I recently bought a Phantom 4 drone by DJI Technologies.  I was quite surprised at the recent shoot at my offices for the 2017 adverts that we were busy recording to see my advertising company using the same drone.  It is a great drone and it has a 4k camera, but I do think that better cameras are available for specialists, but on the other hand, with this one retailing for R25,000 in South Africa, perhaps at that price it is good enough.  I have a cheaper drone before, and by cheaper, I mean one that cost about R3,500 and it just was not anywhere near the class of this one. 

Unfortunately, when it comes to things like drones, you really have to spend quite a bit of money if you want to get one because the cheaper ones really don’t last very long, they don’t work very well and it is just really a waste of money.  The fancier ones are completely different and are capable of flying about 120 metres high – which means you lose sight of it long before it gets to that height and up to 2 km away, although in practice I have never flown mine further than about 700 metres away before losing contact with it.

They are amazing for taking all sorts of pictures – think of couples in front of a wedding chapel from a bit of height, staff in front of the offices (it would have helped if all my staff members were there when they filmed it and not just one-third of the staff) or for property sales, in terms of the house you are trying to sell or surveying a piece of land.  Apart from that, they are just good old fashioned fun for boys – and boys love their toys.  Obviously, as the years go by we will see the use of drones for more and more things – it is already very common to use them in sport – but I am noticing that they are starting to use them in more documentaries and adverts – that after all allows you to get the kind of footage that a few years ago you had to have hired a helicopter and a full crew to obtain.  These days, for R25,000, in South Africa or the equivalent of about R17,000 overseas, you can get a drone that films in 4k – and a few years ago not even movie cameras could film in 4k let alone your own drone!

Master Sabina winning his second Summer Cup in a row on Saturday at Turffontaien racecourse.  Now a 9 time winner and the highest rated horse I have ever had.  Watch the gap he had to take when horses shifted across and blocked his path.

Master Sabina won the Summer Cup for me on Saturday for the 2nd year in a row.  Other than the Met and the July it is South Africa's most prestigious race and the biggest on the Highveld so its certainly something I am delighted about!

The race is one I will never forget.  I cannot recall any major feature race where the winner has come from so far back and had so many traffic issues to deal with and still gone on to win.  The horse who came third, Master Switch literally almost squeezed him out of the race but he kept his line and barged his way through a gap that didn't exist.  In winning Master Sabina beat the July Handicap winner from this year also.  A big thanks to the jockey Gavin Lerena and the trainer Geoff Woodruff.

Sporting Post described the race this way, "A heartstopping burst through a nearly non-existent gap by Summer Cup double hero Master Sabina....Saturday’s  tackle buster, reminiscent of Springbok rugby legend Danie Gerber in full cry, will go down as his bravest victory to date"

I have really been enjoying a new HBO production, and HBO of course made Game of Thrones, called Westworld.  It is a mini-series based on the 1973 feature film by Michael Crichton.  It is a science fiction drama set in an old west theme park where basically guests come along and interact with very lifelike robots.  Some of them are for example working as escorts, but they are really there for the people to do with as they please, including shooting them, in which case they repaired overnight.  They appear human in every respect.  

The trend these days for top mini-series is to have top actors and the main draw card of the series is Anthony Hopkins as well as Evan Rachel Worth and Ed Harris.  The reviews are excellent with ratings on Rotten Tomato of 89% and the production and the acting are first-class.  The reviews suggest that it is an exploration of what it means to be human, as well as the thoughtful critique of violent entertainment – while being violent at the same time and that should give you some clues as to whether or not you would want to watch it.  It currently flights on Mnet Edge channel 102 on Monday nights at 9pm.

The Road Accident Fund is on a campaign at the moment to try and get more people to lodge their claims with them directly.  Partially this is because, as some of the representatives have impliedly told Parliament before, people who go to court typically get more money than people who don’t, but I think it is important to give some perspective as to some of the offers made by the Road Accident Fund that my firm has come across and what we ultimately obtained for clients, so that people understand the savings you make by not having an attorney are not real and that you cannot save money by getting 100% of R366,000 compared to, at least, 75% of R3 million. That is an actual example of a case where one of our clients was, after approaching the Road Accident Fund directly, encouraged to accept an offer of R366,000 after spending a month in hospital.  We have an advocate’s opinion who says that the case is worth R3 million and that the offer borders on the unethical.  Even if one takes a conservative approach and says it is only worth half of what the advocate says it is, it is still worth about 5 times what the Road Accident Fund has offered.  

