Category: economic issues

Read this and help (if you can)

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Be warned: If you are a parent – especially one with young children – you are about to spend some money.

I was alerted to this via twitter this morning. I think you should read it and (if you can) help out.

My phone rings. It’s J. She needs to talk, she says. We met on Saturday, she’d come along to the Young Moms group with her friend who’d been before. They live together in Ocean View.

I ask if she’s okay, but she’s not. She doesn’t know what to say, or how to say it. She’s embarrassed, ashamed, asking a stranger for help.

“We don’t have food, Tracy. We’ve got nothing.”

She’s waiting for her grant but it hasn’t come through yet, because she moved and had to reapply. Is it just a sob story? How can I really tell? I can’t.

Can you help us?

And there you go, that’s the question. Can I help her? I don’t have cash lying about, every cent of my salary has a home to go to, and by the 14th of the month, I’m starting to look forward to payday again.
Then I remember the chocolate I had yesterday. The fancy cheese I didn’t need. The expensive school fees and the safe roof over my children’s heads – not my very own roof, sure, but a warm home and family nevertheless . The iPad I was lusting over, even though I know I’d never afford one, it’s still on my radar.

I have everything I need, and some things I don’t. There are many things I want and don’t have. But we’re safe, well-fed and healthy.

Tracy is Tracy Engelbrecht and details of the Young Moms Support group are here.

You can argue all you like over who is responsible for a 2 year old child going to bed hungry. Is it the Government, is it the parents, is it the system or is it society?
But while you’re arguing, that 2 year old child is still going to bed hungry. And that’s not right.

People like Tracy are going out there and making a difference and for that they deserve our admiration and our support.

You can donate here (Paypal in US$ – which make an even bigger difference at the moment) or contact Tracy at tracy@tracyengelbrecht.com.

Please spread this post as far and as wide as you can: facebook, twitter, email, skinner over coffee – whatever. Even passing it on may make a difference.
The more people that can help, the more help these Moms get.

Cape Town e-Toll Calculator

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As Gautengers gear up for hefty tolls on their new state of the art car parks roads, those lovely people at ensightnetworks have launched a handy e-Toll calculator so that you can see just how much extra it’s going to cost the Vaalies to sit in queues all day get from one place to another.

Obviously, this e-Tolling is going to have a big effect when it is introduced later in the year and so I felt it was only right that Capetonians should also be aware of how much it will cost them to live and drive around the Mother City as well.
I can like to assist with your financial planning for 2011.

We do actually have a toll road in Cape Town – the vastly over-rated and often closed Chapman’s Peak Drive – but since it’s tucked neatly away behind the Lentil Curtain, I’ve chosen to ignore it. Otherwise, your journey from A to B – and quite possibly to C as well – will cost you nothing. But if that’s not quite clear enough, I’ve done some rudimentary calculations and come up with this quick table to assist you:

From: Anywhere in Cape Town
To: Anywhere else in Cape Town
Cost: R0

However, there may be some supplementary costs for Cape Town drivers:

Views of the Mountain from roads: R0
Use of roads that go to beaches: R0
Use of roads that don't go past mine dumps: R0
Opportunity for Dukes of Hazzard jump from unfinished freeway in town: R0

But it looks like there aren’t.

All of which begs the question: Why on earth do people continue to live in Jo’burg?

Slower than me

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Amazing news coming in from the UK, is that there is actually a place – placeS, in fact – in the UK which have a slower broadband connection than me. What sort of a godforsaken, Fourth World backwater are we talking about here?
Well, Kent actually. Home to illegal immigrants, the Neanderthal residents of Maidstone and an
ex-girlfriend of mine. Three good reasons (amongst many others) to avoid the place.

And it’s not just a bit slower, either:

Research by broadband comparison website Top10.com found that Railway Hill in Barnham, Kent, had an average download speed of just 0.13Mb per second.

And when I (eventually) got a result from speedtest.net this evening, it was this:

Whoosh, it ain’t – unless you happen to be a Railway Hill resident, then you’ve never seen anything quite this fast before: “Moy Goodnars!” (Note the retracted first element and slight monophthongisation of PRICE vowel there – that’s Kent for you.)

Let me be honest here, I could get faster if I wanted. But it would cost a lot of money – an extra R300 a month on top of the R300 I’m already paying for this digital equivalent of amputee tortoises sleepwalking through cold molasses. And so while I had to ask myself whether it was worth paying twice as much to get a speed which is still only around one fifth the UK average, I replied to myself with a firm no.

Broadband is hugely expensive here in SA. It’s a luxury and I’m grateful to have it, but I’m paying through the nose for it as well. For only slightly more than I’m paying for my service, my parents are getting 30 Mb/s, which is shortly to be upgraded (at no extra cost to them) to 40Mb/s. For the non-mathematicians amongst you: yes, that’s 100 times faster download speed than I’m on here. And included in that package is phone line rental and a fair few (most?) phone calls as well.

It’s frustrating that even as prices start to come down and speeds start to go up here, we still find ourselves lagging (no pun intended) further and further behind the “developed” nations.

But then I look at it like this – perhaps, in a way, I’ve traded in affordable, super-fast  internet access for Table Mountain, Kirstenbosch and the Constantia Wine Route; for late night dips in the pool and for Castle Milk Stout and Carling Black Label. And while I might only be able to manage a measly 0.43Mb/s; while it might take me 2 months to download a movie, things could be worse.

Because when I open my curtains tomorrow, I’m not going to be looking at Kent.

Glass half full?

Glass brimming, methinks.

Flying news

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Another two parter – this time with airlines doing nice some altruistic (sort of) things for people.

