Cell phone companies around the world have a lot of power, in terms of knowing from your data where in fact you are currently located and of course who you are calling.  In the Ukraine, they have given the government a lot of assistance recently during demonstrations, to the extent that they have provided information pinpointing all of the users of the network within an area.  Of course, once you know who the users are, you will also be able to get their names from the cell phone companies.  

During a recent protest, when protestors were gathering in a certain area, all the people in the area received an SMS which essentially said, “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.”  You might say so what – well they just brought in a new law in the Ukraine that makes it a crime to participate in a protest deemed violent and so it is much easier to intimidate a whole group of people now by simply targeting them with an SMS via their cell phone company basically opening up all their records to the government of that particular country.

This Saturday sees the running of the 2014 J&B Met and I am very lucky to own 2 of the 18 horses in the field.  Last year’s J&B Met was won by a 75/1 outsider, Martial Eagle, and so upsets are possible, but at the moment it appears that both of my horses are considered outsiders and not expected to run a place let alone finish in the first 10.  

On the performance that I saw in Cape Town some three weeks ago, there is no doubt that Master of my Fate is the horse that everybody has to beat.  He has won 6 races in a row, he has won them very easily and he also grew up on Varsfontein Stud like both of my horses in the race. He was in the same ring and would have spent time with my colt Master Sabina while growing up there.  They are both sons of Jet Master and unluckily for me it appears, on form thus far, that Master of my Fate is the better of the two horses.  The other favourite in Cape Town will be Jackson, who is certainly a top horse, but while he has won many important races, he never appears to have won a huge, major race and I just don’t think he is going to win now either.  My filly, Do You Remember, has to have a good chance too because she is all heart and she always puts in a great effort but she is the only female in the race and there is a reason for that – the J&B Met is not actually a handicap.  It is a conditions race and the conditions really suit the best rated horses in the country which means at the weights, neither of my horses should actually even run a place.  Horseracing is all about form and one cannot ignore that on form neither of my horses should have a chance.  I am going in with an approach of basically just hoping for an upset result and to get lucky!  The odds reflect that – Master Sabina is 50/1 and Do You Remember is 55/1.

We have a tremendous fatality rate on our roads, and a high percentage of them, especially relative to other countries, are pedestrians.  It amazes me how little care a lot of pedestrians take with their own safety.  I am not just talking about people dressing in dark clothes in the middle of the night and then walking on the side of the road or those who stagger drunk into the middle of a road – there are types of cases we have dealt with often, but other situations too.  

It is amazing how often, if one is passing a taxi which is stationary on the other side of the road in the opposite direction to you, that as you approach the taxi somebody who is obviously just alighted from the taxi will run around the back of the taxi and directly into the path of your vehicle.  Pedestrians don’t seem to understand that with the height of the taxi, particularly when it is filled with occupants, one cannot see somebody crossing the road from the opposite end of the taxi and nor, given the way they run into the road, can the pedestrian  obviously see the driver of the motor vehicle either!  If people took just a little bit more time to wait for the vehicle they just got out of to move on and then cross the road when the path is clear we would have much less pedestrian accidents.  

The most common pedestrian cases that we are approached with often involve alcohol, although our clients do not admit it or advise us of it initially, where they seem to have staggered into the road and we’ve also had numerous cases over the years of people either getting into or out of taxis, including those who have fallen when the taxi has started moving as they are still getting out of the vehicle.  You can read more about the case studies of the various cases we have been involved in on our website www.accidentclaim.co.za.

I must say I am quite surprised by the English that is being used on Facebook these days.  I understand some abbreviations, and indeed use some myself, but the kind of language I now read, such as people writing to us about the Road Accident Fund saying, “I jst wanna c if dey ar really doin’ deir job.”  I am always sympathetic I must say I am quite surprised by the English that is being used on Facebook when I see somebody clearly does not know how to write, probably because of the shocking state of education in South Africa, especially during the apartheid era, but when it is clearly some type of lingo, or abbreviation, it is concerning and I think those types of abbreviations are really excessive and ridiculous.  
We get people, using that type of language actually apply for jobs at the firm.  People also ask for help, saying that their claims are with other attorneys and writing, “Made a claim to de lawyer since den till now no letters even phone calz.”  It is almost like reading another language, it is extremely difficult to understand at times what people actually mean, and one certainly cannot hire people who write so poorly.

