The Oscars have come and gone for another year and the initial favourite, “Lincoln” was beaten to the Best Picture Oscar by “Argo”.  Some say that it was because the producers of the Lincoln movie went a little bit over the top and had the movie introduced at a recent showing by the former President Bill Clinton and this did not sit well with the Academy voters.

Most of the favourites in the betting won the Oscars, and from a South African perspective it was fabulous to see the documentary “Searching for Sugaman”, which I have written about previously on my blog, won the Oscar for the best documentary.  It is a heart warming tale that those of you who have not seen it need to see.  I love to hear opinions though on the Oscars from those who have watched any of the movies, including “Life of Pi”, “Argo”, “Lincoln” and “Zero Dark Thirty”.

Today is the day for the budget speech by the Minister of Finance.  There is quite a bit of speculation each year as to what will be in the speech, although it would seem that media commentators simply have no idea because they never really make any specific predictions as to what will be in it and the usual debate is simply about whether or not taxes will be raised for high-end earners and whether or not the VAT rate will be raised.

Commentators are predicting that neither will happen this year but at some point something is going to have to give because what we are spending as a country exceeds the taxes that are coming in.  Of course, anybody can predict that the taxes on alcohol and cigarettes will go up, and from an anti-smoking point of view, in my perspective whatever they go up, will be too little.  I would have smokers subsidise their later hospital stays by working out what the actual cost of hospitalisation is for smokers, and calculating the taxes with direct reference to that – in other words, pay for what you need.  Smokers, who always say they have a right to choose, would surely not have a problem with the obligation to pay for what they choose? 

In America one of the businesses taking off, in the car rental section, is the renting or more luxury motor vehicles. Most car hire companies only have the baseline models and sometimes one or two family sedans, but now the business of renting more fancy cars is taking off.

One businessman explained that when he is going to a meeting, he likes to feel confident and get out of a new car and so he will prefer for example to rent a luxury Mercedes sedan and go to the meeting in that, than a cheap car. What is interesting is that the average rental, for example for the Porsche Panamera is $340 a day but Mercedes going at approximately $200 a day and you can rent an Audi A4 for $75 a day during the week and it is cheaper than on weekends. Apparently, the Range Rover Sport is also a very popular car and if you really want to spend money you can rent the Bentley DTC at $800 a day.

I love Amazon’s Kindle, and the latest version is the Paperwhite. It is a dramatic improvement over previous editions, although they were fantastic in themselves. Paperwhite has background lighting so you can read it in bed, with the lights off, allowing somebody else to sleep, although it is so bright you might be asked to tone down the brightness – which is simple to do.

The other neat aspect of it was every time I opened the cover, on a separate cover that I bought for it, it automatically turned the Kindle on. It also incorporates much more images and certainly has a much longer battery life. The feature that I have left out that most people probably enjoy the most is that it works on touch control – in other words, you just touch the screen to turn the pages or to go to the next article. I probably prefer that but it is not as important a feature to me as the background lighting and the fact that the battery is much stronger.

I think Amazon has a huge success on its hands, and the fact that I could not obtain it at a single physical store while in America in December, as they were sold out, and had to order it online and wait a few weeks, is further evidence of how popular and successful this model will be. Incidentally, and that is just another aspect of commerce, you can choose between a version which has commercials on it, and get it for $30 or $40 cheaper, or you can pay extra and get a commercial-free version. I am sure that most people will take the more expensive version, to not be harassed by commercials, but it does show you that there are always options to put consumer products into the hands of consumers more cheaply by building in features like advertising.

Research in Motion, the makers of BlackBerry, have firstly decided to change their name to BlackBerry. That makes sense, because BlackBerry is their only product, and to have a name that has so little to do with the product they were selling is a bit strange. The shares are up 40%, although that is off a very low base after a major slump, following the release of the new BlackBerries overseas. They are meant to be fantastic phones and it is simply a question of whether or not the damage done to BlackBerry over the last year or two can be undone by a great phone.

Microsoft after all, also have a great phone, but is has never sold well, so just having a great phone is not necessarily going to resolve your problems if the brand has been terribly damaged. Amongst the features, if you take a photograph of somebody, is that on each person’s face you can click and dial through about two seconds and choose the expression on the face that you want and that way hopefully get a picture where everybody is smiling correctly at the same time.

