An excellent editorial by political analyst Prince Mashele on the HRC ruling against the Forum for Black Journalists makes me sorry I didn’t post my position when the furore first broke. In my defence, I was swamped by a furore with white racists, not black racists, at the time.
Ivo Vegter
Ivo Vegter writes and argues for fun and profit. He is a columnist, magazine journalist and apprentice model shipwright. In his spare time, he helps run a research company. He specialises in the tech and telecoms industries, but keeps a blog on politics, economics and other curiosities on the spike
Posted inBusiness, Media, News/Politics
In defence of colonialism
Prompted by the debate David Bullard tried — but probably failed — to stir (as I argued on my own blog), I wrote a short opinion on colonialism, which I reckon is worth posting separately.
Posted inNews/Politics
Keystone Kops
The police in South Africa today reminds me of the “kitskonstabels” (instant constables) the old National Party inducted into the police. The police may be getting more money from the government, and more bodies, but from what I’ve seen recently, they’re pretty pathetic as a rule. Shouldn’t we spend our money on training first?
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, Media, News/Politics
Fair trade is unfair
“What developing countries need is to develop, not to have their present conditions of life and work preserved like a museum exhibit,” writes Janet Daley in a column prompted by a report that finds “fair trade” to be fundamentally unfair.
Posted inNews/Politics
How to mop up criminals quickly
The Free Market Foundation’s Jim Harris did some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and found some interesting statistics that suggest there aren’t all that many criminals in South Africa. It then proposes a market-based solution to the problem.
Posted inNews/Politics
White supremacists, begone!
Finally, we know the filthy crevices from which they launch their forays. Now we know the pseudonyms by which they go, which organisations they belong to, and what they believe in. I’m talking about the white supremacist scum who hang out here on ThoughtLeader.
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Water: Dreaded déjà vu bug strikes
“I can categorically say that we are not facing a water crisis, or a water-contamination crisis,” Lindiwe Hendricks, the Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry told a media briefing in parliament yesterday. “The water that comes out of our taps is among the best in the world.”
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Simple solution for power crisis
No plan to fix the power catastrophe in South Africa will work overnight. The crisis is deep and wide and will have grave impacts on economic growth, inflation, and poverty alleviation for many years to come.
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
The Gaia death cult
It’s unnerving how often one is faced with declarations about the desirability of fewer people on Earth, in response to criticisms of environmentalist politicking. Fewer of us, so the reasoning goes, would improve quality of life and be good for the environment. Forgive me for not joining this little death cult. Forty years ago almost […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The polar-bear plot
The US Fish & Wildlife Service is considering listing the polar bear as a threatened species, under that country’s Endangered Species Act. This is an underhanded ploy by evil environmentalists.
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Eskom’s sacrificial offering?
Has Eskom fired Ehud Matya? That is the claim made in a comment on my blog. The Eskom story, with all its myriad twists and turns and all its implications for economic policy and political accountability, has become thoroughly tiresome, but it just won’t die.
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Oh, switch off our MINDS, not our MINES?
If there are two things even more annoying than our power crisis itself, one is the feel-good positive-thinking rubbish people have been writing, and the other are the insults and nonsense we’re being fed by government.