I am impressed with the way the FDA in America investigate so many different health issues.  They take many years to attend to some of them, but at least they attack health issues faster in America than they have in South Africa as evidenced by the tobacco settlements many years ago.  They are worried now that anti-bacterial soaps can lead to health risks such as bacterial resistance or hormonal effects.  Hormonal effects are pretty serious if you are a lady and don’t want to end up looking like a man!  

The anti-bacterial soaps that they are worried about are any soaps, and it can sometimes be perfumed soaps as well, that contain a substance called Triclosan or Triclocarbon.  They are not confirming right now that they are harmful, although they believe they are, but they are insisting that producers, if they want to continue using it, have to conduct clinical studies to show the long-term health effects and the producers will be given one year to submit data and information in that regard.  What they also want to see is the effect of Triclosan on the body’s thyroid hormone which is apparently especially important for brain development and function, particularly in children.  They can also, and this will have to be investigated, appear to affect fertility. 

The nominees for the Oscars are out, and the movies that dominated the nominations, with the most nominations, are American Hustler and Gravity.   The movie that is already the favourite in the early betting markets and quite strongly to win the Oscar for the Best Picture is however 12 Years Slave.   The favourite to win Best Director is Alfonso Cuaron who directed Gravity and for Best Actress it is currently, and she is a very short favourite meaning they think it is guaranteed that she is going to win, Kate Blanchett.  

The one I would really like to see is American Hustler which is on a similar topic to The Wolf of Wall Street, but is rated far better than The Wolf of Wall Street.  It is seldom that people, who have to pay out on the results such as bookmakers get it drastically wrong, particularly when there is a hot favourite, and whether the principle is that of the wisdom of crowds, or research as to how certain people are going to vote, the favourites on the betting sites go on to win the awards year after year.

The Winter Olympics are going to take place shortly in Sochi, and not only are they the most expensive Olympics ever, and that is not hard to say every 4 years with inflation, but they are more expensive than any Summer Olympics as well.  I read a fascinating article in BusinessWeek magazine which detailed massive corruption that has gone on in the Olympics where friends or associates of Vladimir Putin have been awarded the majority of contracts.  It appears however that, sadly like we read all to often in South Africa, you don’t win major construction contracts in Russia unless you agree to pay fees to the people either overseeing you or who have awarded you the contract.  So much has been spent on these Olympics that in fact just the cost of a brand new train that they have put in, which goes up the mountains, at a cost of $8,7 billion, exceeds the total cost of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010.  

Russian opposition parties have done research and have discovered that the cost of building this new train has cost three times more than it did for NASA to deliver the Rovers to Mars.  The total cost of the Sochi Games is going to be $51 billion which exceeds the $40 billion spent by China on the 2008 Summer Olympics, the most expensive so far.  It is fabulous extravagance on the Black Sea, and a lot of money spent in an area where not many people live, so the infrastructure is not going to be that widely used after the Olympics.  It is certainly going to be used to show off Russia in the opening ceremony which is expected to be something spectacular involving trains and boats and given that the Winter Olympics have much less events than the Summer Olympics, it has been calculated that the average event at the Winter Olympics this year, when you divide the total expenditure by the events, will cost $552 million.

There are three big races in South Africa – the Durban July, the Summer Cup and the J&B Met.  The J&B Met is going to be run this year on Saturday 1 February and basically the 20 best horses in the country, over the 2000 metre distance will take part in the race.  There is a lot of competition to get in, because there are probably about 3 500 to 4 000 horses in training in South Africa at any one time.  

