Garbage and Cleanliness

As we sat having lunch the other day I am struck by the contrasts that exist side by side in every part of Mactan Island. Fabulous resorts and filth and poverty are bed fellows here.

We recently arrived at a rather empty Japanese restaurant in a new, small mall just off the famous Quezon Highway. Travelling there by way of a nine peso (US$0.20) tricycle trip we set off on our short walk along the dusty, dirty, muddy edge of the road. No pavements here.

The path was uneven and bumpy and we had to pick our way around garbage, the odd dog, a motor bike or tricycle parked half on and half off the road. People milling around and offering a variety of products from grubby, barred windows. Jeepneys and tricycles belching their way around the road diversion.

Just a few meters off this road the small mall is an absolute contrast. Spotless new buildings, an efficient security guard controlling the traffic and neat clean shops.

After sitting in the restaurant for about half an hour I became aware of a man moving along the passage sweeping. I remembered seeing him not 15 minutes ago sweeping in the opposite direction. As we sat there for lunch he moved along slowly from one side of the mall to the other.

As I looked out not 20 metres away there was garbage lying along the dusty, litter ridden roadside.

Two countries in one. Living side by side. Poverty and wealth are close neighbours but living in harmony. In a country I've heard called, by a young man born and bred Africa, "the most Third World country I've ever been to".

But it all seems to work despite the uncontrolled population of humans and dogs and cats!!!

My First brush With A Filipino Law Enforcer

Enforcer - in the Philippines they are a person employed by the state to enforce the local laws. In most other countries they would be called a policeman.

Like in most developing (3rd World) countries they are severely underpaid and have a strong incentive to subsidize their meager pay at every opportunity.

Last week I took a friend to the airport for an early flight ... very early, as we dropped him off at about 04:15. The airport at this time was hectic with taxis and departing passengers everywhere. So as we left the airport area we were in a stream of traffic ... made up mainly of taxis.

One fantastic feature of Mactan island, which derives a large proportion of income from foreign holiday makers, is that they either don't have too many road signs, or they are so old and faded you can't read them, or they are "disguised" by a myriad of other signs or overgrown foliage. This guarantees that the odds are well stacked against you as a foreigner. The chances are stacked that at some time you are going to transgress (or violate) some traffic law.

This is compounded by another two factors. The first is that the laws for locals are different from those for foreigners ... so don't use a local as the basis for application of a law. The second is that as a foreigner you are a target. Immediately identified as an easy mark.

You don't know or understand the law and when you are stopped there is a veiled threat that the legal process to pay the fine and collect your confiscated license will be very inconvenient and time consuming. So if you are on holiday, where are you going to find the place where you have been told they will be taking your license? How much will it cost to get there? How long will it take to pay the fine?

So there is a very, very strong incentive to finalize the minor "violation" as quickly as possible. This is done by means of a negotiated "spot fine". There is no receipt and the matter is over.

As we left the airport I was in a stream of taxis and didn't notice that there was a feint sign at the beginning of some concrete bollards indicating that I was in the "taxi" lane and I should have been in the other lane. I wasn't concerned as it seemed to be inconsequential. Not true.

As I lowered the window the enforcer requested my license and after taking it and studying it and me, advised me that I had violated some traffic law. So what now. I was holding up a long stream of taxis so was instructed to pull over to the side of the road. My mind immediately went into 3rd world negotiating mode.

As he sauntered (in a manner which traffic police internationally have perfected) across to the car he was fingering his ticketing book. However 3rd world police are very easy to read. They don't start writing the ticket but start telling you about the consequences if they start writing as they flip the pages of the book.

What follows is a short and sweet negotiation. You handing over of a small amount of money for the "spot fine", your licence being handed back and both of you going on your way as if nothing happened.

However that is not quite the end for me. I have now vowed that I'll never again be part of this problem.

Corruption requires cooperation - there are two parties who must agree to be dishonest ... I'm not going to be one of them.

The Death of the Fast Food Worker

The rise of machines to replace the fast food worker. Is this a possibility? Is it feasible?

A company in San Francisco has developed a machine that replaces people in vending hamburgers and the technology is in its infancy.

