ShotSpotter is a company who installs microphones, including in South Africa, in some cities which allow the company to inform police departments of shootings.  Sensors are placed on top of buildings, or sometimes on top of light poles that record audio and when three or more sensors pick up a noise they can triangulate where the noise is coming from.  The information is relayed from wherever it is recorded around the world to the offices of ShotSpotter in California where analysts then confirm the shots and notify the police department where a shooting is taking place.  It usually takes them about 30 to 45 seconds to notify the police department and obviously it makes it a lot easier to sometimes get to the scenes of a crime faster than waiting for phone calls to start coming in.  It is obviously a very expensive system to implement, but it is something which really works very well if it could be installed in all cities in South Africa.  New York City is increasing its ShotSpotter coverage and various other major cities are looking into it.  Where it becomes very expensive is obviously the larger an area you cover, the more it costs.  ShotSpotter has revealed that normally within two years of the system being moved into an area, gunfire incidents go down 34.7%. Other things that are interesting is that predictably, most shots are fired at night, typically between 8pm and 2am, and the busiest time for shootings, for an entire week, are on Saturday mornings between 2am and 3am.  Incidentally, that often seems to coincide with the shootings outside nightclubs, etc.  

The city in South Africa that is using ShotSpotter is Cape Town, leading as they usually do in so many ways.  Cape Town has deployed the technology over a small area though, just 7 square kilometres in the high crime areas of Manenberg and Hanover Park.  Cape Town implemented the system in July 2016.  In July they had 211 shootings in the area, in August they had 128 and by September they were down to 31.  It is also being used on a very limited scale in the Kruger National Park to try and fight Rhino poachers.  Imagine the potential if we could afford to put that across more crime-ridden spots or more wildlife areas. 

Nissan is going to release their latest version of their electric car next year, the Leaf.  There will be about 30 new different electric models from different car companies coming out over the next year or two and obviously many of them will be chasing the leadership of Tesla.  Of course, as there is with everything, such as people who claim to prefer manual cars, technology will in due course take over even the most die-hard fanatics of gas and fuel cars. There will come a time when they have no choice at all.  

Before you laugh and dismiss that, the UK and France have already said that vehicles powered by fuel such as petrol or diesel, will be banned from being driven in those countries by the years 2040.  In other words, if in the year 2040 you want to drive a petrol-driven car, you will not be driving it in France or in the UK!  Things change, slowly at first, and then faster and faster.  There were 21,000 electric cars that were sold in 2011, but it is already up to 540,000 and you will see some dramatic developments in this area in the next year or two.  It will be very interesting, from a lawyer’s perspective, and it is not going to change things right now, as to how the various Road Accident Funds and similar Funds around the world will be funded once half the cars are electric!  I guess the other side is once there is more computer technology driving all the cars, there will also be far lower accident rates anyway. 

There has been a lot of press in recent times about the RAF fighting with the SA funeral industry.  The funeral industry say that people are obliged to use the Road Accident Fund’s panel of undertakers, but the Road Accident Fund says that is not true.  They say that people who lose a loved one in an accident can use any funeral parlour of their choice, but that is where they are not telling the whole story.  If you choose one of your own choice then the family must pay for it themselves before a claim is lodged with the RAF.   In other words, while pretending that people can choose whoever they want to use, the RAF will, if you choose one of their panel undertakers, pay the undertaker there and then and if you don’t use one of their undertakers, then you must pay the funeral costs yourself and claim that back from the Road Accident Fund in your own time through the normal process at a later stage.  

The articles went on to explain that the RAF pays for the transport of the body, the coffin or burial shroud, mortuary services, the death certificate, burial or cremation and equipment used to lower the coffin into the grave and grave fees.  

What struck me when I read the articles was how bad our death toll in our country is.  In other words, we think it is quite normal to read about arguments in the newspapers between funeral parlours and the Road Accident Fund about what is clearly a very big business – and that is burying people who have died in motor accidents.  I cannot think of ever having read any such article in my life in the New York Times or any Australian or British newspaper or magazine.  That is probably because they do not have 40 people a day dying on the roads in their countries.  It is not like the Wild West on their roads.  Of course, they have their own dangers, of course people being killed in motor accidents is still a leading cause of death in those countries, but not to same extent as we have in South Africa and it is a tragedy that road safety has not been properly tackled and that it just becomes the flavour of the month every April and December. 

One of the most important things for people to learn is how to apologise.  It is amazing how many people cannot find it within themselves to ever apologise, and they allow their egos to get in the way.  

