After having Do You Remember run third in the July Handicap, it is terribly exciting in the next one of the big three races in South African racing to have a runner again.  I’ve had many runners in the Summer Cup, and not one of them has finished in the top 10 place as yet.  

Hopefully Master Sabina can do better for me and he is horse number 16, to be ridden by the stable jockey, Robbie Fradd, and he is drawn at No 7, which is not a fantastic draw, but it is certainly nothing to complain about and 13 of the horses in the field have obviously drawn worse, so I would describe it as a decent draw.  My trainer, Geoff Woodruff, has a number of horses in the field and quite honestly any one of them could win as could any of the horses in the race, but I am obviously hoping that my horse has a great race in this biggest feature race of the year in Johannesburg.  In his favour is a relatively low weight of 53,5 kg.  Before you ask me what has happened to Do You Remember, she will be making her comeback run tomorrow as well, but it is her first run in 4 months, so obviously she is not necessarily going to be at her sharpest.  She is getting ready for the J&B Met in Cape Town at the end of January 2014, which is a race that we have targeted for her ever since she came third in the July Handicap.

A philanthropic legal unit established by a Houston billionaire is investigating the criminal justice system in America.  Some of the ideas that they have would definitely help with many other countries and one of them in particular is actually quite obvious.  

They have gone through all the data on previous cases to see, in criminal matters, whether defendants, if released, would commit a violent act, if they would turn up for the next court date and whether or not they are likely to be re-arrested for a similar offence again.   They have identified that the main problems are that a large number of people who are guilty of small offences stay in prison even though it is likely that if they were released they would appear at court the second time and that quite often high risk, repeat offenders who are not likely to show up at court, are actually released.  They have now combined all their data into a programme that helps predict whether or not somebody will turn up at court and it is apparently highly accurate – I guess, because without generalising, when you do generalise you often do get it right!  Obviously, it would be an additional tool over and above the individual facts of each case, but when you think about it, it is extremely surprising that in this day and age of computing everything, that nobody until now has designed a programme, with the input of certain data, which will give you a risk level as to whether or not that particular person should be released on bail and it is certainly a kind of system that would help in South Africa where we frequently hear of those who are getting bail committing further offences.

It is a little bit too early to be making lists for 2013, but I see that one organisation, obviously to get media coverage as early as possible, has already come out with the list of the words that we use the most across the Internet this year.  

The Global Language Monitor reported that the number one most used word of 2013 was 404 which of course is an error code which stands for the file not being found!  The most used name of the year was Pope Francis and the top phrases for 2013 were “toxic politics” and “federal shut down”, both of which relate to American politics, although “toxic politics” could relate to other countries!  The other popular words were “fail”, “hash tag”, “surveillance”, “dromes”, “deficit” and the number one legal word to make the list was “sequestration”.  Kate Middleton was also popular as was Ed Snowden, the National Security Agency of America or NSA and a few topics related to President Obama including his name and the name ObamaCare for his Healthcare policy.  

One of the great authors of the last century recently died.  She was also known for her role in feminism.  Her death made worldwide news - she previously won the Nobel Prize for Literature and she was very closely connected to South Africa.  She grew up in what is now Zimbabwe, living in what was then called Salisbury.  She eventually was banned from South Africa and Zimbabwe and declared the “prohibited alien” because of her criticism of apartheid.  Amongst her famous books are “Children of Violence” and “The Golden Notebook”.  I particularly enjoyed some of the quotes that they gave in her obituary such as, “In University, they don’t tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.”  Another one I like is, “Remember that the book that bores when you are 20 or 30 will open doors for you when you are 40 or 50 and vice versa.  Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.”  That is so true of many things, not just books.  Lastly, “What is terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don’t need love when you do; or you like your work where you know quite well you are capable of better.”  

I am at that time of the year when I get into e-mail overload.  I try to go through easy e-mails first and reallocate those that I can.  It does not matter however how many e-mails I answer and go through, every time I look up my unread folder seems to have 120 e-mails or so in it.  I manage to get it down to about 30, but I have once again fallen behind!  For me this typically happens when I have events like Law Society meetings, or the Law Society’s Annual General Meeting or when I am out of the office for a solid day.  

Even if I am in the office for a few hours, I am able to stop the e-mails from piling too high, but I am going to have to get into some sort of e-mail management system starting with getting my staff to e-mail me less!  I like to have a proper control over my business, so almost all staff report to me in one way or another, and that tends to lead to me receiving too many e-mails apart from those from clients, prospective clients, potential employees and various business partners.  I found recently that it is taking me up to a week to reply to some e-mails – which for me is extremely unusual.  I would normally reply to e-mails within a few hours, or indeed 24 hours, but at this time of the year it sometimes becomes extremely hard.

