THE BBC FOUND IT COULD NOT TREAT DONALD TRUMP ANYTHING LIKE AS BADLY AS IT TREATED SIMON ABBOTT AND GET AWAY WITH IT.

     

Donald Trump

Dear Readers,                                              Trump should consider himself lucky, instead of threatening to sue the BBC for up to $5 billion. After all he’s still alive and there is no danger of him dying because the BBC upset him by the way it edited one of his speeches. Sadly my son Simon Abbott did not survive the relentless cyber bulling instigated against him on the tiny Channel island of Jersey by BBC radio presenter Murray Norton. Simon established a properly registered Trust in Jersey to raise money to help women with a similar problem to his sister Samantha.

        Samantha died in England after she jumped off a car park building shortly after the birth of her son Bosco, who was her first and only child. She was suffering from post natal depression.

        And it was Simon's charity efforts that included a Fashion Show that set off the heartless cyber bullying that led to Simon's own death at the age of 47 of a heart attack.

                                                                 

      Apart from being a well known radio presented Norton had established a considerable reputation as Jersey’s most prolific charity fund raiser. So it became clear that Norton regarded Simon's charity as unwelcome competition. 

      He set out to destroy Simon's efforts with posts on Facebook and Twitter that accused Simon of being a con-man, who was just collecting money for himself. And because of Norton's standing on the island others joining in his cyber bullying like vultures on a kill.

Norton even organised for his photographer friend to take a snatched

picture of Simon which was used in their harassment of him. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                        

                                        Samatha & Simon with their dad 

                              Jon Abbott in happier times in South Africa                                             

        Before he died Simon had complained to the BBC about the cyber bulling that Norton had  instigated and even after his death his South African father Jon had lodged a similar complaint.

        In spite of the fact that a senior member of the BBC on Jersey said that they could not take any disciplinary action against Norton because he was a freelance presenter and not actual on the BBC staff, the Corporation went to the trouble and expense of organizing for its own white wash investigation to be done.

        The report was by an anonymous investigator and everyone mentioned in it were all only given anonymous tags. Even Norton, Simon and his father were not named. As a serial lawsuit instigator against media giants Trump has had mixed results ranging from multi-million dollar settlements to having his claim completely dismissed. In 2024 Trump tried his luck with a $475 defamation case against CNN. It was for the use of the term “the big…… It was clearly very weak so no wonder the judge dismissed it. But Trump was not put off from mounting further costly cases.

        In 2025 Disney settled a Trump lawsuit with ABC News in exchange for a $15 million  donation to a future Trump library.       Then in the same year Trump was linked to sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein in an article in the Wall Street Journal. He was not going to stand for that, so he claimed $10 billion this time. Legal experts believe however, that he has no chance of winning because in the United States public figures, who sue for defamation must prove that the publisher was motivated by malice, which means they published knowing the information was not true or they did not care whether it was true or not.

           Regards

           Jon

 

 

HOW TRUE WAS THE MEDICAL TREATMENT I RECEIVED WHILE IN THE TOKAI MELOMED HOSPITAL IN CAPE TOWN

                                 

     Dr Cecile Balkema

Dear Readers,

Early in 2025 I spent four days in the Tokai Melomed Hospital in Cape Town after I fainted at home and was taken there by ambulance. By the time I reached the hospital I was no longer unconscious.

    In the hospital Dr Cecile Balkema, who is a specialist physician, allegedly saw me and charged me for her services.

    In November when I was back home I sent her an email because I was not happy with the number of medical people who allegedly saw me in hospital and I was also concerned about the amount she had charged me, as well as what all these other people had been paid by my Sizwe Hosmed Medical Aid.

    These are the Questions I put her:

1. When I was in hospital did you ever tell me that you would be submitting an account for your services that would not form part  of the Hospital's Account?

2. Did you ever ask me what my financial situation was so that you could get some idea as to whether or not I could afford the treatment you had in mind?