Click on this article. It may sound like something like science fiction ... but it is already a reality.

Just another step in feeding decreasing employment, in a growing world population, faced with ever increasing unemployment.

Unemployment among the young is a dire growing problem throughout the world. This one source of employment for unskilled, young people will slowly be destroyed.

Government interference into the free market has increased the incentive to replace people with machines. Governments don't realise that ill-considered (may I call them dumb?) decisions often have unintended consequences. Their relentless grasp for power through handing out favours and entitlements has generated legislation that works directly against the people it was supposed to help.

There will be consequences to their short term decisions. This is one of them ... what will the others be?

Kopico is So Good

Since arriving in the Philippines I have become a fan of the premix sachets of a wide variety of hot drinks ... and especially Kopico and all its derivatives and competitors.

A simple blend of coffee, creamer and sugar in a one cup sachet. Goes so well with my hot water on tap water cooler and heater. What could be easier to produce an instant hot cup of coffee ... or chocolate (some are really excellent) or Milo or Ovaltine?

They are really delicious (as long as you enjoy a two spoon helping of sugar) and I've completely gone off traditional instant coffee and will choose a cup of Kopico over brewed coffee any time.

Now available in various combinations including cappucino. It appears to be a very competitive market space with many other options including Nestle available. In what is a very lucrative, growing market. Added to my collection is now a variety of Swiss Miss chocolate drinks and Milo. A concentrated cup of Milo is my choice before my morning walk ... so no wonder they were a sponsor of Comrades Marathon for so many years!!

I just wonder why these are not available in South Africa as they are delicious, cheap and so easy to prepare. They are in sealed sachets so have a long shelf life and are available at every convenience store.

The only negative I can see is that there is probably an excess amount of packaging ... a negative both on the price and the growing piles of waste packaging. So hopefully it is biodegradeable.

Please let me know what you think of them or what you prefer?

Age of Entitlement - When Will it End?

The following graph and article says it all. And I'm sure that the graph doesn't only apply to the US as it is a universal trend.

Have We Reached Peak Entitlements? Charles Hugh Smith

Let's zero in on entitlement program spending. Personal Current Transfer Receipts (PCTR) include all transfer payments to individuals, a category that includes all social welfare programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

So what does this graph tell us? 

It says that entitlement spending has increased by 500% since about 1990. To put this into some perspective - at an inflation rate of 5% per year prices over 23 years would have increased by about 300%. So why the extra 200%?

This is the Age of Entitlement. 

There are many groups in society who somehow believe that society owes them something. From children finishing school who are entitled to a university education even when the course they are studying does not provide them with a skill that is wanted.

There are so called disadvantaged communities the unskilled and unqualified, single mothers, racially specified groups, baby boomers, retirees, the unemployed, and the list goes on and on. 

All these groups expecting that someone else must take responsibility for their life choices and mistakes. And as these groups get larger and larger they become more and more attractive for politicians to target.

Liberty - a fast fading right

Another excellent article by Simon Black at Sovereign Man.

Listen to to the chilling evidence given by Catherine Engelbrecht.

In this day and age and with stories of US government agencies action and campaigns against people like Kim Dotcom and Edward Snowden you realise that America is as guilty of human rights violations as any country in the world.

As you listen to Catherine's very personal testimony you can easily accept that the US as the erstwhile leader of the free world has become nothing better than a third world totalitarian state.

If this presentation doesn't help you understand the underhanded and insidious ways that your government will maintain their power over you ... then nothing will.

There are solutions for getting freedom ... but your government and their media lackeys won't be helping you with these. You are responsible for you and your family.

Sometimes Government Department Service Shocks You!

Friday evening on a sweltering hot night, and a Filipino hot night is very hot and very humid and there is no wind! We had just finished supper and the lights flickered. Immediately one's thoughts are "not another brown out" (in the Philippines a "brown out" is a blackout which lasts for less than one day.

Then darkness. With that the air conditioning and fans ground to a halt. The still hot, humid air seemed to close in and I started to sweat. But something wasn't quite right. As I looked outside I could see the shining street light ... and the next door neighbour's lights were shining brightly.