The predictive text is also meant to be better than any other phone, which means with typing very few characters you can in fact type long sentences and it adapts very quickly to your style of writing, so it can do it quick and fast in future. BBM has been upgraded to allow free calls over the Internet as well as video and so it is no doubt going to be a huge success in South Africa, where BlackBerry has always been strong and it is simply a question of whether or not they get back some of their supporters in the United States and other countries and whether BlackBerry is indeed back. Talking of good products that have never sold well, WordPerfect was always the best word processor in my opinion, and those of most people of a similar age but Microsoft, through bundling together all its office software at ridiculous prices, eventually killed WordPerfect with Word and so the superior word processor got beaten – so it is not always a question of what is actually the better product!

I have always been fascinated by the Drones that the Americans fly, from various bases, and take out terrorists with these unmanned planes. A commercial version, albeit in a very simplified and much smaller form is available, in the form of the Parrot ARDrone and I bought myself one. It is a little helicopter that flies around, up to heights of 50 metres, and while it does so it records video and can take photographs.

The applications that one can think of immediately would be very interesting photographs for estate agents as well as video tours of bigger properties, but apart from that it is just a whole lot of fun. It is quite difficult to control at first with the result that I could read from a number of comments of users that it was likely to break fairly soon, but I did not think that I would break it on only my fifth day of using it! One can imagine sports coaches, even at the schoolboy level, taking some aerial footage of the team’s different manoeuvres for future strategizing.

The ultrasound part of my Drone does not appear to be working anymore and the problem with buying something that is not available for sale in South Africa is that you end up having to return it overseas to have it repaired. It certainly does however give you another glimpse of the future and it cannot be long before more robust versions, at cheaper cost, and which can fly far further, are available and it would allow hobbyists to do a lot of the things that currently require an actual helicopter to do – just for one example, the fly-over television footage they use of golf courses – you will not need to hire a helicopter to do that because you can easily fly the Drone over each hole at the same height taking video footage of the hole.

There was a lot of news in the media, some time ago, with the big train accident when PRASA offered the claimants up to R10 000,00 in compensation if they immediately signed away their rights. There was the predictable flood of people who ran to go and get the compensation, under the guise that it would take much longer to get compensation from attorneys, and that their fees will end up eating up most of your award.

It is amazing that such approach works, but it does, and people rush to go and get their R10 000,00 and sign a waiver to accept that settlement in full and final settlement of their claim. It does indeed take longer with attorneys and obviously, if an attorney is involved that attorney is going to earn fees, but the 6 or 7 cases that we have taken on from the same accident have left most of our clients getting about eight times more than what PRASA offered, and quite a few of them in excess of R100 000,00. I would much rather wait 18 months to get R100 000,00 than I would to get R10 000,00 now - and that is over R100 000,00 after the deduction of our fees.
Sadly the people who need to read articles like this, never do, and it is unfortunate that there is no media coverage a year and a half later to let people know what did happen with those who went to attorneys to get compensation, because those who signed up for the R10 000,00 and were fooled into accepting it, would now feel totally ripped off.

I thought there was quite a bit of criticism, possibly of an implied nature, that the Pope resigned. He is the first Pope resigning in 600 years, and generally the only way a Pope is replaced is when the Pope dies. I however thought it was a wonderful decision.

The bottom line is that when you are that old, and he is 85, you are not necessarily in full control of your mind. You may be of course, but it depends on case to case, but he has decided that he is not in giving up health or in control of his mental faculties to be the leader of the Church and he has done the right thing. I think that it is such a good example as well, for those who follow him, who will not be the first to do it in 600 years, that if they feel they are no longer physically or mentally up to leading the Church, instead of keeping going out of tradition, they consider their capability to continue to do a good job as a first requirement to head the Catholic Church. Hopefully, a younger leader, although one obviously has to have a lot of experience and wisdom to step into a role like this, will also revolutionise the Church’s approach on some issues. I don’t think, for example, that the anti-condom approach of the Church has been a great message to send out and while I understand the rationale behind it, one also has to take into consideration sexual diseases, amongst which should include HIV, and the Church’s approach here needs to change.

When one is closely involved in a story, the first thing you realise is that often media coverage is particularly slanted. It is pretty much the same as contestants in reality shows, who will always tell you that the editing of the show produces a distortion of what happened in real life. It is only when you are involved in a story, or know more about it, that you realise how true that is. The Road Accident Fund would be a perfect example, with the campaign to bring in the 2008 laws based around how much one foreigner was getting from the Road Accident Fund and how much lawyers were taking. In convincing people that lawyers were earning too much and a foreigner could bankrupt the system, a lot of people were only too happy to see changes to the system, and it is only when later they have a claim and have little or no compensation to look forward to, that they now understand there is an entirely different angle to the story. Incidentally, the foreigner was covered by an insurance policy that the Road Accident Fund had, so they did not pay out the large sum themselves in any event.