I have, from time to time, purchased goods overseas and had them sent to me via DHL.  DHL is such a brand name that we all seem to think in South Africa there is no other competitor and so we put up with shocking service.  By that I mean service where once a package has cleared customs, DHL say that they still have to tend to certain paperwork, that they then don’t have drivers to bring the goods to you or, for example, that they have allegedly sent it to their Sandton branch.  Their Sandton branch then says they don’t have drivers and the long and short of it is, in my dealings with DHL, instead of them delivering the goods to me which is after all the service that they advertise, I end up having to send a driver to their premises to go and collect my goods because otherwise it would take them 2 or 3 days, based on previous experiences, to actually deliver the goods to me.  

I sometimes wonder if the American division of DHL is aware of how poor the service is in South Africa.  I recently used FedEx, and the experience was way superior to anything I had ever experienced with DHL.  I was asked to pay an invoice at about 10.30 am and after paying it and sending them proof of the payment, they sent a driver with the goods, not just to my office, which is closer for them, but the whole way to my house and it arrived about 5 hours after I had paid the custom duty.  I will never be using DHL again where I have a choice.

A lot of Hollywood movies have been devoted to asteroids that are heading towards earth and how the heroes have to travel into space and deflect or change their path.  That is not going to be Hollywood fiction for much longer, because the United Nations is expected to adopt two of the recommendations of one of its committees.  

The first recommendation is to establish an International Asteroid Warning Network and the second one is to get the world’s space agencies to set up an advisory group to give advice on how to deflect asteroids!  Apparently, 95% of the asteroids near to earth that are a kilometre in size have been identified, and they are mostly safe, but scientists say that it is likely that earth will be hit by an asteroid at least once every decade.  The scientist say that a one kilometre asteroid is the end of human civilisation, but it is not the only one to watch out for, because one that is a little bit over 100 metres wide would, according to them, probably kill 50 million people and destroy the world economy for a century or two!  It is at least good to know that they are busy working on this and looking into it, but it is one of those topics that I wish would remain just a figment of the imagination of a Hollywood director!

The Summer Cup is Johannesburg’s biggest horse race and it takes place on 30 November 2013.  It has been run since 1887 and with R2 million in prize money it attracts the best horses in the country as well as a number of other important feature races that take place on the same day.  The final entries for the field that close on 18 November 2013 and the Summer Cup field will be announced sometime today.  I am hoping that the talented son of the very first horse that I owned, namely Sabina Park, makes the field.  His name is Master Sabina – not a particularly original name but his father is Jet Master and his mother is Sabina Park and so it is a combination of the two and he really is an incredibly impressive looking horse.  He would have been worth a small fortune if he had been sold on auction.  I am sure that he will make the field, but also what is quite important is the starting day positions where one ultimately hopes to draw a number probably lower than 10 but ideally somewhere from about 2 to 7.   

The FDA is the Food and Drug Administration in America and their new proposals will essentially eliminate artificial transfats.  Artificial transfats are major contributors to heart disease and basically they are likely to declare, after accepting public comment for 60 days, that hydrogenated oils are no longer recognised as safe.  Companies that want to use them will have to in future then prove that they are safe, and apparently from a scientific point of view that would be an extremely hard thing to prove.  

If they cannot prove it, they cannot use it and so essentially that would be the end of use of hydrogenated oils.  Hydrogenated oils are formed when liquid oil is treated with hydrogen gas and become solid and it has become quite common in products like margarine.  However, they apparently raise the levels of bad cholesterol and they believe just in America alone this could reduce heart attacks by 20 000 a year and 7000 fewer people will die a year from heart disease.  These hydrogenated fats are apparently still found in microwave popcorn, some desserts, frozen pizzas, margarines and are also quite common in coffee creamers.  So there are a few things to cross off your list immediately and stop eating because it may be some time before they are banned in South Africa.

Twitter has finally come to the stock market at a time when all shares are on the way up, and even Facebook has recovered considerably from the depths it had plunged into from the beginning of this year.  I cannot say that I use Twitter every day, but certainly when I am bored I do tend to try and follow the news that way and I find it particularly interesting during major sporting events, where you can see the comments of other fans and complaints about referees, etc.  I would be interested to know though, for those of you on Twitter, who you follow that you find of particular interest.  

The most popular Twitter user at the moment is Katy Perry, who on 7 November 2013 had 46,7 million followers – she no doubt has more already.  The challenge for Twitter of course is going to be how to make money out of advertising, which is a similar issue to Facebook but perhaps with even less space to do it in, so we are no doubt going to see more sponsored tweets and possibly adverts, but it certainly is a universal phenomenon, with approximately 75% of Twitter users living outside of the United States.

