I see a new airline has just been launched in Durban, in terms of the first airline based in Durban, flying to Johannesburg and Cape Town. It just had it inaugural flight to Durban, and clearly there is a lot of room for low cost flights between regional cities in South Africa. There is no doubt that we are going to see airports like Lanseria continue to grow and I would be surprised if Velvet Sky is the only new airline to be launched within the next 2 or 3 years.

I was surprised, but pleasantly so, at how quickly the United Nations managed to come out with a decision on Libya. I was under the impression that they would really do nothing, because one expected either China or Russia to veto any vote. As it was, they did not veto, but chose to abstain rather and the votes of South Africa and Nigeria became crucial. According to a report in the New York Times, the South African representative on the Security Council, probably the most important committee in the entire world, did not arrive at the meeting on time, and United States representatives had to sprint around trying to get the South African representative at the meeting, which they eventually did and South Africa voted in favour of the resolution.

I see that the Lonehill shopping centre is being auctioned tomorrow. There are prominent signs everywhere that it is being auctioned and I see quite a media write-up as to what a great centre it is, and what a huge amount it is expected to be auctioned for. For me it will really be a case of seeing is believing, because although it can have a vibey feel around it, when the restaurants are open, the centre has a lot of shops that are closed, covered up windows where they are waiting for tenants and very, very few shoppers around on a mid-morning weekday. I cannot imagine that it would make an amazing investment, at the sort of prices they are estimating it will be sold for, although there is no denying that it is surrounded by a very lucrative market and a considerable number of upper-end economically active people.
 

I recently saw Rango with my children and it is another wonderful family movie that is well worth seeing and as so many of those movies do, appeals to both children and to adults. From an adult level, it really is the story of political manipulation, greed and the lengths that some capitalists will go to in order to achieve their business objectives.

In this case, it is about a greedy Mayor of a town who cuts off the water supply so that he may be able to buy up land more cheaply but from what I saw of those leaving the cinema, and there were lots of adults without small children, both young and old really enjoyed a really well animated movie with a very good script.

The format of the World Cup has been ridiculous. It has taken weeks to simply eliminate a whole lot of teams who, in all truth, should be playing in their own tournament and not in the World Cup. There has been no punishment for teams like England, who lost more games than they should have, but still advanced to the next stage and none of the minnows made it through anyway. 

Rory Sabbatini won on the US PGA Tour again last week and the noticeable thing was that he was wearing a new cowboy-styled hat with a wide brim. The reason? He has recently been diagnosed with skin cancer and has realised that the caps that most golfers wear are so useless in protecting against the sun that you may as well wear nothing if your choice is only going to be a peak.

It must be something to do with the male ego, and the fact that cowboy hats really don’t look fantastic, that so many men in South Africa insist on wearing peaks, when we have such a harsh and strong sun, especially at altitude, that skin cancer, as any dermatologist or plastic surgeon can tell you, is increasing at a rapid rate. There is simply no reason not to put on a wide-brimmed hat and a strong suntan lotion before you venture into the sun.
 

Approximately a month ago You Tube lifted the restrictions on the length of the videos that could be uploaded by users, or at least some of its users. For a long time, the time limit was limited to no more than 10 minutes, then it was extended to 15 minutes and now YouTube allows some account holders to load videos longer than 15 minutes and without limit. That would be of great use, because there are many lectures and interesting topics that cannot really be covered in less than 15 minutes and people, who don’t presumably abuse their accounts, will now be able to load longer videos.

Internet Explorer 9 is already out, and it seems to have a nice clean look to it, but the problem whenever you get the latest version of this type of Internet browsing software is that it is often not compatible with your banking, with the result that when I went into Google and started typing in the words “uninstall”, it already came up with “uninstall i.e. 9” and “uninstall Internet Explorer 9”, without me even typing the rest of the sentence, so common is this problem! It is a pity that the banks cannot get up to date a little bit quicker, because the latest software is invariably safer against attack, and one would prefer to use it.