I have been very lucky last year to have a horse run third in the July Handicap, namely Do You Remember, and then took a very narrow second place in the Summer Cup with Master Sabina.  Master Sabina ran wide, because the jockey could not get him to the rail the whole race and had to cover far more distance than the eventual winner, Yorker, despite losing to him very narrowly.  I am hoping that both Master Sabina and Do You Remember make the field for the J&B Met, but their first runs in Cape Town went very badly due to a virus in the Milnerton Stables.  As a result, there is a chance that one of them may be left out of the race – but I hope not.  It would be an incredible honour to have my first run ever in the J&B Met – something I never had before, and if I can actually have 2 out of 20 horses in the field, that would be an amazing achievement, particularly given that these are not 2 horses that I bought – I have bred them myself from mares who I owned and achieved quite a lot of success with – Sabina Park and Festive Occasion.  Master Sabina’s name is pretty easy to work out – his father is Jet Master and his mother is Sabina Park and my friends have worked out that Do You Remember’s name is a tribute to her mother, Festive Occasion, who we won’t forget.

We once again heard a positive upbeat message from Government of improving Matric results.  The Sunday Times recently ran an article by Jonathan Jansen, who is the Rector of the Free State University, who said as far as he is concerned, that our Matric results are all a massive fraud.  That is because we set the standard so low that in certain subjects you can pass with a 30% mark and in others you only need 40% to pass – so knowing less than half your work is good enough for a pass and sometimes knowing approximately one-third of your work is good enough to get a pass.  

In a recent world report on Science and Maths, South Africa came last of all of the countries involved, based on a test done in all of those countries and so it is quite clear that our standard of education, particularly when it comes to Maths, is absolutely inadequate, at the bottom of the pile and passing at 30% or 40% in those conditions really does not mean very much.  That also ignores the fact that many people who cannot pass Maths then elect to do Maths Literacy which is a simple version of Maths and as a result the vast majority of pupils entering the job market are basically incapable of doing many mathematical calculations – something of a problem if we need them to start businesses one day so that unemployment in South Africa can be improved.  

I love Zapiro’s annual collections of his cartoons that appear in the Mail & Guardian, Sunday Times and The Times.  I am not the only one who loves his annuals, which started in 1996, because I struggled to find a copy in Umhlanga during the December holidays as every branch at Exclusive Books told me that it was sold out.  I don’t think that it is the first time I have been told that it is sold out and it somewhat surprises me that they don’t print enough or alternatively order enough copies.  

Zapiro is a genius and his cartoons and the commentary that they deliver on our country way surpasses that of his rivals – particularly when it comes to political issues.  I own the original, which he sold to me many years ago, of a cartoon relating to legal fees of attorneys and it is interesting to see how it is drawn with pen and using Tippex as well but the true brilliance is in the message they send and in his political commentary.  I think, like Johnny Clegg, he is a South African superstar who, despite all the acclaim that they get, actually deserve far more. 

We may not see too many social protests now, but there is no doubt that we are going to see more in the years to come.  How the government reacts at that time will determine, to a large extent, what sort of country we live in and hopefully we don’t go down the route of Zimbabwe, where President Mugabe started blaming a minority section of the population for all Zimbabwe’s problems.  

I was shocked to read in the City Press recently that the government budgeted an extra R500 million for food parcels, vouchers and cash grants for social relief in 2008 when we had an election.  By 2011 this amount was down to R118 million and surprise surprise, with 2013 being an election year, the amount is back up to R479 million.  City Press interviewed a number of people in various townships who basically said that ANC members promised them food packages before elections if they registered and voted.  Things must be pretty desperate in many parts of our country if people are voting so that they can get food packages and what makes it worse is that actually after the election the people claimed that the groceries they were promised on a monthly basis were not delivered.  The food parcel apparently amounts to R1 200,00 and the complaints have been made with the Public Protector, by the DA, about previous instances of this in Tlokwe.  In almost all instances the food parcels had only been delivered just days before an election.

