Cricket's 20/20 minnows getting raw deal

Dear Haroon Lorgat, Chief Executive of the International Cricket Council,

         You and the rest of your Council are bowling underhand googlies to the minnows of cricket. You can’t get more unfair than that?

         The Twenty 20 World Cup needs to be revamped completely.

         You opened this year’s tournament in Sri Lanka with a match that was complete rubbish because the teams were so mismatched. And spectators and millions of TV watchers around the world still had to look forward to another seven of these one sided games. 

         As the hosts Sri Lanka set the ball rolling with a pathetic match, which was hardly a great advertisement for this version of the game. They thrashed Zimbabwe by something like 80 runs in the format of the game where even the very best sides seldom score 200 in an innings.

This was followed by one humiliation after another for the lesser teams.

         Zimbabwe got an even bigger thumping in their second match when South Africa reached their meagre 93 without losing a wicket. So they found themselves knocked out completely when some teams hadn’t yet played a match.

Brendon Taylor & AB de Villiers

         Brendon Taylor Zim’s best batsman, his side’s wicket keeper and skipper made a duck against Sri Lanka and a miserable 3 facing South Africa. The Zimbabwe Herald described the batting as downright kindergarten stuff.

New Zealand beat Bangladesh by 59 runs. Ireland scraped together 123 for seven wickets, which was easily passed by Australia for the loss of just three wickets.

         Afghanistan showed a glimmer of hope for the underdogs against India. But deplorable catching let them down and they lost by 23 runs. In their next match against England the wheels came off completely with England hammering 196 for a win by 113 runs.

         You can imagine how these losers must have felt. Sorry I don’t think you can, otherwise you wouldn’t have put together such an unequal contest.

         The huge areas of vacant stands testified to how wrong you have got it. And for us TV watchers it was equally depressing seeing cart horses in the same races as high priced thoroughbreds.

         You start with four sections each consisting of two high power teams and one rabbit and they have to play one another in their sections to decide which eight go on to the next round. And as the rabbits have virtually no chance of winning, all they can realistically expect is to have their already poor self esteem crushed even further before being put on a plane home, when the tournament hasn't even reached the halfway stage.

         Is this really the best way to encourage the growth of cricket in the countries where it is still in its infancy?

         Why not have two parallel tournaments, one for the eight top ranked teams and the other one for the eight best minnows. This would introduce an element of real competition in all the matches and make it far more likely that all the games would be worth watching.

         And more importantly it would allow the members of the lesser teams to come away with their pride intact and a determination to go on promoting the game in their respective countries.

The International Rugby Board’s, Sevens World Series has got the right idea. It has a Cup Final with finals for lower level trophies so that teams of different standards have a reasonable chance of avoiding having to return home empty handed.

         Regards,

         Jon, MD of the Sports Ideas Factory, whose only knowledge of cricket is that a Chinaman is a ball that goes through the chink between the stumps.

P.S In the picture of South Africa’s captain AB de Villiers (in green) consoling Brendon Taylor, the Zim captain looks on the verge of tears like all of us. These matches were a crying shame and a blot on the game.

Literacy not required but Government to get 5% more

Dear South African Voters,

        Where in the world can you get a part-time job next to the beach that pays nearly R30 000 a month or R350 000 a year for only 20 hours work a week?
         Now they are expected to get a 5% increase.  

          Where can you get such a plumb job without being able to read or write?         
          In South Africa where else? And in picturesque Cape Town what’s more.

          Would you lend your car to somebody without a driving licence? Well that’s exactly what you voters are doing to our country. No wonder it’s in the ditch more often than not and the stage is fast approaching when there won’t be enough money to haul it out even for its scrap value.

          Sadly these words are wasted on a lot of you.

        Sadder still this is the deplorable standard we set for those who govern us.

          No wonder the African National Congress Government is not bothered about the edikasion sistam being in shimbles because with these kind of salaries who worries about schooling.

          We are a third, going on a fourth or fifth-world country with a population of 50-million.

          There are 400 members of Parliament. MPs get R800 000 a year while President Jacob Zuma and his bloated Cabinet get double that or more while at least a third of the adult population have no salary at all. Zuma’s standard of education is a State secret and who knows how many MPs would get a job anywhere else.

           Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the Mother of the nation proves the point. Flights to the moon occur more often than her appearances in the House.