I found a very interesting advert in the Financial Mail of 11 March, for a book that is still to be published, and of which I could find no information on any website. It is almost as if whoever is publishing it is either trying to get maximum publicity before it comes out, or alternatively, thinks that it will not be on the shelves for very long when it does come out, and they need to create some sort of immediate demand. The book is called “Between the Lines” and it says that it is, “The shocking story of the largest ongoing corporate fraud in South African history.” It will also apparently unveil what it calls “a special relationship” with one of the country’s leading legal practices.

No doubt as a result of the advertising I do, I actually get beseeched with requests for more advertising. People contact you basically every day, offering you special rates to appear in media supplements, advertise on walls or electronic billboards or sponsor various shows or programmes, not to mention golfers who have a chance at a professional career, or people offering you the opportunity to advertise on the side of their motor boat, racing car or you name it. Quite a few of them read my blog and put comments here, and one simply cannot afford to take up all the opportunities in most cases, or indeed respond to the e-mails and phone calls because they really do come in – in high numbers – from every form of media, not to mention every single newspaper, who seem to have their advertising departments calling all day. I generally just forward them to my ad agency for them to decide, so please excuse me if I don’t get back to you.

The earthquake just off the shores of Japan followed by the tsunami, have wrecked havoc all over Japan, but it could be far worse if they were not such a disciplined, careful nation. I spent some time in Japan and I have always been impressed by their attention to detail, cleanliness as well as their strict rules that their society is run by, something that has always extended to their buildings and engineering requirements. If the same earthquake had struck any other country, you could be sure that fatalities would be far higher and one has to hope that there is no risk with nuclear problems with the power stations that have been damaged. It is certainly a wonderful country with fantastic, friendly people and one’s thoughts go out to them at a time of a terrible tragedy like this.

Predictably, given that Libya is led by a man who is quite happy to use violence to save his own skin, that is precisely what is going on right now. It is amazing how slow the rest of the world is to react and that even South Africa has been sending out mixed signals with Jacob Zuma apparently saying that we should not be influenced by foreign media, but should look at what the Libyan media is saying. A comment like that is absolutely ridiculous, when we are talking about dictatorial regime where of course there is no freedom of press.

Even worse, was the coverage I saw on Russia Today, a channel which I always watch for amusement, because just like American publications always make out Russians to either be starving or subject to leaders they cannot change, Russia Today also always has an exaggerated go at America. It is not as funny though, when they start interviewing Libyan Ministers to try to explain the peaceful approach of the Libyan government, defending itself from ”terrorists” while their Russian-built fighter planes bombard Libya. Russia is not really on the wrong side in most cases these days, and I was quite surprised to see that they are clearly very pro-Qaddafi.
 

I see that www.moneyweb.co.za has come up with what is probably the correct solution for what I call trolls, the anonymous vile spewing, poisonous minority that love to post comments on the Internet without doing so in their own names. Of course there are occasions, such as in politically motivated matters, where this can be justified but an open door policy then becomes abused by those who only have nasty, and often racist, comments to make.

What Moneyweb is doing is that from now on, if you post to their forums, as long as you link your post to your Facebook account, thus identifying yourself, your comment would be posted immediately. If the person has comments that he wants to post, and needs to remain anonymous for some or other reason, those comments will then go in an outsource facility that identifies posters first, before their comments may be posted. I hope a lot more sites adopt a policy like this. Moneyweb explained this, saying, “Moneyweb provided an open media platform where anyone with a keyboard and an opinion was free to participate. Here, however, we miscalculate it. Freedom without responsibility tends to attract a minority who just cannot resist the temptation of abusing the privilege.”
 

I don’t think South African expectations for a World Cup have ever been as low as they are, and nor could the tournament have gotten off to a more boring start. Having said that, it will probably be the one we are going to win!