At the beginning of the year there will be much more discussion of the inflation rate with various Unions, etc, all demanding big increases for their members.  Those increases will always be referenced against the inflation rate and we are quite fortunate that in recent years our inflation rate has been fairly steady and typically on the way down.  Inflation reached an all time high of 20,9% in January 1986 in South Africa and it has been as low as 0.2% in January 2004.  The long-term average is 9,49% and the actual inflation rate for November, which was issued in December, was 5,3%.  Economists who generally don’t forecast that well, tend to get this figure pretty accurate, because it is quite hard to be that far out and they are predicting that in February, around when most people get their annual increases, inflation is likely to be 5,5%.  Once again of course that will depend on factors such as the Rand/Dollar exchange rate and the impact upon the petrol price which generally has quite an impact on overall inflation.

This is a much talked about development in the northern suburbs, just past Dainfern.  It is certainly to my mind going to spell severe pressure for the Dainfern housing market, with many people no doubt going to sell and take the opportunity of building a new, fresh house in Steyn City whereas most of the housing stock in Dainfern appears to be about 20 years old.  The registered website for Steyn City is www.steyncity.co.za.  It will no doubt make huge news when it is launched, and initial indications were summer 2014, which one would guess would mean September or October later this year as it is an enormous development. The scale of what they hope to achieve in terms of offices, shops as well as residential living areas makes it a massive undertaking and the infrastructure certainly looks very serious.  

The bridges going over the rivers dwarf those at Dainfern, the golf course appears to have been finalised more than a year ago but it is still not open and Douw Steyn’s palace, for want of a better word, was finished some time ago at a reported cost of R250 million.  Hopefully, before it opens upgrades to Cedar Road will be finalised and of course on the William Nicol side they have increased the road width but there is no doubt that whatever traffic problems exist now will be far more severe in 5 to 10 years’ time when the estate is more built up.

Now that 2013 is behind us, another list is out, and that is of the most successful movies during 2013.  I looked up the worldwide grosses to see which movies made the most money in theatres around the world and while some of them are still in circuit and will continue to earn a little bit of money in 2014, the biggest movie for 2013 was “Ironman 3”.  It grossed R1,2 billion around the world and some R409 million in the USA.  It was also the biggest movie of the year in the USA, narrowly holding off “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”.  Other huge hits include “Despicable Me2”, “Fast and Furious 6”, “Monsters University”, “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”, the new animation “Frozen” as well as the science fiction hit “Gravity”.  Of those movies that I watched, I probably enjoyed Gravity and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire the most.  

We are at a time of the year when the international fuel price typically increases.  The worst possible combination for us is the Rand weakening at the same time and that unfortunately is exactly what is happening.  You can always see the daily update indicating what the fuel price will be at http:/www.cef.org.za/images/petrolprice/daily.pdf.  It was indicating a few days ago that the international price has gone up about 15c a litre depending on the grade of petrol that one uses and that the movement in the exchange rate would add another 19c.  That means, and it is very early in the month, but having just being faced with an increase, we are looking at a potential increase of about 35c a litre at the end of this month with those who use diesel facing a 17c per litre increase.  If the Rand stays weak for the rest of this month, we could be looking at considerably more.

I have written over the years quite a lot about the continuous traffic light problems that we have in Johannesburg.  An article in The Sunday Times on 29 December 2013 caught my eye and dealt with this problem, mocking somewhat sarcastically, as I have before, the allegation that Johannesburg is a world class African city!  Apparently the Western Cape does not have the same traffic problems and that is because it is dealt with better than it is in Johannesburg. Unbelievably, the Johannesburg Roads Agency or JRA only has 22 technicians to look after 2 113 traffic lights.  The centre that sends out those technicians is staffed by only four people who work 12 hour shifts of two people only.  In other words, when somebody lays a complaint about a robot being out of order, there are only two people that are dealing with those complaints at any given time.  One has to lay complaints because unlike other Municipalities, apparently Johannesburg does not have fully automated signals which would automatically alert the centre if there was a problem, so if motorists don’t tip them off and actually phone them, they will not know about the problem! 

