Can't Reinstall

[Anthony Wons]

I've been using get_iplayer successfully to download radio programmes as .aac files. It stopped working last week and I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software but now it doesn't work at all. I get the message: 

get_iplayer v2.79, Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Phil Lewis
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use --warranty.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
conditions; use --conditions for details.

WARNING: Running the updater again to obtain plugins.
ERROR: get_iplayer is not writable - aborting update (maybe a package manager wa
s used to install get_iplayer?)

Looking at the mailing list, I realise there may be a solution to the original problem but I can't even get that far at the moment. It's probably due to me being dim but I'd be grateful for any help.