So what could it be? Previously we had a power failure due to a short in the electrical distribution board so I found a torch and then manouvered my way around behind the fridge to flip the trip switch. Down and up. Down and up. But no lights. The still air felt heavier and hotter with every slight exertion.

My mind was struggling to accept thought of no power for the whole weekend. Then I remembered that a couple of days previously our neighbour had given us an electricity account which I had put into my brief case. Forgotten till this moment.

As a peered at it through the darkness I realised that the account stated that there was an amount in arrears! Our power had been deliberately turned off!!

On the account I found a contact number. But thought who are you likely to get hold of who will do anything to help on a Friday evening. Another drop of sweat dripped from my forehead and I realised that it was worth call.

The phone rang twice and was answered by a human!! Wow! Explaining our situation and playing the "just arrived" card the customer services representative was very accomodating and I assumed that they would just flip a switch and we would be cool again.

About an hour later I phoned to follow up and was told that there had been an emergency and that they would attend to us as soon as they had completed that repair. The only way to keep from gushing sweat was to lie very still. So after a cold (very mild) shower went to lie lifeless on the bed.

Eventually I fell into a fitful sleep. Suddenly I was woken up by the sound of the water pump starting up, lights were on, the fans stared whirring and the airconditioner kicked into life. It was 03h30 and quite unbelievable.

I then drifted into a deep sleep only to be woken at about 07h30 by a voice outside the window. It was two repairmen from the Mactan electricity department checking up whether our power had been resumed.

Shockingly excellent service.

Just Another South African Government Scam!

Think of what an ANC victory this year will mean to you and your family's future.

Nkandla Highway / Freeway Corruption Potentially Exposed...

Much has been said, fought and argued over the funding of the R250 million Nkandla Compound, and rightly so. 

But what's received little attention is the funding of the freeway set to run through Nkandla following the development of the president's luxury compound. 

This freeway is set to cost R1.5 billion, so this is no small chunk of change. Mybroadband's amateur, volunteer, investigative journalists gave it a crack and uncovered what appears to be a case of corruption on an arms deal scale. 

Here's what they uncovered:

Claim #1

Public Works claim that the freeway is being constructed by a private company called Korong Capital Partners who will, following the road development's end, donate the entire road to the government at no cost to them. 

Now that sounds incredible. So incredible that it sounds almost too good to be true ... that's because it is.

Debunking

Korong Capital Partners appears to have been a dormant shell company since 1999. Its only director is Moeti Mpuru, who claims to have secured the funding of R1.5 bn for this project. 

The problem with this scenario is that Korong Capital Partners have no history of this sort of work. In fact, they have no history of any work whatsoever. 

They couldn't have raised this finance in the capital markets either because no financial institution would originate and secure a bond for a company with zero balance sheet strength and zero cash flow. 

So the only other option is that there was an angel investor involved, and this is the next claim.

Claim #2

An angel investor is funding the entire project at no cost to government whatsoever.

Debunking

Who was this angel investor? Well the claim is that the cash originated from the USA, through an attorney who is set to make $100,000.00 for simply arranging the transfer of the cash. Apparently Mpuru, after being turned down for a R1 million loan to fund a small portion of the project, managed in just a few months to secure R1.5 billion in funding for a project that will see absolutely no return on investment. 

It is a straight R1.5 billion loss to whoever funds this project. And why is the donor not being made public? What has he got to hide? And who in their right mind would philanthropically fund a minor freeway in SA through the president's home town? 

It makes no financial sense, nor logical sense.

So on to the facts: 

Korong Capital Partners has its registered offices at the following address:

UNIT 2 CHIANTI ESTATE

39 LEEUWKOP ROAD

SUNNINGHILL 2196

So this company that apparently has R1.5 billion spare to either flush down the toilet, or will be managing R1.5 billion worth of angel investor cash, from Unit 2, Chianti Estate in Sunninghill, a residential complex that does not have business rights for its units. 

This is a tiny, 60 sqm residential unit - not an office park, or the premises you'd expect for a company with R1.5 billion to spend and manage. Yet Public Works feel happy for this company to complete this project on their behalf. Ever wondered why?

So who owns Unit #2 at Chianti Estates? None other than MBANJWA NQOBILE ZINHLE (Zinhle Mbanjwa). 