          India, which has a population of more than a billion with around 200-million people in the A Income Group, has just over 800 MPs. Most of our A Income Group earners are in Government somewhere filling their boots.

          As the local government elections are coming up in South Africa it’s appropriate to talk about Councils. Take Cape Town, the only City controlled by the Democratic Alliance, as an example.

          It has 210 of these overpaid Councillors – more than half the number of the MPs who run the entire country - getting those salaries I mentioned to begin with. And the population is a mere 3-million.

          Tammy Petersen’s story in the Peoples Post opened my eyes to the way the spending splurge doesn’t end with ordinary Councillors. There’s the Mayor on over a million a year; his deputy taking home R789 355 and Mayoral Committee members and  sub-council chairmen each being paid R741 143. And there are 33 of these jackpot winners.

          And even some of these high rollers who are full-time employees can get permission to supplement their pittance by taking another job. That tells you just how diligently you have to work in a bureaucracy.

          A similar scenario is repeated at councils that are there to be plundered up and down the country. ANC supporters are fighting each other to be nominated for one of these, money for jam jobs where nobody has to account for anything.
           The country's Auditor-General's report for 2010/2011 gave a clean audit to a mere 13 of the 283 councils.. That's how bad it has got.

           It’s as though there’s been a gold strike and everybody is rushing to stake their claim. You don’t have to be educated to do that either.

        Literacy is a touchy subject. No wonder because all of our rulers should be deeply ashamed of the present situation.

          When I asked Alderman Dirk Smit (Salary R789 355) Cape Town’s Speaker (he’s there, I think, to make sure everybody behaves themselves) if you had to be able to read and write to be a Councillor his first response was "See Constitution." I asked his PA: "Surely the Speaker can give me the answer off the cuff." He came back through her saying it’s not a "Yes"or "No" answer.

          This was followed by a letter in which he referred to Section 158 and 47 of the country's Constitution to be read with Section 21 of the Local Government Structures Act no 117 of 1998 which sets out the qualifications required to be a Councillor.

          "You will note," he went on,"that there are no restrictions or prohibitions relating to literacy for Councillors and the legislation referred to is silent on this matter."         

          That’s the longest "No" I’ve ever heard. Heaven help us if every Councillor answers a simple question in this long winded fashion. Is that why they get paid such huge salaries?                             

          Not surprisingly the money’s running out. The Times reported that 20 ANC run municipalities have gone bankrupt; 30 ratepayer groups have refused to pay something like R10-million in rates and taxes because their basic services are collapsing.

       Realistically all that South Africa needs is a Parliament of 50 and Cape Town and all the other cities should have no more than 30 Councillors with the smaller places having proportionally less.

          Whatever party our rulers belong to you won’t hear even a whisper among any of them suggesting that we have far more MPs and Councillors than we can afford at prices that are ludicrous.

          WAKE UP! Can’t you see your taxpayer’s money is going down the drain faster than the sewage at a lot of municipalities? And the stink can be smelt internationally.

          Tearfully yours,

          Jon, Member of the Packing for Perth Party.

Note: This was first posted  on 31/5/2011 but I have updated it slightly as the 5% salary increase has been proposed.

Man's real forte`- buggering up our planet

Dear Green People,

         All this Greening nonsense is wishful thinking in the extreme. Thousands of delegates have attended the BO17 (there’s no deodorant yet invented for that) conference in Durban where they waffled away for days and came away with nothing that will have any noticeable affect on Global Warming.

         Polar bears will continue to be on ever thinning ice and so will the rest of us while the real problem will go on being ignored.

         The South African Government wasted R200-million on this junket and if you add on what the thousands of delegates spent on flights, their accommodation etc the total cost could have been double that or more.

        Could any of those who attended tell me how many trees you can plant for 200 – million grand?

         To coincide with this massive holiday by the sea the local papers and TV channels were full of ridiculous advertisements telling us how everything would be rosy if only we would turn off the lights and that sort of thing.

         They also ignored the real problem.

         Probably half the 7-billion people in the world don’t even have lights to turn off. And even if they had and we all agreed to have two nights a week in complete darkness it wouldn’t help one bit while the factories in the industrialised nations like China and the USA continue to belch out hot air in ever increasing volumes.

         Added to this lethal concoction you have nuclear power stations that melt down every now and again. And ironically South Africa has plans to build plenty more of these as well coal fired ones while it’s Government was trying to convince the conference that everybody else should go Green.

