a historic moment, one for the historical record." Oh, the shame. The word "historic" starts with what some folks call an "haitch" (as in Haitch-SBC. The correct pronunciation is "aitch".) A satirically-minded reader wrote to remind me, quite correctly: "Before nouns beginning with haitch, such as 'istorical' or 'istoric, the article is 'an' not 'a'." One might attend an historic inauguration; one might have an hatred of grammatical errors; one might deserve an hiding.

Unlike Ms Bakker and the other swaggarts, I have no one to blame but myself. I can't hide my wicked ways from the public gaze, or deny my mistake as if it had never taken place. I can't even take a leaf out of Mr. Schmidt's book and say that my ghastly blunder is good for my shareholders, because I don't have any.

I therefore humble myself before you as I start the long crawl back toward moral clarity. I beg your forgiveness and vow henceforth never again to make a mistake, excepting only those occasions when I do.