One of my favourite views on a drive is to come over the hill as you enter Hartbeespoort, see the mountains in front of you, the dam and all the red top roofs of the houses in Pecanwood Golf Estate amongst the trees.  

It is truly a magnificent view and it is somewhat surprising that Hartbeespoort, which was extremely popular 15 years or so ago, has done so badly recently.  You can buy houses in Pecanwood at the same amount that you could 10 years ago and you can rent them for about 20% of what the bond would be.  My biggest financial disaster of my life is next door to Pecanwood and that is The Islands Estate.  When you factor in interest as well as levies that I had to pay, on a piece of land there I lost a big sum and the worst part is that at one stage I was offered R1 million more than I paid, but didn’t accept the offer and then the market there headed south in a very dramatic way.  I don’t know whether it is the dam and the dirty water, or that it is far away, but the promise that Hartbeespoort once had seems to have dwindled and there is so much over-development and over-supply in the area, it is probably going to take another 20 years to take up all the slack before prices will start rising again.

We are always talking about South Africa being corrupt or being one of the more corrupt nations, and with bribes and contracts awarded, not necessarily on the basis of expertise or who is the best for the job.  One of the biggest problems is that everybody has a “guy”. 

Everybody knows somebody that can get something done faster for a little “present” or a gift and people get hooked on their way of getting things done.  It is precisely that “connection” or guy that is the problem.  If everybody waited their turn, never pushed to the front with a present or bought something that had fallen off the back of a truck, there would not be such a market for corruption and dishonest dealings.  When it comes to stamping out corruption, everybody has to do their bit, and that includes not giving R200,00 to the traffic officer, and letting him rather go ahead and write out that traffic fine that he is threatening you with.  

Firstly, we were told that BlackBerry was about to be brought out.  Business magazines warned that the terms of the buy-out were so speculative that the deal was unlikely to take place.  It never took place.  

The share is one of the most spectacular losers of the last five years and now, with $1 billion having to be invested into the company, in an effort to turn it around, the CEO has also been fired.  It is amazing how a company, whose product was so dominant only three or four years ago, is now a complete disaster and will no doubt feature in business manuals in the years to come as one of the most epic failures of all time.  How some people can even buy the share at $6,50 simply amazes me, because this is a sure-fire loser for the next few years.  There was a time when its share price was $230 and it slid, over six years, to the current $6,50.

There is an expression in law that if you represent yourself, you have a fool as a lawyer.  Basically, it is a stupid thing to do!  I am reminded of this on a weekly basis when we receive e-mails from people who have handed their own claims with the Road Accident Fund.  I have received e-mails from people who don’t want to do claims, who have told us that they have lost interest in the process because previously they settled a serious case themselves with the Road Accident Fund directly for very little money and so it makes no sense.  That ignores the fact that an attorney of course would not have settled the case for as little as they did.  

Another very common e-mail that we receive is from people who have given their claim to the Road Accident Fund a few years previously, but have not managed to finalise it, often because there is so much paperwork involved and have now discovered that the Road Accident Fund says that their case has prescribed because they never issued a summons against the Road Accident Fund in time!  The Road Accident Fund is simply advising the client as to what the law is, but I hardly think that you can appeal to members of the public to approach you directly to do claims, and then not assist them in issuing summonses against your own business.  That does sound ridiculous, but perhaps that is exactly the problem – it is ridiculous to have the Road Accident Fund representing you in a case and expect them to help you sue them properly and issue a summons against themselves!

The Law Society AGM is this weekend and takes place at Sun City.  It is a meeting I have been going to for more than a decade, and it certainly has livened up in recent years.  Members of the Law Society of the Northern Provinces are particularly vociferous and active and normally there is much heated debate during the meeting on whatever the contentious issues of that year are.  

There have certainly been a number of important votes over the years and this year, for example, a draft set of Uniform Rules will be put before the members.   Rules don’t deal with all issues, because there are certainly topics which are still being dealt with in the Competition Commission, but otherwise they constitute a revamp of the rules of the Law Society.  For the first time it is likely that South African lawyers will have one set of Uniform Rules for the whole country because up until now, each Law Society has had its own rules, and once all Law Societies have endorsed the new rules, they will be adopted as national rules.  That will certainly make it easier for a lawyer who is advising a client on a potential complaint against another lawyer, because previously you had to go and look up the rules of the different Law Societies which have differed substantially, at certain times, even allowing for example practices that may be illegal and lead to a striking off in another Province, but being perfectly permissible in that particular area.

