A New Year

Dear reader

First, an apology. I promised that I would write another entry last Friday, which, unfortunately, did not happen.  The post didn't pan out as I hoped, plus the fact that my arm is in a sling makes typing difficult, and I decided it was best to just skip the week.  For that I apologize.

Now on to this week's post.

A New Year

And thus 2014 has started in earnest.  For some the year only really starts next week.  For others the year is already in full swing having worked their first week, which includes me.  To be honest, I never thought that working over the festive season could be so depressing. You see, I didn't take leave during Christmas as I intend to take leave a bit later this year, thinking that this will be a much better way to spend my leave.  After all, why waste leave if it's the time of the year that is the least stressful at work?  How wrong I was.

And so, as the year started, I was...down, if I could put it mildly.

Anyway, I'm not going to give you any kind of song and dance about it, or some weepy story in an attempt to invoke feelings of care or sympathy from you.  What it does do, however, is set the mood for the start of this year.  And thus, onto my post for the week.

Trouble in E-toll Town

As the year started, the complaints started to roll in regarding the E-toll system.  You see, in order for most Jo'burgers (people living in Johannesburg) to get to their holiday destination they would need to take the highway in order to cut down on their travel time, and since most would want to go on holiday in the Cape or Durban, it would be foolish to add another hour to their trips by taking back routes if they could just take the highway, which they paid for through fuel taxes.  The very highway that now has gantries over them so that the ANC government can illegally extort money out of the good citizens of this country.

And yes, illegally, for as smart as they are in thinking up the multitudinous ways in order to commit corruption, these ANC fools can be just as stupid.  A little lesson in creating acts or bills: if you are going to make laws that need to be implemented and governed by a court of law, and you are passing these laws in different languages, make sure that the different language versions spell the law out clearly and exactly the same way, with the same definitions and interpretations, and that any amounts that are published in the acts are exactly the same.  To add to the stupidity, the Department of Transport and Sanral both decided to live in La-La land by just plainly ignoring the JPSA's findings on the E-toll bill.  Aren't they aware that the only way to fix the bill is by repealing it and going through the same process to re-instate as if its a new bill of law?  Are they aware that they will need to write off everyone's e-toll debt and repay all e-toll users that paid during the time that the wrong bill is in place?  I guess they don't.

To add to the circus, Sanral has been illegally obtaining non-registered users' details and sending out SMSs and emails to everyone high and low to try and find valid cell phone numbers and email addresses so they can invoice unregistered road users.  A lot like what 419 scams are doing, which of course is completely illegal.  However, when they do eventually find someone to invoice, the invoices end up with incorrect amounts, incorrect dates, incorrect vehicle license plate numbers, incorrect photos, or don't contain enough evidence to to make the invoices complete.  As a side note:  I was a recipient of an E-toll invoice lately, which gave me no photo evidence and had the wrong dates.  All that unregistered users have to do, though, is play the same La-la land game that Sanral and Co. have been doing with the incorrect bill and simply not respond to any invoices or pay them whatsoever.  Since the invoices don't come via registered post, there is no proof that the invoices ever arrived at the correct recipients, and even if they did, both the incorrect bill/law and the invoice contents makes the whole affair a moot point.  And by the way, SMSs and emails aren't evidence of invoicing in a South African court of law, and won't hold water in front of any judge worth their salt.  Happy days are here again.

What Education?

Just this week the newspapers went wild with the stories coming from our Department of Uneducation. Angie and her crack-happy colleagues posted staggering results of pupils passing Matric last year.  In fact, the figures are so good, that they buck trends for the last 20 years.  Smelling a stinky rat, or stinky rat's nest (Angie, Sadtu and Co.), analysts and opposition parties went into full investigation mode, and found that 47% of pupils quit school at grade 10, either due to lack of funds, bad marks, or government policy/interference in schools.  Add to that the dumbing down of education and that you only need 30% overall to pass Matric and you have to be either really stupid or a special needs person not to pass.  In fact, the current pass rates are far too low: 100% of pupils should have passed.  At least then Angie would have justified the first 30% of her salary.

 

Juju juice

And how could we not start the year off with South Africa's very own "Chilled Monkey-brains Boy" at least ringing in the year with his latest flapping gums act.  Juju, the EFF leader, in all his red-beret glory, went on to praise the Genocidal Maniac of Zimbabwe (Robert Mugabe) for the very system now causing widespread famine and poverty in that ill-fated country, the ZANU-PF land reform "project".  He goes so far to say that, and I'm quoting from News24 here, "although Zimbabweans may be hungry and poor today, they could be proud of the fact that they owned property while South Africans had nothing to show as proof that they belonged to South Africa".  First off, I did not know that you needed to own land in order to belong to a country.  Isn't that why you register for citizenship and an ID book: to belong to South Africa?  And seriously, Juju, I did not know that Zimbabweans valued a piece of dirt more than food or water. Well, at least they will have a place to be buried once the famine finishes them off.  Of course, to be really insulting, you could always tell the Zimbabweans that beg at the traffic lights to go eat dirt.  "I say, my good man, are you from the former Rhodesia?  You are!  Well awesome, my chum.  Listen, I don't have any cash or food for you, but I heard from Julius Malema, that wise man from the EFF, that you guys value dirt more than food.  Look there, near the traffic light, is a nice rock.  Why don't you go lick it?  And sprinkle some dust and grass over it, my good man. That way you get some fibre in with your solids."

End of the Beginning

With that I've come to the end of my post, and the end of the beginning of a new year. Already I can see that we are in for a rough year, and all of us will need some thick skins to get through it.
Personally, I would like to wish all my readers (yes, that's you) a wonderful new year, with many blessings.  May it be far better than 2013, and may you accomplish everything good you set out to do this year.

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