A tournament that stretches over such a lengthy period, and includes hopelessly mismatched teams, simply does not generate excitement. I, nor any of the spectators in India it would seem, have any interest in watching Netherlands play South Africa and Pakistan v Canada is just a laugh. Unfortunately, it has been a week or so of that already, and with more to come, it is going to take quite a long time before anybody cares too much about this tournament. Interest will obviously pick up if South Africa gets through to the later rounds, and then start competing against teams that actually can play cricket.
 

The iPad 2 has been launched in America and will be available in 26 countries from late March. In South Africa we have the old version and it was launched a year late. It is surprising that there has been no commitment to launch the iPad 2 yet, because nobody is going to want to buy the old iPad given that the iPad 2 takes photos and shoots videos which the previous one did not, that it is thinner, lighter, runs two times faster than the original iPad and that graphics now load up 9 times faster than the iPad available in South Africa.

The Oscars were cut shorter this year, which is always good, and many AGM’s could learn from that as well, but in some respects they lack excitement. Bookies seldom pay out huge payouts to people predicting the winners of these events and one merely needed to go to their sites to know all the major winners before the event was held. For example, The King’s Speech was a hot favourite at 1/10 to win best picture, Natalie Portman was at 1/60 to win the best actress award and Colin Firth had similar odds to win the best actor award.
For those who don’t understand betting, effectively for every R100,00 you bet, you would win about R2,00 on those two categories and about R10,00 on the best movie category. In other words, short of a nuclear bomb hitting the venue, you already knew all three of those categories and there were other categories with even shorter favourites!

At the end of the day it is probably not that hard for somebody who has to pay out money based on the result to do a bit of a poll of those who have a vote, and to realise that somebody is romping away with that category, but it loses all its excitement when you know two weeks beforehand exactly who is going to win each category, even if the media tries to hype it up, and makes it seem as if it is a battle between X and Y – the betting sites are telling you that there is no battle at all and there is a clear winner.
 

It is quite terrifying that a few days after the Public Protector came out with a report damning the Police Commissioner, Cele, that the Public Protector’s office gets raided by the police. I hope whoever has ordered this raid, or approved it, is fired because it sends out such a message of some type of bullying, dictatorial approach by a branch of Government that is out of keeping with our country and it is completely unacceptable in any democracy.

The Golf Digest annual list of the 100 best golf courses in South Africa is available in the March 2011 edition, and for many golfers, the magazine is a must buy.

Leopard Creek has been replaced at the top of the charts by The Links at Francourt, George. The highest new entry on the top 100 and quite predictably so for anyone who has played there, was Blair Atholl as the 6th best golf course in the country which compares well to another residential golf estate nearby, Dainfern, who dropped 20 places to 71st.

Next door to Dainfern of course the Douw Steyn development continues at some pace, with nobody seemingly to know very much about the development at all, other than the golf course is currently being built. For people who live in Gauteng, Blair Atholl

The Telkom PGA at Woodmead concluded this weekend with George Coetzee winning the event. It is feather in the cap for the Country Club Johannesburg or CCJ to hold such a prestigious event and it is always fun to watch professionals play the same course that you have. It is not as much their distances that impress me, because I don’t necessarily out drive regular players, but it is accuracy and particularly their finishing – the way they manage to get the ball into the hole for as few shots as possible from anywhere around the green.

I see - and there is always good news behind the bad news - that naturally these toll roads are going to be running at a profit and some companies are really going to be doing very well out of this new SANRAL project. Apparently, a foreign-owned consortium will be making more than R4 billion from running our toll roads and an Austrian headquarter company, Kapschtraffic.com ag will be doing very well out of the project. One would have thought, in a developing economy, that the last thing you can do is to afford to cripple anybody with transport costs, while doubling up on the electricity charges over a few years, and that those toll roads would really be run on a break-even sort of concept, funding the repair of roads, as we were told would be the case. To now discover that like anything else, it is just a business, designed to run at a profit and what is more, many of those profits will be going overseas, is quite simply shocking. For up to 66c a kilometre one wonders what pressure will be diverted through all the towns and the small roads in an effort to avoid such fees.