So it’s obvious that you might as well leave you lights on 24/7 because that’s not what’s doing the damage.

         Still the real problem went unrecognised.

         If the rich nations don’t care about putting a break on Global Warming unless it can be done without affecting their pockets who in their right mind can expect  the poor to do anything about it. If you’ve got nothing, a tree is something to be cut down for firewood or to sell. It’s not something you plant when it won’t benefit you in your life time.

         All those delegates spent days at this COPOUT 17, trying to agree on a repeat of the pathetic Kyoto Protocol. That momentous non-event committed 37 developed countries to reduce their stinking footprints to 5% below their 1990 levels (whatever they were) by 2012. Five percent; that’s just a couple of fags for every person on the planet.

         Even if these squabbling countries agree to continue this charade it will take them 220 years to get to a 50% reduction and by then we will all be underwater or gassed by an atmosphere that you’ll have a job cutting with a knife.

        As man can’t even run many families successfully let alone entire countries what chance is there that he can put the world right when he has buggered it up himself.

         That’s why nature is stepping in as it has done since time began. And when it gets going democracy goes out of the window and it doesn’t waist time in endless, fruitless conferences.

         Over population that’s our real problem, which nobody wants to mention. No wonder you can’t see the trees for the people.

         Man might have come up with fantastic inventions but his real forte` is letting his you-know-what and his uncontrolled greed ruin our planet.

But don’t worry nature will sort this out in its own ruthless way without the help of Facebook or Twitter.

         It will take out those who man doesn’t kill with earthquakes, tsunamis, famines, floods, droughts, hurricanes, diseases and a few other things that it will no doubt come up with along the way.

         And when the population has been cut by half perhaps the world will cool down and get back to normal so that man can start buggering it up again.

More ominously nature might not give him a second chance.

         Who was it that wiped out the dinosaurs?

         Yours despondently,

         Jon, who is desperately trying to find a desert island that won’t be under water. 

P.S. While the delegates were procrastinating in Durban nature was getting on with  the job very efficiently outside the conference centre where its wild weather brought floods that killed eight people. 

Buy my book ‘Where have all the children gone?’ on Amazon.com  It’s a thriller with an underlying love story that defied generations of prejudice.

Great Walls of Shame

 Dear Minister of Police,

         In South Africa the very rich are ignoring history and it’s the fault of your Government.

         It teaches us that high, thick walls were a great means of defense in the days when the only weapons available were bows and arrows, swords and the like. Then with the advent of gunpowder and artillery the wall became obsolete.

         The most famous wall of all is the Great Wall of China. That was effective for centuries. Now it is nothing more than a tourist attraction.

        But South Africans are determined to turn the clock back by building thicker and higher walls to protect themselves from gangs of burglars, rapists and murderers, who are invading homes all over the place, often armed with up-to-date weapons. Put these walls end to end and who knows one day they could stretch as far that one in China.

         It all happened after the advent of your African National Congress Government in 1994 because you let crime get completely out of hand.  

         Nowhere are these walls more evident than in Johannesburg. There, as the crime levels have gone higher and higher, so have the walls. Up and up they go as money, bricks and cement gets poured into them at an astonishing rate. 

         Many have got one up on the one in China. A wall five meters high, higher than the average house, is not considered enough protection by itself, it still has to have an electric fence on the top.

         I’m sure there’s one round your house. And how much of our precious resources are going into these fortifications when they would be far better spent on uplifting the masses?

         The next logical step in the great fortify-your-home race would be to have a moat inside the boundary ramparts with a drawbridge at the gate. That would provide an extra obstacle for the cat burglar, who arrives with ropes and pitons or a grappling-iron.  

         In the morning the gardener could fish out the ones who could not swim. Think of all the prestige a moat could bring. For the slightly less, well healed owners it could double as a swimming pool.

         Everywhere the rich are barricading themselves like a tortoise going into its shell. But like the tortoise they have to come out some time and that’s when they are so vulnerable to predators.

         The predators are after their flashy limousines, their diamond rings, their big bucks, their cell phones and anything else of value. As you know they think nothing of killing to get what they want, or just for the thrill of it. It’s scary and the more you’ve got the scarier it gets.

         For every meter a boundary wall goes up those prying eyes on the outside are registering that as the owner has so much to protect, they will have be more ingenious or  more vicious to steal what’s inside. 