3. Is it right that you were responsible for my medical treatment while I was in the Tokai Melomed Hospital and that you arranged for me to be seen by all the other doctors etc who saw me? If you did do this why was I, as a 91 year old, who was brought to the hospital because I fainted, seen by physiotherapists Van der Meijden and Hassim, who are described as "sport injury and post operative recovery specialists." I have no recollection of having any kind of physiotherapy yet my medical aid Sizwe Hosmed paid them a total of R1 681.49 for treatment on two days 15 and 16/5/2025.

4. When I came into the hospital I was initially in a general ward, but nobody told me that I was going to be put into a High Care ward that would cost a lot more than the one I was initially in. And your personal account for R1 681.20 for each of the four days shows that my Medical Aid only paid R578.34 on two occasions. (This was my mistake Sizwe my Medical Aid paid her this amount on four occasions) So it seems I was put into a High Care ward with no regard as to whether or not my Sizwe Medical Aid would pay for it.

5. Did you examine me at any stage while I was in hospital because I don't recall it. And if so what were your findings?

6. Did you liaise with Sizwe my Medical Aid when you wanted to get other medical people to see me to find out whether my medical aid would pay for them?

I got the account from the Cardiologist who saw me after it had been paid by my medical aid and at the bottom of it was the name of the Doctor who had referred me to him. It made me wonder why I hadn't made world headline news as the first 90 year old man to have had a sex change. The referring doctor it turned out was none other than a Gynecologist.

7. I only recall being seen by somebody for the itch I had and the cardiologist who said as he was walking away, "There is nothing wrong with your heart " and the Ear Nose and Throat specialist who I saw when I was taken to his rooms.

8. But I can't understand how I could have had something like my chest X-rayed by Morton and Partners without knowing about it. Surely I could not have had this done while I was in bed in the ward?

9. Regarding your first Account Detail Statement that gave the total as R5 292.12, now the more recent one I got gives it as R4 135.44.

    My general observation is that as you are a specialist physician I would have thought that you would have been able to diagnose my condition pretty accurately, so that it would not have been necessary to have a sort shot gun approach with the bringing in of all sorts of medical people before the final one got my condition right and that it was an inner ear problem. And having spoken to some of my grown up relatives this ear condition seems to be quite a common problem among older people, so it was not as though I had some rare illness. 

    My situation reminded me of a lion's kill in the game reserve when a whole lot of other animals like hyenas etc. as well as vultures get fed at just a single kill.

This was the reply I got from ShaiYah du Preez, the Team Leader at SPESprac the firm that evidently deals with the doctor's accounts.

"Kindly see the attached statement. Please note that Dr Balkema has written off the account, your balance is now R0.00"

Note: Unfortunately by this time my Medical Aid had already paid her R2 313.36

Regards,

Jon

THE FICTITIOUS CANCERS THAT WOULD HAVE BADLY SCARED ANYBODY

Dear Patients, 

Dr Sandra Pather is a Dermatologist who is a Senior Specialist Consultant in Cape Town and a part-time lecturer at the University of Cape Town. She works in the Skin Cancer Multidisciplinary Team at Groote Schuur Hospital and contributes to the undergraduate and post graduate teaching programme. She also finds time to run her own private practice and that is where I consulted her in 2025 for a skin rash I had over most parts of my body, which had kept me awake for the greater part of the night for months. Even when I had been in the Tokai Melomed hospital for four days some time before I saw Dr Pather nobody there was able to sort out my rash problem.

    I was taken to hospital by ambulance after I fainted at home as I was getting out of bed. It turned out that I had an inner year problem which was soon cured once I had had my ear syringed by an Ear, Nose and Throat Surgeon. The Dermatologist who I believe saw me at the hospital prescribed some cream for my itch but it didn't work. So I still had it when I left the hospital.