I think I learnt to apologise largely because I don’t remember my mother ever apologising.  She has always told me that she is the first to apologise if she has done something wrong, but as luck would have it, she never does anything wrong!  Sometimes you learn from what others don’t do, or do, such as if your parents smoke, and try not to repeat those mistakes.  In fact, in that regard, I have always said I will not make the mistakes my mother made in bringing me up, and I will just make new mistakes.  In other words, probably all the things she got right I will get wrong but rest assured, like all parents, my children will believe that there are all sorts of things I have done wrong in bringing them up, by the time they are older, and I am sure in some respects they will be right.  

I do hope, when I am older, that I am not silly or stubborn enough to get into a fight with my children.  I think that children are sent to us from God and that does not mean they are perfect, but I will not spend my life telling my children that I am either disappointed in them, shocked or horrified, etc and giving them unnecessary grief all the time.  

I have always noted within my own offices as well that there are those that are able to apologise easily when they should and there are those who are very stubborn and, sometimes I guess, simply believe they never do anything wrong, and just cannot apologise.  I think it is a tremendous weakness and a failing that affects careers and one’s advancement.  As a boss, I don’t always apologise when I should, maybe because the relationship is somewhat different, but I certainly have given some apologies over the years.

I wrote a blog recently about immigrants, and it became obvious to me that some people don’t always understand when to use the word “emigrant” and when to use the word “immigrant”.  One person can be both.  When you leave Russia to come to South Africa you are an emigrant from Russia but you are an immigrant to South Africa.  So you have emigrated from Russia and immigrated to South Africa.  

Either way, if we are sensible, we will welcome you into our society.  Most countries have in fact at some stage or other either been developed or considerably influenced by the immigrants into their country.  The best examples would of course be Australia or the USA, but of course the original people of those countries may not agree. 

I once again paid up to get the latest version of Dragon Naturally Speaking.  No longer do you train the dictation to capture your speech – you just start dictating straightaway and it is remarkably accurate right from the get-go.  

However, it is still not where voice dictation software needs to be and what has disappointed me is that it does not seem to improve, that much, as I dictate more.  For example, it has a tremendous problem with the name of one of the advocates I use, Eben Serfontein, and even though I trained it on his name a few times, it still comes up with some incredible versions and words most of the time!  It makes an absolute hash of my dictation if I try to run it through the software, but if you are talking about replying to staff, and especially being able to give longer replies to people in emails, explaining a little bit more than I might have if I just typed it myself, it is quite useful.  I use the software most typically when I am trying to catch up on e-mails – which is quite difficult, given that I generally get in excess of 250 e-mails a day.  

There is a part of me that believes, if you could still read passages to the program it might well pick up the learning pace a little bit faster, but I am going to persist with it, because I do find it, as I say, quite invaluable when I am trying to deal with my correspondence and send my staff and members of the public, who are not our clients who write to me with all sorts of strange queries, slightly longer answers.  By way of example, and I don’t always give politically correct answers, a young man wrote to me recently saying that he drove at 160km/h in a 120km/h zone and expressed to me that he thinks he might need an attorney because there is a possibility of going to jail when driving at that speed, but that it was necessary because he was going on a first date.  

When I hear something like that, part of me thinks I am being spoofed for some or other show or program, and the other part of me wonders how somebody can drive at such a disgraceful speed and not already have an attorney.  He should have been locked up on the spot is my opinion.  Certainly, in the line of work we are involved in, I would never be prepared to represent somebody driving in such a wild and reckless way. 

I must say that I get distressed when I see the anti-immigrant approach that we often see in South Africa.  In particular, of course we had the horrific xenophobia a few years ago and some of that sentiment continues to this day, if not as violently.  What many people forget is that, and we see this trend now in Europe and America, it does not help to complain about immigrants working harder.  You need to compete with them.  The answer to competition is not to try and kill people or chase them away!  I have hired a number of immigrants at my firm over the years, typically people from Eastern Europe, and I have generally found them to be very honest and educated workers.  I have also hired people from Zimbabwe and likewise I found them to be very hardworking and well educated people.  Part of building a successful economy involves welcoming and accepting people from other countries, and if you cannot keep up with their work capacity or abilities, then my approach is simple – move out of the way!  

We don’t appreciate how much sacrifice and effort a lot of those people have made to emigrate from their own country, to start their lives again and it takes far more courage and risk than most of us possess!  We sit safely in the same place our entire lives, only to moan about others who are trying to create a better future for themselves and in most cases for their own children.  We should only be so happy that some of them actually select South Africa to come to!

I read a recent article in The Atlantic magazine, and it featured an article written by an author whose new book is called iGen.  She says that is her name for people born after 2005, and it all coincides with 2012, at which time 50% of the population all had phones.  I think what she says though relates to many who had phones before that and who are mostly aged about 16 to 20 now.