When I was a student at Wits University, I took part in protests against the apartheid government, in particular for the release of detainees without trial and for my efforts had the security police visit our house. Whenever protests at Wits were filmed or shown on TV, it gave the sense that the whole campus was up in arms, and that it was really a very politically orientated University. I was one of those students, and there were only about 150 at any given time involved in most of the activities or protests, out of some 20 000 students, but it does not make sense to record thousands of other students just sitting in lectures, or watching, or doing nothing, because that does not make “news”. It is always so important to realise that before you watch the next documentary on TV, about whatever it may be about, and get the impression that either an entire city is up in arm and at war with each other or whatever point the producer is trying to sell you, that although it may well be true and indeed many cities do have ongoing civil wars, it is not necessarily always a reflection of the true reality of life in that city or whatever it is the programme is about.

People who have the iPhone 5, and did the upgrades to LTE, are having tremendous problems at the moment, which are written about on many forums. Essentially, when you travel through an area which has no service, your cell phone loses its signal and sadly it does not pick it up again once you are in an area with service. That means two or three times a day you lose your service for the rest of the day until you realise that the reason you are not getting calls or messages is not because nobody is contacting you but because your telephone has gone off line. I am sure this is just a software problem, but it is something that Vodacom needs to sort out soon and there is no doubt that it came straight after the LTE carrier update.

Few news items created the shock that the killing of Reeva Steenkamp did when word started circulating at about 8am.  A Pretoria story about the death of a model ended up, just a few hours later as headline news on CNN and Sky.  In many respects that because most people in South Africa do not realize how big a name overseas Oscar Pistorius is.  There is no doubt he makes millions from his various international endorsements.  MNet have already taken down their Oscar Pritorius billboards – denying that it has anything to do with this case, saying it was an Oscar promotion for the Academy Awards and the promotion is over – which is amazing give they are only this Sunday.

South Africans are torn between those who believe Oscar is a hero and those who believe lightweight blades gave him an advantage compared to other runners, and that he perhaps has let his fame get to his head.  That much is clear from the social media where the incident is being described as a “tragedy” on one hand and “murder” on the other.  People comment base on their own reading of someone they don’t know and facts none of us are privy to.  The only thing that is truly certain is that Reeva’s life is over  and Oscar’s life will never be the same.  What led to that life changing moment will be determined in our Courts.

It is old news now that Rory Mcilroy signed up with Nike. £145 million over 10 years is a wonderful deal, even if undoubtedly there are plenty of taxes, etc to pay! It means that Nike now have the best two players in the world signed up and allows them to produce wonderful adverts like the You Tube flip in this article which is the first advertisement the two of them have made together for Nike. Rory obviously now has to adapt to his new clubs as quickly as possible, because the price for getting £145 million is obviously that he has to play with Nike equipment, which he is not entirely used to as yet.

I used to write a legal newsletter focusing on Road Accident Fund personal injury matters for the Johannesburg Attorneys Association. Many years ago, after the majority of Committee decided not to proceed with a court challenge for direct payments at that time, I decided to do the newsletter on my own.

We were ready with brilliant papers weeks ahead of any other organization and they gave in to pressure which I believed they should not, to hold their application in abeyance pending an application still to be brought. We would have won easily – so much so there was almost a bun fight to see who should bring the application. After that frustration, I decided to do my own newsletter on my own rather than under the name of any organisation again.

It has had more than 200 editions and attorneys sign up for it at www.legalnewsletter.co.za I am proud that the membership has slowly grown over the years and whereas the newsletter, when I wrote it for the Johannesburg Attorneys Association, had just over 300 members, it now has in excess of 900 subscribers.

It looks like inflation is beginning to trend up again. The current inflation figure is 5,6% but the Reserve Bank has revised its inflation forecast and expects inflation to remain at 5,7% in the first three months of this year and to average 5,5% for the rest of the year. That sounds like a drop, but the Reserve Bank’s estimate previously for the rest of the year was 5,2%, so the estimate has been revised upwards.
It does not appear that interest rates are going up, either in South Africa or the rest of the world, and most probably until late 2013 or in 2014. So, now really is the time to pay off those debts before the interest rate cycle starts turning again, as it will eventually. With inflation currently at 5,7%, and heading down to 5,5%, that is going to be the figure that many employers look at when calculating their annual staff salaries.

The two topics guaranteed to generally receive the most reaction on my blog are topics relating to smoking and to labour laws. When it comes to smoking, people who smoke generally have the attitude that they are making the decision and they can decide what they want to do – ignoring all the evidence of the tremendous costs they put on society as well as their fellow employees when ultimately their health is at risk – in the form of lung cancer and various other cancers and diseases which are all ultimately paid for by the State and fellow taxpayers. So its not something they suffer with alone – we as taxpayers end up paying for their choice.