    I was aged 91 at the time I went to see Dr Pather because she had been so successful in treating the outbreak of sores on the lower part of my legs that I had had six years earlier. I saw her after my GP at the time had failed to make any impression on what was eating me up. But after consulting Sandra it was as though I had seen a magician. Within a couple of weeks my ugly wounds were healing up nicely and they were soon a thing of the past.

   Sadly I found a different woman this time when I went to see Dr Pather in her rooms in  about the middle of 2025.  She only seemed to be interested in making money. Both she and a lady in her reception area emphasised when I arrived that she does not deal with Medical Aids and I would have to pay her in cash for my R1 650 consultation. After I told her that my main problem was the rash I had to take off my shirt and after glancing briefly at my back and the top of my bald head she told me emphatically."You have three cancers. Two on top of your head and one on your back." She didn't say anything about the rash. 

    On my head I had what looked to me like two small blood blisters almost next to each other. The size and look of these had not changed for a year or more. She then  told me I would have to have another R1 650 consultation so that she could remove samples of the cancers to be sent for examination at the laboratory. My first consultation lasted about 15  minutes and my second one was even shorter.

     After the 2nd consultation when she could not give me a plausible explanation as to why she was sending two samples to the lab when she had told me I had three cancers I told her I was not going pay for any lab reports and I walked out still with the rash that had plagued me for months. Again no reference was made to my rash.

     I had paid for both consultations with my credit card before I left her rooms. But shortly afterwards I was shocked to find that this practice, that does not deal with medical aids, had submitted a claim for R1 650 to my Sizwe Hosmed medical aid and had been paid. It took me a bit of time before I eventually got this refunded.

      It is now about 6 months since I last saw  Dr Pather and this is what my back and the top of my head look like. I got my carer to remover the two blood blisters on my head because they were ruining my modelling career and as you can see there is only a slight sign of them ever being there. As for the cancer on my back I have no idea what Dr Pather saw because apart from an obvious rash I have not had anything that could be classified as some kind or growth.

  Top of my Head now          My Back - No Sign of Cancer

Best Wishes and a speedy recovery to all those who actually have cancer.

Regards, Jon 

 

     

THE BIGGEST GAP OF ALL IS IN ZEST LIFE'S MEDICAL EXPENSES GAP COVER

 Dear Sick People

Craig Swain Zestlife's
Contact Centre Manager

When I took a Zestlife Medical Gap Cover insurance policy to cover the shortfall in my medical aid payments I assumed this would cover, at the very least what my Medical Aid did not pay if I was hospitalized. As this is one of the most expensive aspects of any serious illness I automatically assumed this was covered in the 24 page Policy Document because of what was in the letter I received from Noleen Bell congratulating me on becoming a Gap Cover policy holder. The first paragraph of her letter told me I was now covered for "The most frequent in-hospital and approximately 50 out-of-hospital medical expenses shortfalls that may not be covered in full by my medical aid.. This is the 'gap' your Gap cover  policy is designed  to cover." 

       In the third paragraph I was lulled into a further sense of security with this: "The policy specifically (note this word) covers medical expenses shortfalls that are not covered in full by your medical aid." I believe that most people would definitely think that this means that the shortfall of any medical aid payment would be covered.

       In the second last paragraph I was told "To ensure we are continuously covering the most frequent and significant medical expenses shortfalls your policy benefits, cover limits terms, conditions and premium will be revised and be effective on 1 January each

year."

        Well if a short payment of the actual hospital bill by your medical aid is not one of the "most frequent and significant medical expense shortfalls" then I don't know what is.

        I had had the policy for three years when I was shocked to learn that it did not cover the shortfall of R7 369 between what my medical aid paid for my stay in the Tokai Melomed Hospital and the actual hospital bill. I got the following from Zestlife

when I tried to claim this amount.

        "Please note that in accordance with the terms and conditions of your policy hospitals and day to day clinic fees, including theater charges and related costs are specifically (there is that word again) excluded from cover."