The article goes on to detail how today’s teenagers are in fact unhappier than ever before.  Usage of devices is up, suicide rates are up and everything else is down, including in particular, sleep.

It has become all too easy for modern parents to give their little darling an iPhone, possibly even an iPad as well as a computer and the children are running back and forth from one device to another.  They don’t play outside very much anymore, they seldom actually meet with their friends, and they lie in bed late at night messaging people back and forth every day.  They have accounts on Instagram, they try to keep SnapChat streaks going and they are committing suicide in higher numbers than ever before.  Incidentally, suicide numbers reduce considerably when somebody plays sport and goes to church.  The main thrust of the article is that today’s teenagers are not happier because of the devices their parents are giving them.  They are far less happy than ever before.  Their lives are being spent on these little screens, and girls in particular are getting bullied by other girls and ostracised on social media.  It is a mistake that parents are making, and I do hope that the anti-cell phone movement grows.  There are certainly already signs that more astute parents don’t give their children devices – let’s not forget that the man who was in charge of Apple, Steve Jobs, did not allow his children to have devices – they could not have iPhones or iPads.  His company simply sold them to your children.  

He knew how bad they were, he could see their negative effects and his company has presided over making money out of you, but he certainly did not let his own children have such devices.  Remember that when your child begs and pressurises you for a cell phone, start reading up on this topic because it is actually the weaker and worse parents who are giving in to this with all sorts of excuses such as they spend a lot of time at work or their child needs it to learn, etc, etc.  Your child does not need an IPad or iPhone to learn anything unless you want him or her to become skilled at computer games and online chat!  The children themselves are not happier for it, no matter what they tell you in order for you to pay to get them that device and that device ends up replacing you as parents and ruling their lives and ends up being the conduit for the bullying of your child.  Think carefully before you go down that road and also try and think more critically.  Stop making and looking for excuses for the easy way out when it comes to having kids.  It is so easy to simply, as a grandparent or as a parent, give a device and chase the child off into another room to play with the device – but are you really doing your bit when you behave like that?  The early feedback, the early statistics and indicators on the current generation would suggest that you will bring up a depressed and socially inept loser if you take the easy route.  I personally think that in about 10 to 15 years’ time most parents in developed nations will ban their children from having such devices or limit them to no more than 30 minutes a day on the devices.  I guess then, just like with the cigarette and sugar companies, those companies will have to start targeting the poor, the developing nations and start pumping cheaper versions of their products into Africa and elsewhere in much bigger numbers. 

Our growth rate during 2016 was very poor – coming in at 0,3%.  That, compared to Australia at 2,8% and the USA at 1,6%.  Remember, it has been estimated if we want to sort out the employment problems in South Africa, we would need to have a growth rate of approximately 5% a year so 0.3% isn’t going to keep pace with our high birth rate and unemployment.  

The World Bank recently halved its forecast for 2017 for South Africa.  They say that our growth for the year will probably be about 0,6%, despite the forecast optimistically given out in February of 1,3%.  What was quite interesting, and it is some point I have made before in my blog, was that the World Bank warned that any prospects of recovery in South Africa would remain fragile unless South Africa succeeds in becoming “more productive”.  We are not a particularly productive country, and while the rest of the world has benefited from an economic rebound, South Africa has not, despite the fact that the weakening of the Rand should have made it easier for our exports to break into new markets around the world.  I wonder who the ANC will blame for our lack of productivity and our slow growth rate?

We all have our idols and people who we want to meet.  I’d love to know who those are for you – and maybe even why.

For me when I was young it was Sebastian Coe, the 800m track world record holder at the time.  Since I was about 20 though it was Nelson Mandela and Tiger Woods.  Two totally different characters, both of whom need no introduction to anyone.  I am always cross with myself that I didn’t make more of an effort to write letters and make more effort to meet Nelson Mandela and have my picture taken with him.  Maybe it wouldn’t have happened but I did not try hard enough.  I saw him a few times in person and on one occasion, at the Wanderers Cricket stadium I climbed up a fence, reached over and shook his hand.  He had big hands, much bigger than mine and gave me a handshake.  Something I won’t ever forget, but I would have liked to speak to him and spend a few minutes with him at sometime in his life.  All of us South African were so blessed to have him.

Tiger Woods is the richest, most successful sports person, as well as golfer in the history of the world so far.  Nobody has ever attracted as much media attention as he, as much sponsorship money and even today, if he is shown on TV the audiences spike.  It doesn’t matter how well he is playing, despite all his injuries and operations, if he plays the “Tiger Woods Effect” occurs and viewership of a channel increases about 50% which is huge.  Whatever one may think of him, no other sports person has ever had that effect.