         So does it really pay to advertise wealth with those high walls in a land where the majority can not afford to build just one meter of one of them?  

         Some walls are so high that for the people inside and their neighbours sunrise in winter is close to mid-day with sunset around the middle of the afternoon. Talk about interfering with nature.

         And what’s worse is that an environmental impact study is not required before permission is granted to put one up. Protection is the new buzz word that over rides everything else.

         Of course people can have their 4X4 , their fancy BMW or Mercedes Benz armour plated, the equivalent of having a wall around their vehicle.  It will enable them to get in and out of their fortress without being hijacked or shot.

         But once they’ve left their home environment this moving safe deposit box only keeps them in one piece as long as they don’t get out of it.

         These high walls are already becoming obsolete as ingenious crooks have come up with a Trojan horse. They rent a home inside the ramparts of a posh townhouse complex and continue to rampage among the rich.

         Will the day ever come do you think Mr Minister, when the Great Walls of South Africa will be nothing more than tourist attractions?

         Will there be a time when a guide points to the walls and says, Those were built to keep invading hordes of thieving, murdering have-nots from plundering the homes of the haves. But fortunately these days they are no longer necessary. They remain just a reminder of our evil past.

         Sadly I don’t think I’ll live to see that day unless we get a new Government that can tackle the crime problem far more effectively than you and your colleagues are doing now.

Talk, talk and more talk without effective action will never get the job done.

Yours truly,

Jon, a Chinese trained wall builder of distinction. 

P.S. It doesn’t do much to discourage crime when our country’s overall Police Chief gets 15 years for corruption and his successor is suspended for much the same thing. 

Buy my book ‘Where have all the children gone?’ on Amazon Kindle  It’s a thriller with an underlying love story that defied generations of prejudice.

     

Silensing the people - draconian new law

Dear President Jacob Zuma,

         If you take off your dark glasses for a moment you’ll see that it’s only a very small section of the population that believes you should change your spots. They’re barking up the wrong tree completely when they run down your brilliant idea to change South Africa’s national coat of arms to something more meaningful.

         With that in mind I’ve attached a few ideas that could form the basis of the new design. These are so appropriate in a view of the modern direction in which you are leading our country with your see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil legislation.

         The one with bananas is very much in keeping with African culture that has spawned so many of those wonderful banana republics that have all adopted this approach.

        Enough of the praise.  I thought you should know that I’ve come across something of great national importance to South Africa. It’s something that could ---- your Government sky high.

         It concerns a ----- of well ------- , well ----- people who are hell bent on ---------- our country.

         I’m not talking about the usual Government officials who are busy ---------- their nests with the tax payers help and your ----- ing. No, this is a lot more serious than that.

         But thank goodness your Government has ensured that I can’t talk about these things. I didn’t even mention it to my four wives and ten children.

         They’ve kept secrets before but I couldn’t trust them with this one. After all who wants to spend 20 years in one of our overcrowded jails now that you have very wisely outlawed loose talk with your Protection of State Information Bill?

         That sort of thing only alarms everybody and gives people the ----- idea about our leaders.

         In the past anybody who had stumbled on the kind of information I’m not talking about would have rushed to some newspaper or TV channel and then it would have been all over the place.

         Now, thank goodness, all we are going to get is the good news. It’s so much more uplifting than the kind of thing I’m not talking about.

         Shutting up whistleblowers is long overdue. All they do is tell lies, disturb the neighbourhood and wake babies. So that’s another service you have done for our country Jacob.

         And if anybody knows what hell it can be when somebody wakes the little ones, it’s you. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to mention how many you’ve got or whether that’s now classified. But don’t worry I’m not taking any chances.

         Don’t let those depressed Western Nations try and tell you that preventing people from blabbing about all our secrets will do irreparable harm to our country. Look where that policy has got them.

         In Britain for instance, if you were a celebrity or somebody else in the public eye you couldn’t even fart in private without it making headlines somewhere or other. So it looks as though they will soon be coming round to your way of thinking.

         And if Joseph Stalin and the rest of that Commy mob could successfully keep the Soviet Union going for all those years there can’t be much wrong with this closed mouth policy of yours. If it does nothing else my neighbour will think twice about telling everybody what he thinks I’m doing with the girl down the road, when it’s a figment of his imagination.

         I hope, Mr President that you are going to have enough secret police to back up this new legislation. Why not do what the Russians did and get everybody to spy on everybody else.