         It is only on Page 7 of the Policy Document that I was given was the vitally important  information that I would not be paid for "Hospital fees including theater charges, ward charges or any other hospital costs."

         Who in their right mind would take a gap cover policy that doesn't pay the outstanding amount of their hospital bill when their medical aid does not cover it in full? Unfortunately that impressive letter from Noleen Bell gave me a completely false impression of what Zestlife actually covers.

           As it turned out it was like being told when your car is under guarantee and you put in for repairs that the manufacturer will only cover the wheels and you have to foot the bill for everything else.

            I finished my email to Craig Swain with this. So the last thing you need to find out when you are sick is that the shortfall

between what your Medical Aid paid and the Hospital bill is the Biggest Gap in your Gap Cover medical insurance policy.                            Get well soon all you sick people and I                                                   hope none of you have the same                                                          Gap Cover experience as I did.

                                                     Regards, Jon

nn

DYING OF OLD AGE IS NOT MUCH FUN

   Dying of old age is not much fun unless you are lucky enough to have a carer like my Andi. Mind you I can’t claim to be an expert on dying because so far I have never done it any other way.

            But when you are into your nineties as I am you know for certain that you are very much living on the edge. People say things to you like “Are you still driving?” and if you say “Yes,” you can imagine them thinking, Heaven help the rest of us on the roads, when I’m far less likely to cause an accident that the drunk drivers, the speed merchants and the many others you see driving dangerously on our roads.                                     

            That stabbing pain in my one foot. Is that what’s going to finally get me I wonder. No, false alarm, it’s gone away as mysteriously as it came. It’s just Death playing one of it’s preliminary games with me before the final to get me acclimatised to the Big Idea.  I have never been any kind of gymnast in my life so long drops are not my forte.

But I can’t help wondering what it will be like. Will my body go into sudden excruciating spasms or will I just fade away to sleep peacefully forever.

            At a few months short of 92 I can’t complain about my old age because it has really been very kind to me and I haven’t yet got any serious ailments unless you count a memory that forgets what I want to say halfway through the last sentence.

          To get back to Andi, if I reach a CENTURY much of the credit will be owed to her for looking after me so well. To say she is a carer in a million would be a gross under statement. Thanks Andionette Domel for doing such a superb job keeping the Old Boy going to give him every chance of reaching his CENTURY.

         Watch out Death you have some real competition here and Andi is certainly no push over.                                                                                                 

BELINDA 'BOO' THE SERIAL RAPIST SURVIVOR

My wife Gayle and I were living in Johannesburg when our daughter Belinda Abbott attended St Teresa’s School there. It was more commonly known as Rosebank Convent and she was in her late teens, fresh out of the convent in 1998, when we organised for her to go to the Natal Technikon in Durban because it had such a good reputation for teaching Clothing Design.

            This was something Belinda had always wanted to do from when she was a little girl. And in her last school year she even designed and made her own dress for the matric dance.

            We bought a two bedroomed flat for her not far from the Tech in Durban with the idea that she would get a companion to share it with her.  But when she initially got there she hadn’t had time to find somebody when it happened.

            Belinda was woken in the middle of the night by an Indian in his underpants standing next to her bed. He told her he had come to help her. She immediately started spraying him with the mace spray I had given her for just such an occasion. It was a particularly large one which enabled her to keep spraying him as he ran through the flat and out of the window he had come in through.

            When I went down to Durban to comfort her it was clear that the intruder had spent some time in the first floor flat before he had come into Belinda’s bedroom. Like a wild animal marking its territory he had left his calling card under quite few of the cushions in the lounge.

            At the time Belinda had no way of knowing that she had escaped unscathed from a physical point of view from what turned out to be possibly South Africa’s most prolific serial rapist. But the mental scars of such a horrendous experience will be with her for the rest of her life.