The message is twofold – firstly, we need to report all traffic issues to the Johannesburg Roads Agency and secondly, we need to put pressure on the Municipality to allocate more staff, both technicians and to the management centre to deal with these problems which ultimately costs us probably billions in lost productivity as thousands of people sit unnecessarily in traffic every morning and every evening.  The registered site of the JRA is www.jra.org.za and the phone number, which you can put on your phone to call at any time when you come across a faulty traffic light or a problem is 0860 562 874 and the e-mail address is [email protected].

I receive regular e-mails from people who have their own claims with the Road Accident Fund, something that I have discussed on by blog before, but what was interesting was a recent e-mail I received.  It read, “I would like to get your assistance in completing a claim against the RAF.  I have since lodged the complaint myself as I was encouraged by RAF staff while in hospital.  I have found that the assessment conducted by the RAF appointed doctors is not fair. Can you help and represent me in completing the claim?  

This illustrates precisely why so many people are now doing their claims with the Road Accident Fund directly – it is not so much out of choice, but because agents of the Road Accident Fund approach them while they are in hospital and encourage them to do the claim with them.  The motivation for that process is undoubtedly the fact that it will be far cheaper for the Road Accident Fund to settle the claim without the involvement of attorneys than it will be with the involvement of attorneys and that is not just because there will be additional party and party costs in the matter, but because in so many cases those matters are settled for far less than they really are worth.  It is exactly the same with the train cases involving PRASA where our firm on average settled the cases for about 8 to 10 times more than the R10 000,00 that PRASA offered everybody.  There is of course also a saying that people deserve the President of the country they live in, because they after all vote for him or her, and I suppose if one had to be critical one would have to say we deserve the level of service and the compensation that you choose to get.  It is just sad however that so many people are naïve, because they don’t do the research before agreeing to allow the Road Accident Fund to handle their case.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was a massive hit in 2013 and I was really looking forward to the final movie which I assume would be out late in 2014.  They have obviously realised however, after the movie is heading close to R1000 million worldwide, that they have a massive hit on their hands after the first movie and have done a “Hobbit” in that just as the Hobbit book has been turned into three movies, the final Hunger Games book has been turned into two movies.  That means that the final movie in the series will only be shown in 2015.  I was particularly impressed by Jennifer Lawrence, who I thought was particularly good in the movie, but I did not realise that she has been in so many different movies previously such as acting as Mystique in “X-Men” when she was 20, and she is now only 23. She was the third youngest actress ever to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress at 20 and at the age of 22 she won an Academy Award for best actress for her role in the movie “Silver Linings Playbook”, so she has got her career off to an incredibly successful start.  She now stars in a major international blockbuster and it was perhaps no surprise that Rolling Stone magazine called her “the most talented young actress in America” and less importantly she ranks very highly in many desirable women lists!

The most unpleasant months of the year for gym are November, December and January.  There are always much bigger numbers of people in gym at that time, either following up on a New Year’s resolution or getting their beach body ready!  Most people don’t keep going to gym for very long and that is because, in my opinion, most of them have no idea how to exercise properly and overdo it at the beginning without tackling the bigger issue – and that is eating.  

When you are young you can eat almost anything and it will not affect your shape that much, within reasonable norms of course, but as you get older it is really all about what you eat.  Exercising all day, and most people don’t exercise with incredible intensity, is not going to help you if you drink sodas filled with sugar and help yourself to desserts, junk food like chocolate and chips, etc.  I have always found January to be the easiest month of the year for me to lose weight, but normally what it boils down to is that when I am under less stress, I can eat properly and I don’t eat as much as when I am stressed and that is where the weight loss comes from.  Most people eat far more food than they need and it is extremely easy to give into the temptations that we are surrounded by, as well as our cravings, but if you really want to lose weight this year you need to get rid of the carbohydrates, focus on the proteins, absolutely eliminate all the junk food and then still considerably reduce what you eat.  It is very hard, it is not easy and that is why the vast majority of people these days are not in shape and every year sees them putting on a few kilograms more than the year before.