One could make similar arguments about the labour laws and that is that we live in a country with mass unemployment and where our labour laws do not encourage employment, but those with jobs already, are quire comfortable with the situation and don’t really care too much about what may be done, in terms of the law, to increase job creation. New laws will be coming in shortly relating to temporary workers who, while they will not have the same status as permanent employees, will shortly receive similar benefits. We are already in a situation where 11 million people have formal employment in the year 2000 and that we are currently at 9,1 million people – in other words, 1,9 million people have lost jobs in the formal sector in the last 12 years.

The experts are predicting, with the new amendments, South Africa’s labour law environment will be the worlds’ worst when the next World Economic Forum global competitiveness report is released. The reality of the matter is, and it is a tragedy for South Africa, but while the laws remain as they are, and continue to get stricter, major international companies will simply bypass South Africa – there are so many other options where to invest one’s money and you don’t need to invest it in a market which has far stricter labour laws than any other market. Of course, the lazy will rejoice and say that it is great, but nobody who has any understanding of business or the fact that nations have to compete with each other will think that we are going down the right route in South Africa with our labour laws.

This is one of my favourite times of the year. There is plenty of time, when one gets home, to go for a walk and do some outdoor exercise. Everything is looking beautiful and the sun is setting after 7 pm.

I think walking is one of the most under-rated exercises. When I was young, I really was quite dismissive of walking, particularly because I used to take part in weekly time trials for running, ran marathons and even ran the Comrades Marathon three times. Where I was mistaken is that what walking really has in its favour is that it does much less damage than running, and it produces much of the same benefits albeit not as dramatically or as quickly. It certainly can be more enjoyable and easier to hold a conversation and to walk in the evening at this time of the year is wonderful. I would certainly still run, and I do jog from time to time, but I do find that it has always left me with shin splints and in one case severe stress fractures on the bones, and one certainly does not get that with walking because the impact with the ground really is not as harsh.

January has always been the best month for me for weight loss, and I guess for most people with New Year resolutions it is probably also true. It has nothing to do with a New Year resolution for me but I just find that when there is less pressure at work and the days are longer, I get to do more exercise.

Sadly, the biggest key to weight loss, and I lost 4 kilograms in January, is really a reduced diet. All the exercise in the world will not help if you are overeating. The first key, and I am surrounded by a number of people at work who tell me that they eat healthily, are drinking Coca Cola, eating chips and chocolates, is to get rid of sugar and after that, certainly to reduce the carbohydrates in your diet. The truth is weight loss is easy – if you are prepared to do the hard work – and that is exactly what makes it so hard!

I am happy to say that LTE has now arrived for the iPhone 5 in South Africa, and that is obviously one of the big factors in motivating one to get the iPhone 5. The LTE technology allows you to download at superfast speeds, in theory in any event, and dependent on the area. In the heart of Rosebank or Sandton you could download data extremely quickly and open attachments and e-mails faster than ever. In theory LTE can go up to 100 mbps, but in practice it is probably going to be closer to 17 to 20 mbps, based on the figures that I have seen. Unfortunately, installing it on my phone required the latest IOS update and after that, when I received carrier settings, my phone stopped working and had to be taken to the Apple store to have the APN settings corrected, so it was a bit of a mission but I am certainly looking forward to faster speeds than ever before.

I enjoyed recent research, published by a team of psychologists from Harvard and the University of Virginia, on how we change over the years. More importantly, how we continually underestimate how we have changed over the years and at each age look back thinking we have changed dramatically not realising that we continue to change and will continue to change.

In other words, a typical 20 year old woman, according to the report, makes predictions for the next 10 years of her life which are never as radical as what a typical 30 year old woman, looking back, would find the last 10 years to be! People consistently minimise, in their estimates, how much they will change over the next 10 years compared to the reality that they discover over time. The doctors believe it is because, at each age, we make ourselves feel good by believing that we have reached the “peak” of our personal evolution.

That is why a decision made to get a tattoo today, for example, and this is one of the examples the researchers gave, may not seem to be such a great decision in 10 years’ time. It gives people security to insist that whatever they say now will always be their policy or approach in the future, even though time will, again and again, prove that that same insistence is invariably wrong. It gives us much more confidence to believe now that we will not change, even though whenever we look back, we realise we have changed but we don’t seem to be able to take that fact that our lives have continually changed any further into the future, believing that where we are now and what we hold true, will remain as it is right now even though time and research shows that that is not true!