City Press and Media 24 have brought a court case for access to the disciplinary hearing of the Johannesburg Bar of Menzi Simelane.  This will be of huge interest to attorneys, because our present principles prevent the media from taking part in disciplinary hearings.  Mike Hellens is quoted as saying that the procedure for holding disciplinary enquiries behind closed doors “has simply been wrong”.  He went on to say that the public needs to see the manner in which the Bar enquiries into its members so that the public can trust advocates and the institution of the Bar.

In opposing this, it has been argued apparently that because the Bar is a voluntary association of advocates it is different from other forums.  It would be very interesting to see what ruling comes out but I would imagine that however long it takes, ultimately all disciplinary proceedings will be opened to the media and to members of the public and there will certainly be some good aspects to it, as well as bad ones – particularly with some of the sensationalist reporting we get.  From my own experience, having Chaired many of these enquiries over the years before I was a Law Society Councillor, I can tell you that many complaints, without any substance at all, make it to these committees and the media perception that it is just professionals looking after other professionals is totally incorrect. You are simply faced with a complaint against another attorney, which has absolutely no merit and you sometimes even sympathise with him or her, in terms of the client that they have had to deal with.  Some attorneys, in the eagerness to get business, take on extremely difficult people, who are not necessarily right in any event, and then get surprised when that person turns on them later.  One must choose your attorney carefully, but likewise attorneys have to have some regard for the clients they agree to take on.

An interesting article on the My Broadband website dealt with how people steal from the banking accounts of others.  Most of the time this unfortunately involves SIM swaps.  They normally steal the information by a phishing attack, which occurs when you receive one of those e-mails telling you that you’ve got a refund, or that your banking details have changed.  It is no wonder that people fall foul to such tricks, because one is simply bombarded with those e-mails – I must get probably two a day, at least and that is excluding all the millions that somebody wants to put into my account because I was named in somebody’s will and the easier to spot scams!

Things are made worse when one’s bank says that they will never send you communication via e-mail, they don’t ever send you anything that you have to fill in – and then they do!  For example, Nedbank recently sent me an e-mail saying that if I use my firm’s Nedbank credit card machine during the month of November we will be able to claim our share of R1 million and they sent me e-mails asking me to register to take part in that process.  It is exactly e-mails like that, which the bank has confirmed is genuine, which cause the confusion.  The banks are using e-mails to communicate with people, as I guess one would expect in this day and age, and they are using e-mails to ask you to fill in forms to register for things, so now it becomes a question of spotting the difference between a real registration and a fake registration.  I guess it all boils down to simply not filling in any forms, for anybody involving your banking and personal details.  I am not talking about online purchases with credit cards – something I have done for years and without any problems – I am talking specifically about filling in your banking account details to allegedly win your share of a prize or get a refund from SARS or someone else!

One often reads articles in the newspaper or in the media about things that have happened to other people, but it normally only hits home when it is either you or it is a friend.  I remember the horrors of being hijacked in my car, frog-marched into my house and being robbed when I lived in Atholl.  You can read what I wrote about it at the time on the Moneyweb site here. I moved straightaway to a secure estate and will never live anywhere else again.  

A good friend of mine had his laptop stolen in the past week when he went to the Broadacres Shopping Centre in Fourways.  He walked off from his car thinking he had locked it, but he had in fact being jammed by somebody and they went into his car and stole the laptop.  The guy was caught, partially because apparently the owner of the nearby supermarket has a scanner that indicates whenever jammers are being used in the area, and so he was aware that somewhere somebody was trying to steal something and he was already out looking for it, but it is a good reminder that whenever you lock your car in busy spot, that you should always make sure that the car is in fact locked and you are not to just about fall victim to a scanner whose electronic jamming is actually going to stop your car from locking. 

An article in the Sunday Times this weekend caught my eye. It was primarily about divorce, and how the number of divorces in South Africa soared from 39 573 the previous year to 50 517 in the most recent year due to the fact that it is relatively easy to get divorced in South Africa and detailing how, as long as they were no financial problems in the relationship, the parties tended to stay together for longer, even if the relationship wasn’t working that well. It’s no surprise that when on top of everything else, there are financial issues, that the relationship doesn’t survive. 

The part that interested me the most though was that for first-time marriages the average marrying age for a women in South Africa’s 29 and for a man is 32 to 33. I’ve often thought that people tend to get married too quickly, this statistic tends to suggest that those that are marrying young are in fact the exception these days. And average age for women of 29 is far higher than I thought it would be, and probably around the ideal age for marriage.