            “I didn’t sleep for two years after that,” she told me. But this did not stop her excelling at her studies during her three year course at the Tech. Shortly after this terrifying experience one of the local papers carried a picture of a boyish looking Andrew Mohammed, who had escaped from the CR Swart police cells there while waiting to appear at an identity parade. And when I showed Belinda his picture in the paper she identified him as the man who had been in her flat.

            In spite of her terrifying experience she still completed her National Diploma in Clothing Design cum laude top of the class of about 40 students at the Tech with 11 distinctions. She was also a finalist in the Du Pont Fashion Awards in which there were 79 entries from two competing Technikons. And now 30 years later she runs her own successful fashion house Once Was that she founded in Melbourne, Australia. It is hardly surprising that the last place that she wanted to built her career was in South Africa where she was born.

            The 30 year old Mahomed said at one stage he “just walked out” of the Police station in Durban. The cops were clearly not paying attention to one of their most notorious sex offenders. He was facing a variety of sex crimes and armed robbery. Within a few days he continued to terrorise young white women in Pretoria half the country away. He also stole cars from some of them, which he sold through a contact.                                                   

            It took the Pretoria police to do what the ones in Durban had failed so dismally to do. In the Commercial Crimes Court there he was sentenced to an effective 177 years in jail. This meant his sentence was only for part of what he had done because, as he got such a huge jail term there it was considered pointless to try him again for his similar crime spree in the Durban area.  He held up some of his victims with a gun before raping or sexually assaulting them. The only plus about Belinda’s experience was that when he got into her flat he had evidently not yet been able to obtain a gun.

            He was sentenced after he pleaded guilty to 23 charges of rape, attempted rape, indecent assault, armed robbery and the illegal possession of a fire arm. All but two of his victims were aged between 18 and 30. 

            He even forced some of his victims to have oral sex with him.

            The Police forensic psychologist Captain Lynne Evans told the court that because of the number of cases and the physical violence involved there was a possibility he would have ended up murdering somebody if he had not been caught.

            Pleading for a second chance Mahomed told the court, “I have a wife and child to support and if my wife knew I was a serial rapist she would have divorced me long ago.” If his wife hadn’t  known she must have been in another world.

            Belinda had a friend move into the flat shortly after the incident so she was no longer all on her own there.

            A former Northern Transvaal gymnast was just 19 when she was severely injured when she jumped out of a two story window after being raped by Mohamed. She subsequent successfully claimed damages of R5 million from the State for the negligence of the Police in letting Mohamed escape after he was first arrested in Durban.

            The humpty dumpty legal system is such that Mahomed's sentence was changed to an "indefinate term of imprisonment" which meant he had to return to court to be "resentenced" every 15 years. This has already been done once with one side labeling him a"manipulative psychopath" and his defence making the ridiculous claim that he had a "clean prison record" and should be released. But he did not succeed in getting his freedom so both sides will be repeating the arguments when the current 15 period comes to an end.

            It's deplorable the way the State is treating Mahomed as though he was wronged when he devastated the lives of so many women.                  

                                                                    

IF PEOPLE HAVE NINE LIVES LIKE CATS, HOW MANY HAVE YOU USED? HERE ARE MINE.

 Dear Cat Lovers,

            I used the first of my nine lives as a teenager when I was living in Cape Town.I got tuberculosis at a time when the cure was nothing like it is today. It was not uncommon for both children and grown ups to die from it. I was in bed for six months and I also had a spell in the TB hospital at Nouport that was in the arid Karroo because the medical boffins believed that the dry climate there was best for people with their lungs being destroyed by the disease.

            I had only just recovered from TB when I embarked on the greatest trip of my life – crisscrossing Africa hitch-hiking alone from Cape Town to Tunis. I had only just left South Africa when I got a lift with a guy in a little old M.G. There can’t be many cars so unsuitable for river crossings because they are so low. He and his friend were both driving more or less identical vehicles and I was in the front one when we came to this river in Rhodesia which was in flood.