I like KLM’s surprise for social media users (spotted via @tara_lawson). And though it was just a bit of an experiment, it worked for them, with over a million mentions on twitter alone. Someone, somewhere will be able to tell me how much that is worth to a brand.
(And someone is going to pull me up on the meaning of the word “altruistic” too, aren’t they?)

The best bits for me were that they were taking ordinary people in an ordinary situation and making their lives just a bit better and then they were not just giving gifts out, but that those gifts were considered and tailor made for each of the recipients. That shows real thoughtfulness because those are the gifts that mean the most – even to a “stranger”.

And they’re right: “Doing something that creates a real smile on somebody’s face is much cooler than attaching a smiley face”.

Nice work, Ogilvy.

Meanwhile, er… Ogilvy have created a brilliant campaign for KLM’s rivals, British Airways, on the back of the Ashes tour to Australia.
With England set to win the final match (and the series and the Ashes with it) tomorrow, BA have launched an online promotion for flights from Sydney to London, offering to discount flights by the largest amount of runs England scores in a single Ashes innings.
Apparently:

The tongue-in-cheek campaign is running on Australian sites only, such as the Sydney Morning Herald, and uses the strapline “Do something you never thought you would do. Cheer on England”.
Andrew Boggs, business director for the British Airways account at Ogilvy London, said: “The idea was to offer Australian cricket fans some consolation in defeat – without resorting to triumphalism or condescension.”

Right, Andrew. I’m sure the Aussies don’t see it as triumphalism or condescension. *cough*

Because they have been so very dominant in the series, England haven’t actually had to have too many innings’. However, I think I’m right in saying that their knock in the current match in Sydney was their best at 644 (A$644 = £415) – knocking about a third off the cheapest flights to London.

Throw in some cricket lessons for them as well and I think that’s a pretty good deal.

I should be out in the sun…

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…but there’s the small matter of a few thoughts to be documented and this tends to be the place where I do that sort of thing.

I will commence with this documentation process now.

Firstly: did I see my first fixed game of football on Friday night? We all know that cycling is a valueless laughing stock now that another (and another and another) big name is discovered to have used drugs to enhance their performance. And all the scientific evidence points towards the biggest name of all having done exactly the same – but having got away with it, at least for the moment. Athletics too, is in disarray with medals tables still being updated a week after the Commonwealth Games has finished. And even the “Gentleman’s Game”, cricket has fallen foul of recent match-fixing allegations.
So far, football has really only made itself look stupid by not adopting goalline technology, but the result of the Cape Town derby on Friday night was decided by the dodgiest 92nd minute penalty I’ve ever seen given. And that includes several at Old Trafford. And that’s saying something. None of the players, nor the 15,000 crowd, nor (apparently) the referee saw anything untoward as veteran goalkeeper Hans Vonk collected the ball and got the game going again. But the linesman on the far side decided to flag for a foul and was already in position for the resulting penalty to be taken before the ref had even blown his whistle. It looked weird.  It looked dodgy. And it was made even more iffy by the fact that it was in the 92nd minute. He probably would have given one earlier, but Santos hadn’t actually got into the box before that.

The penalty was saved by an incensed Vonk, but he couldn’t hold on to it  and the rebound was popped in for world’s most unlikely draw. After the incident and after the game, Mr Vonk could be seen telling the officials exactly wheat he thought of them. Repeatedly and in detail.

Secondly: dolphins, The Cove and the internet.
Now, I like dolphins as much as the next man (as long as the next man isn’t Alan Cooper – I don’t like them that much). But I’m also one of those enquiring people who never takes things at face value and likes to look at both sides of a story. The annual dolphin killings at Taiji in Japan is one of those stories. It’s been in the news again recently, because the time for the annual kill has come around again and much reference has been made to the overly subjective film The Cove, which was released last year, documenting the 2009 kill and telling us that the water turned red with the blood of the dolphins.
Isn’t that dramatic? What do they think the floor of a slaughterhouse looks like?

Now, environmentalists want this annual practice banned – no matter that it’s been going on for over 300 years and there are still plenty of dolphins to be caught.  And that’s ok, because everyone is entitled to their views on this and when you are a greenie, you have to protest about something – it’s what you do. And dolphins are the most awesome thing to protest about because they’re dolphins. And dolphins and pandas are top of the list when it comes to poking the human conscience. Them and puppies.

But what about humans? Because Taiji isn’t some oil-rich, gold-laden glittering city. Taiji is a small town with no industry or income other than that of the fishing (and for fishing, you can read “whaling”). So when you take away what they are their ancestors have been doing for centuries because it doesn’t fit with your Western beliefs, what’s left for those people?
Imagine Jeffery’s Bay without the surfing, imagine Boulders Beach without the penguins: there’s suddenly no support for those people; poverty ensues and the settlement – there for hundreds of years – is ruined because of the views of some activists 1000’s of miles away who refuse to look beyond the “plight of the dolphins”.

And then the people who support them without considering the reasons why they are doing it. Why?
Dolphin, panda, puppy – must protect.
It’s a trendy, ill-thought through, kneejerk, bandwagon-jumping response.
What gives you the right to decide how others should live?

I don’t like the thought of dolphins being killed either, but it’s a necessary part of  life for the people of Taiji. The dolphin catch provides food (albeit potentially unhealthy food, but beggars can’t be choosers) and income for the town.
Imagine if your only sources of food and income were taken away from you because someone in America didn’t like the way you lived your life?
That’s no more braais, because they don’t agree with the way your lamb is slaughtered or the ingredients in your boerewors were sourced. They’re stopping your income as well, because they don’t like the way you make your money. Of course, they have no legal powers to do this – but actually, they’ll even go as far as breaking the laws of your own country to make your hard life even harder.

What happens to the people of Taiji if the dolphin catch doesn’t happen? Have you even considered that? 
No, of course not:  because it’s about dolphins and pandas and puppies.