Who is Zinhle Mbanjwa? He is the manager of the Housing Development Agency of South Africa. This is the governmental department that oversees investments in housing related infrastructure onbehalf of the Human Settlements Department. They also manage inter-departmental projects. 

So why is Korong Capital Partners' premises at the HDA manager's personal premises? The answer to that is simple - he owned the shelf CC from the outset. This means that the CC used to move the money around to pay for the Zuma freeway is in fact located at the HDA manager's house and directed by the man who supposedly secured the funding. 

This makes no sense in terms of the government's official statements that this is a private entity funding the project through angel investment. 

What this actually means is that the HDA more than likely used the CC owned by their manager to move Human Settlements money to Korong Capital Partners to fund the Zuma Freeway. 

What does this mean? 

Well it means that Zuma's R250 million compound is only the tip of a very large iceberg. 

The real corruption is worth in the region of about R1.5bn, as it indicates that the HDA facilitated government cash (which is what they do) to be moved to Korong Capital Partners to fund the Zuma Freeway. The government knowingly lied to the public about how the project was being funded. 

It indicates that behind the scenes, HDA, Public Works and Human Settlements arranged a secretive transaction to spoof legitimate business operations, when in fact they were simply trying to hide their money-trail of corruption, knowing that using public money would cause outrage among South African citizens.

None of this makes any sense in terms of the official story by the government. 

Though it makes perfect sense when you add a corruption element to the mix. Public Works and Human Settlements found cash to fund this project. In order to hide this from the public, they engaged with the manager of the Housing Development Agency, who are the middle-man for inter-governmental transactions. Together with a lawyer in the US, they laundered the cash offshore to make it appear as if the cash was from an angel investor, and would not be subject to disclosure to the public.

They then moved the money to a CC owned by the HDA manager called Korong Capital Partners who are now officially funding the Zuma Freeway. On the surface it seems like an extraordinarily unlikely investment ...  that

some unknown source of billions of dollars donated all of the funding capital to a private company that coincidentally happens to be owned by the HDA manager, to build a freeway through Jacob Zuma's Nkandla hometown, with no oversight of the spending, no recourse whatsoever to the cash, no return on investment, while remaining completely anonymous. Then with the intention to hand the entire road over to Public Works upon completion. 

And that is because this is ridiculous. It looks remarkably like the SANIP (South African National Industrial Participation company) with SAAB and BAE, where Fana Hlongwane processed the bribe payments for the arms deal.

What has happened however is that government appears to have attempted to pull the wool over the eyes of its citizens, in anticipation of backlash for R1.5 billion funding of the Zuma Freeway, by hiding cash in an entity they thought would be safe from public scrutiny. 

As it turns out, this wasn't quite as private as they expected. The crucial oversight was using a private CC owned by the HDA manager and forgetting to remove his personal address from the company information records, which are public.

So government has a lot to answer for here and we the public should demand answers. Not only does this appear to be corrupt to its very core, but the spending at Nkandla is outrageous too.

Public Works is currently involved in hundreds of projects around the country, with their mandate being to spend on infrastructure and social development. With this in mind, their average allocation for each project will be somewhere between 0.1% and 0.2% of budget (this is a very high estimate in my opinion - they're probably spending less across more projects). 

Zuma's non-revenue-generating, unnecessary development that has nothing to do with infrastructure nor social development equates to a 0.32% allocation of the national public works budget. This means that they've spent up to 224% more on Zuma's compound than on their average spend on actual deliverable projects that meet their mandate.

If we include the freeway project, which I'm quite sure is just a dodgy vehicle to protect Zuma from recourse, the figure jumps to 2172% more than their average national infrastructure spend. So instead of money going to

the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project, to mitigate the impact on the country, Public Works chose instead to over-spend on Zuma's home by up to 2000-odd percent. 

So if you want to do something about this and make your voice heard in opposition to potential corruption, fraud, misuse of public funds and lies, then send this out to media outlets, the public protector, your friends and family etc. 

It's high time this sort of presidentially-supported corruption is put to bed, once and for all...

All it needs for evil to thrive is for good people to do nothing