         My mistake. That won’t work. In such a law abiding country as ours nobody will ever talk about these things once there’s a law against it. They are too patriotic to do anything that would endanger the security of the State.

        And you and your Government are shining examples of this kind of thinking.        

        As you rightly surmised, all our people needed was a good, healthy Act of Parliament to spell it out for them.

         Thanks for your foresight Mr President.

         Yours faithfully,

         Jon

P.S. I badly need coaching from one of your advisers just to make sure that I don’t end up being WANTED. 

BUY MY BOOK ‘WHERE HAVE ALL THE CHILDREN GONE’ ON Amazon Kindle  IT’S A THRILLER WITH AN UNDERLYING LOVE STORY THAT DEFIED GENERATIONS OF PREJUDICE.

Paradise for the rich - City that gives money away

Dear Financiers everywhere,

         Don’t all rush in at once because I don’t think there will be room for all of you.

I doubt if you will ever come across a better place for the rich, the very rich and the stinking rich than this. This is especially so as your main aim in life is to find somewhere where you can get something for nothing.

         And apart from anything else it’s a great place to live. It’s just had its mountain listed as one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature by spending a fortune on advertisements to get people to vote for it.

         The campaign showed Archbishop Desmond Tutu on top of Table Mountain proclaiming that when God created the world he said, I’ve got to do something special here.

Of course you have to be an Arch to know what God was thinking at the time.

        Anyway the City of Cape Town told us in these adverts that if the Mountain got this honour it would boost the South African economy by R1.4-billion a year and create 11 000 new jobs. That sounded about as believable as Tutu’s ability to read God’s thoughts.

         A report I saw indicated that the only people who will be making money out of this 7 Wonders of Nature caper are the Swiss promoters of the idea.

        The mountain has been around forever so are people suddenly going to flock there now that it's suddenly been given a title?

         Sorry I’ve got off the point I’m trying to make. The same City that spent so much on this high flying idea has an even better claim to fame. This is guaranteed (no airy, fairy thumb suck) to put money in your pocket if you choose to live in the shadow of that mountain and you will no doubt bring billions with you.

But can you believe it the City is ever so coy about this.

         So I thought I better tell you the secret. It makes Cape Town a paradise, particularly for the rich. You know why?

         Because this City gives money away and the richer you are the more you are able to get.

         How about this for a mind boggling concession?  In Cape Town, which has the slogan The City Works for you, property owners can forget about paying their property taxes and their water and their electricity bills for months. Then when the authorities get round to cutting off, say the electricity, all the owner has to do is to pay the small reconnection fee and make one of their golden lined arrangements.

        An arrangement is the popular money making word that everybody is cottoning onto fast. As an example I asked a City official, Does this mean if I owe R100 000 and I arrange to pay off say R4 000 a month can I do it without any interest being charged?

The answer incredulous was, This is correct.

        They just have to keep paying the instalments as well as their current monthly bill and everything will be fine.

        Everybody who owns property in Cape Town can use the Council as a bank for these interest free loans. Where else can you get this kind of public service? And of course the people who benefit the most are the rich because they are able to run up the highest debts before the Council gets round to cutting off the electricity.

         This is suppose to be done after 60 days of non-payment. But one case I heard of must have been going on for a lot longer than that before the Council woke up, because the amount was so huge. This indicated that there were probably a lot of other fat cats watching what they owe mount up and up, safe in the knowledge that they could actually use it as an interest free loan.

         I understand that Greece is in such financial mire because so many people dodged paying income tax and they didn’t even have a property tax system at all.

        So how long can Cape Town last if it continues to give away money and reward non-payers with a scheme that encourages defaulters on a grand scale?

         No wonder Moody’s, that international organisation that rates the financial status of countries, has downgraded South Africa’s prospects to negative.

        News Flash: Cape Town has just been awarded another title; the Number 1 Free Money City of the World.

         Perhaps Tutu can tell us if that was another of God's ideas to keep Cape Town in the public eye.

         Regards

         Jon, the Consumer Watchdog with a strong sense of Smell. 

P.S. I’m thinking of buying a R10-million house on the slopes of that mountain overlooking the sea, and using the City Council to finance the deposit.

Buy my book 'Where have all the children gone' on Amazon. com It's a thriller with an underlying love story that defied generations of prejudice.