Another client of ours was told by the Road Accident Fund that she has no claim. We took the case to court and settled it for R200,000.  That’s R200 000 for a “no claim” according to the RAF staff.

Yet another client of ours was given an offer by the Road Accident Fund and was indeed paid out for his general damages.  They did not tell him, because he will never work properly again, that he was also entitled to compensation for loss of income.  Since we sued the Road Accident Fund for their under-settling this client’s case they have already paid out an interim amount of R600,000 or so and we feel that the balance of the case is worth another R1,5 million.

In other matters the Road Accident Fund has filed documents in court, and you can read the documents here (http://accidentclaim.co.za/_docs/RAF_plea_dont_help_clients.pdf) where they have said that all members of the public who approach them directly are told that of course the Road Accident Fund cannot represent them and themselves at the same time and it is impossible for them to wear two hats and play those two different roles.  That is not actually though what they say in the media – where they say the opposite and say you can save a lot of fees by approaching them.  In court papers they say that if you approach them directly you are doing the case yourself, you are responsible for it and you have to make sure that no mistakes are made and you have to make sure that your case proceeds successfully – which would in most cases include issuing a summons yourself.  How many people would approach them if they publicise that in their town hall meetings as well as publicity?

The bottom line is, if you approach the Road Accident Fund directly, you may well save on legal fees, but if your case has any value to it you may be so considerably under-settled that any saving you get on legal fees will be a fraction of what you have just lost by not approaching an attorney.  Before you finalise any case with the Road Accident Fund, go to a reputable attorney and get the offer checked, because you may just discover that you are absolutely being taken advantage of.

I am sure I have written about this before, but to me the two most difficult periods of the year are late January until mid-February as well as November.  There is always such aggression in the air, particularly in Johannesburg, during November as the business year winds to an end.  It is only round about the first or second week of December when people start to relax and calm down.  Until then, there seems to be a lot more hostility and I have often experienced it with our clients.  We don’t have the same issues that we did in the past, because we have much smaller number of clients than we did 7 or 8 years ago before the system changed, even if they have bigger cases now than the average case of 7 or 8 years ago.  What is also significant is that the vast majority of clients have now accepted that they have to wait a lengthy period for payment and they have become far more patient than they might have been in the past.  Nevertheless, there is always pressure from people, not just clients, towards the end of the year.

I always try at this time to remind my staff of some of the basics – and that is to control your own temper, to bear in mind that you might be picking fights with people for reasons that are not entirely valid and to try and always reduce stress and pressure by exercising healthily. There is no doubt that a good session of weights, aerobics or running will so often calm one down and allow one to make a more rational decision in handling a matter than one might if one typically allows all the energy and negativity to continue to build up without any release.   

I was recording new television adverts together with quite a few of my staff recently and as usual it was educational in many ways.  What I noticed this time, more than previously, is the tremendous difference that different items of clothing on you can make.  I am certainly not in my best shape at the moment, but with the different changes in clothes it is amazing how you can wear one shirt and look perfectly decent and in another shirt look bloated and overweight.  I was actually horrified with the one particular scene involving me walking with a client, where I think I look terrible, but it was too late to re-record it by the time I saw the effect.  

It is no wonder that most of the stars and the TV production companies all use stylists so they have somebody choosing what looks good on the people, pinning it if necessary and styling it.  If that was not enough, one of my staff told me that it is quite common for guys to wear make-up now to nightclubs.  That should probably be a topic for another blog!

I have the new iPhone 7 Plus and I enjoy it.  I think the photographs it takes are indeed better, but I cannot say for anybody who had the iPhone 6, that the upgrade is really going to be worth the money – probably not.  If you have an older version, then of course it is time to upgrade by now.