I try to ride my bike every now and then, although generally not far.  In fact, I think the longest ride I’ve done in the last year was a 20km ride, which in bicycle terms is really not that far.  I like to get my fitness via a number of different sports – a little bit of gym, a little bit of walking, some track work on the track where I include sprints, as well as cycling.  

I have always thought the cycling is a little bit dangerous, especially on some of our roads, and generally try to cycle within estates.  I read a frightening article recently again in the New York Times, which I have on my Kindle for many years, about cycling death statistics.  Apparently, it used to be children who died most often on bicycles, but these days parents are not really letting their children ride bicycles in the streets – probably for good reason – and so their death rate has gone down.  The group that now has the leading death rate from riding bicycles are males aged 45 to 50.  These statistics obviously relate to America, but I would think that they are probably even more true of South Africa where I don’t recall when I last saw a child riding a bicycle in a street, but there are certainly lots of fanatical, generally older men, riding them.  

The biggest problem with a bicycle is pretty much the same problem that a motorbike has.  People do make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes are just small mistakes – a little bump here, a small collision there.  If you are both in cars, everybody walks away, but if one of you is on a motorbike (or motorcycle as some prefer) or a bicycle, then you may not be walking away at all.  I found that a tremendous pity because it has often been one of my favourite ways to see suburbs – for example riding around Houghton and sometimes you feel safer, certainly in some suburbs, riding around them than walking.  For example, I have gone on rides with my brother through Braamfontein and downtown Johannesburg on a weekend and I would certainly not walk on some of the streets that we rode on.

I read an interesting article in a magazine called “What doctors don’t tell you” all about the water industry.  I think by now most people know, and I do hope that you know, that buying water in a plastic bottle is generally a bad idea.  Almost all bottles, even if they don’t use BPA plastic, which has been linked to cancer, generally have plastics that also pose cancer threats.  You certainly are not doing yourself a favour if you drink water out of a plastic bottle and the sooner we all stop buying water in plastic bottles the sooner the manufacturers will move on to healthier options.  

What I also found interesting was how much water is wasted to produce the water that is bottled.  It takes approximately three times the amount of water as is in the bottle during the manufacturing process, to fill the bottle.  Two hundred billion plastic bottles sold around the world annually end up in landfills or the oceans and they eventually break down and pollute our water supply even more.  They say that most of the vitamin water contains sugar or artificial sugars like Aspartane, which has been linked to neurological dysfunction.  

I am one of those people that generally does not have a problem drinking tap water, but I know that a lot of people are terrified of tap water saying that ultimately lawn chemicals, industrial waste, fertility drugs, anti-depressants and antibiotics all find their way into our water supplies and some of those chemicals still remain.  I am not quite sure what the solution is, unless you live right next to a natural spring and can get all of your water there?

I am a hoarder.  I keep hundreds of things, whether it is all my to-do lists, pads, old photographs, etc.  I also keep all sorts of equipment that I bought some time in the distant past and in some cases never ever used.  That is obviously a little bit of a waste of money, but like most people, when I buy something I do truly believe I really need it at that time!  I guess we are all just consumers and of course that keeps the economy going.  If we all stop buying the economy will be in a far worse condition than our South African economy already is.  

I recently decided to try and put some of my stuff up for sale and I got some tips from somebody who told me to put them up for auction on auction-type sites with a very low starting value to get more interest and an offer to accept returns – in other words, if the person is unhappy they can send it back.  I did all of that and I sold one of my Canon battery grips – which is a piece of equipment that allows you to essentially double up the battery capacity to one of your cameras.  I did not get back what it cost me, but I did get 40% back which is far more than I would have got if I continued to leave it in my cupboard as I do with most things.  The starting amount was ultimately multiplied by four and it inspired me to get together some of the other nonsense I have that I don’t use and sell that as well.  

Some of it is not nonsense – such as my last laptop, which I am sure will never attract anywhere near its real value, because people are not keen to get second-hand computers, but I can either put it up for auction and get something for it or I can leave it in my cupboard until it becomes a museum piece or a paperweight!  I strongly recommend if you have any unused items out there that you would like to sell that you go ahead and sell it!  You may well find that you have a few things around your house, while they don’t have much value, will have some value – and it is better to get something for them than never use them again!  I tend to buy a lot of gadgets that I don’t ultimately use much, and apart from that I am really overstocked on cameras and camera equipment.  I recently discovered that what I thought was three professional Canon cameras turned out to be four – so one of them is going to be sold next.