            The bridge was almost completely under water, but this did not deter the driver I was with. We spent the next 15 minutes or so wondering when we were going to be swept away as the little car battled against the current with the river running right through it across the floor from one side to the other.  

                

 

             This is what the bridge looked like when two of us crossed it in this MG. Miraculously we made it and we had to wait two days for my driver’s friend to join us. He had done the sensible thing and only crossed when the river had gone down sufficiently for this to be safe.

              I tested the vulnerability of my lives once more on my year long safari through Africa. It’s hard to imagine that I could have been so stupid as to buy a dugout canoe from one of the locals on the Congo River and then paddle down it for hundreds of miles when I could not swim. Not that swimming would have helped me if I had gone over in a river that is reputed to be the deepest in the world and runs for the most part through nothing but jungle. But at 22 you have no fear. 

 

                  My canoe was one of these            

             As I rounded a bend my canoe got washed broadside up against a pile of water hyacinth. It was inches from being filled by the strong flowing current when my third life came to the rescue and I floated free once more.

            In England where I had gone to become a journalist I nearly came to grief in a little bubble car. It was mad of me to buy one because I am over 6ft tall, but it was all I could afford at the time. The driver has absolutely no protection at all in these vehicles because all he has in front of him is a paper thin metal door.

            I so nearly came to grief in this tiny car as I was driving into a cutting in a very hilly area. A car approached from the opposite direction going like a bat out of hell. It was travelling so fast that it shot up the embankment and did a wall of death ride past the left hand side of my bubble car and back onto the road. All its windows on the one side were smashed by the reflector posts on the edge of the road. When it stopped a short distant behind me two men got out. They were extremely agitated. One kept repeating: “I told him not to drive so fast. I told him not to drive so fast.”

            It turned out that the driver was trying out the car with a view to buying it and the dealer was with him. So that was the fourth life I had survived.

            I returned to South Africa to join The Star newspaper in Johannesburg and that’s when I bought a Toyota van because my wife Gayle and I used to go on camping trips with our two children, Simon and Samantha and this was an ideal vehicle for such outings.

           On a visit to Cape Town to see my mother I was driving down a slight slope in one of the suburbs when a drunk African ran across the road right in front of me without any warning. In the collision my entire windscreen disintegrated into hundreds of tiny, sharp bits of glass one of which got me in the right eye. Fortunately I never hit anything else as I brought the vehicle to a stop without being able to see much of what I was doing.                                                            

        Our family doctor was wonderful. He came out to the accident scene and then organised for me to see an eye specialist who put 10 stitches in my right eyeball. It was so well done that some 50 years later I can still see out of that eye without glasses. But I could so easily have lost not only an eye but my life if I had crashed into another vehicle or one of the many buildings in the area. I was never able too find out what happened to that unfortunate person.

            On another occasion shortly after I had started a new career as a self employed private eye I was waiting to meet a woman who had agreed to help me. I was in my car parked on the grass verge in a road in Germiston just as it was getting dark when a man pulled open my driver's side door and said: "We've been waiting for you" and at the same time he began hitting me on the head with a spanner he had taken out of the back of his trousers. After the first couple of blows my head was a sea of blood. I managed to bite his hand and get the spanner off him, but by then I was feeling as though I was about to pass out. All he was interested in was getting his spanner back so I felt I no alternative other than to hand it to him. As suddenly as he had arrived he stuck it in the back of his trousers and walked off.

               I managed to drive round the block into the driveway of house where the owner called an ambulance and I was taken to the local hospital. There I was in the operating theater having my face stitched up when my wife arrived. She told me afterwards that when she passed two of the hospital's orderlies the one said to the other, "Do you think he'll live man."     

              I suppose you can’t expect to reach the age of 91 without losing one or two lives, but it all depends on what kind of life you lead. I put mine on the line far too often and if I hadn’t been like a cat I would have certainly gone long ago. 

Do you think I’ve got enough lives left to reach 100 or MORE?

Regards, Jon meow,meow,purr,purr.