What amazes me though is the cash price it is available for in the local stores which is approximately R18,500 for the 128Mb version.  The same version in the USA is approximately R12,500.  It is incredible that so many extra taxes and profit have to be put on a product before it is put on sale in South Africa and it stops us getting ahead as much as we would like because, while it is one thing to slap all of these tariffs, etc on imported clothing, I feel it is another thing on communication devices.  I would like to see widespread internet availability in South Africa and computer usage at low cost and when one accepts that for most people their phone is their personal computer, I think it is outrageous that phones can cost 50% more in South Africa than in other countries – especially when being sold by the same company, although as I understand it, the Apple stores in South Africa are not directly owned by Apple.  

It is amazing how often the public perception of what great risks are, and the statistics, are so far apart.  For example, a lot of people have the impression that in Europe or America you have a huge chance of being killed by terrorism.  

In fact, in the last 10 years in America, a total of 300 people have been killed in terrorist attacks.  That is about as many who die in motor accidents in a week in South Africa.  That is a figure that will surprise most people, and in fact, more people die each year accidentally tangling themselves up in their bed sheets in America than from terrorist attacks.  

To me what this really says is that they are so used to the statistics and the shock and horror stories that the media feeds us.  It is sad, but it does not really make the news anymore that a woman and her son on their way to school are killed in the morning traffic - that 4 teenagers on their way home from a nightclub on Friday night are killed in a motor accident.  That is not sensational – hundreds and thousands have died that way before and so, that is not what the media focuses on.  They focus on the lightning strike that kills somebody on the beach, the child that walks into alligator-infested waters at a Disney Resort and is then killed by an alligator, the 20 people that are killed in one country by a hurricane and 800 people are killed in a much smaller country like Haiti, where there is not much of media presence, is not such a big story.  

To me, the true sensational story should be that every single week in South Africa a full Boeing load of people are killed on our roads.  Three times that number are seriously injured and maimed and by that I mean lose eyes, get brain damaged, lose their arms, lose legs, etc.  I don’t mean suffer whiplashes.  It is a tragedy that we have become so used to the death and destruction on our roads that we all forget that that, apart from the usual suspects such as lung cancer from smoking and heart disease, etc, that are the big killers.  The bottom line is, regardless of where you live in the world, your chance of being killed by terrorists or a madman with a gun, before cancer, heart disease or a motorcar get you, are remote.  That does not mean it cannot happen to you, but one really should not sensationalise the bizarre.

I was disappointed to hear that the new Public Protector, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, has no sooner taken office when she changed the TV channel that is displayed on TV in their offices.  Sometimes you have to learn from the smaller signs that something is not right, and this is not the smallest sign in the world.  

To go from E-News – and I can’t say that E-News is my favourite news channel – to another news channel would have been fine, but not if that was a channel owned by the Gupta’s.  Her staff were in fact however told to change all the TV channels from E-News to AMM7 – a channel owned by the Gupta’s.  That is about the worst signal she could possibly send, and although no doubt we will be told later that she flicks on to other channels from time to time like CNN or SABC, the directive to her staff in that regard sends all of us a terrible, terrible signal as to her independence and one can only worry about what her future steps will be. 

We all know that before the elections the SABC imposed an 80% local content on all stations and the results of that are now in.  The audience share of the SABC channels have already started dripping, with for example SABC3 having 7,6% of the audience in May 2016 and by September this was down to 6,2%.  Although that just sounds like 1,4% it is dramatic drop in what is already a poor share of the audience and even SABC1 has gone from 29,8% of the audience to 28,7% during the same period.  The SABC total share of the market since May, which was 52,1% between all of their channels is already down to 48,6% and I would imagine it is worse with some of the radio stations.  What does that mean?  It means ultimately they will have to charge less for advertising and it means advertisers would be less likely to promote their products on the SABC channels with the result that the SABC will be short of money.  I guess that does not matter if you can get it from the government and the government will just get it all from us!  

It just shows you however the folly of always trying to meet political agendas with the SABC, the labour laws, etc – we all end up paying for them in one way or another.  At the lower end of the market SABC has retained a share of the viewing time with eTV who has eaten into it and as we go up to the higher ends of the market the people are basically running off to DSTV.

To make matters worse, it actually costs more money to produce local programming than it does to import programmes.  There are of course benefits to having local programming, including building a South African identity and culture as well as keeping South African directors, producers, camera people and actors and actresses and work.  Unfortunately, directly or indirectly, you and I, who don’t want to watch their productions and are changing to other channels, will still have to pay for the cost of their productions.  Let’s see how long this particular disaster continues.