I must say it is terribly sad to see how half of the teams get to leave the World Cup so quickly. The business end of the tournament goes much slower, with far fewer teams, and that is understandable, but one just wishes you could have 32 teams in the country for longer!

Every part of the country and Sandton in particular, seems to have a wonderful vibe and it is probably best encapsulated at Nelson Mandela Square, where at my favourite coffee shop, I struggle to get a table these days and all around me all I hear are different accents. It has a wonderful cosmopolitan feel and I really hope that we are going to be given another dream to aspire to – by that I don’t mean another Rugby World Cup, which will be nice and which of course we will get, or another World Cup in terms of cricket – which is inevitable given how many different tournaments there are in cricket these days, but something major like the Olympics. We will always use the line that Africa has to have its turn and we better keep hammering away at that, until they give us another major event to build and work towards.
 

It is shocking that FIFA has still not introduced goal line technology. The equaliser that England scored, in their game against Germany, when they were losing 2-1, is the case in point. I think England were outplayed in what was one of the most exciting games, full of attack by both sides, but one never knows what difference it can make to a game if you are playing with the knowledge that you are 2-2 at half time instead of 2-1 down.

The goal hit the cross bar, and bounced behind the line and even the goalkeeper’s facial expression betrayed the fact that he knew it had gone over the line. I am sure that they will announce later that there will be greater use of technology at the next World Cup, but that is only insulting to South Africa, because it will create the impression that it could not be done now, whereas in fact obviously it could be and it is FIFA that has chosen not to. Too much is at stake, and on the line, and I am not just talking about in betting on football, but in general and this type of situation simply has to be resolved.
 

I always enjoy following the odds on the various betting sites and I probably follow the odds on a local bookmaker’s site at www.interbet.co.za  more than most, because it always gives an informative opinion as to who is favoured to win.

Bookies seldom lose. I notice that the way the results have been going, this trend is set to continue. For example, when the United States played Ghana, one site alone showed R60 000,00 on the United States for a win and R1 000,00 on Ghana and the actual result, in terms of at the end of the 90 minutes, was that the matter was drawn, so the bookies paid only out on the draw scenario. Naturally, Ghana qualified and the United States failed to do so, but on a match result you are betting on what the result is at the end of 90 minutes, and not what the result is after extra time or penalties.
The current World Cup odds are: Brazil 33/10, Argentina 15/4, Spain 9/2, Holland 13/2 and Germany 7/1.
 

I cannot remember when last a cell phone that I ordered was actually in stock at one of the companies that advertised it for sale. It seems to be that one is permanently encouraged to buy a particular phone, and then told that it is out of stock and that the stock will be arriving in three days. A week later, you are told that the stock will be in shortly. I really don’t understand why they simply don’t tell you from the start that that particular phone is not in stock with them, and allow you to go to another company and perhaps sign a contract or a deal with somebody who can actually sell you what they are advertising. Clearly, it is still boom days for the cell phone companies some 15 or 16 years after mobile phones first arrived in South Africa.

One of the most informative websites is normally handicaps.co.za where you can look up any golfer and see their handicap. At the moment the various parties involved in the handicap system are currently changing, so the 160 000 registered golfers in South Africa are having to wait until 1 July 2010 for hoping that the scoring history will probably have been updated from the NGN data.

I went to see the new Sony 3-D television sets and I was immediately impressed. For those who have not seen them, the experience would be absolutely no different to seeing a 3-D movie at the cinema, other than the fact that they would now be able to do it perfectly easy with live TV at home.

There are two catches – one is that you are going to have to wear glasses in front of your own TV set which I am sure is going to lead to all sorts of strange headaches and other symptoms and the other thing is that basically nothing is being broadcast live in 3-D at the moment in South Africa. I cannot imagine that people would rush out to buy it now just to watch a few Blue Rays in 3-D, but it is definitely a sign of the future and I think just as this World Cup in SA is moving more and more consumers to HD (I upgraded my office decoder to HD as well), it will take a major sports tournament, which is broadcast live in 3-D, to start the sale surge of these sets. I understand that a game a day from the current tournament is being broadcast internationally in 3-D. I think given our priorities, and that HD has only really got going in SA recently, that 3-D going mainstream, is a number of years away still.
 

My interest in the World Cup has never been how Bafana Bafana progressed, because it has been inevitable, from the start, given their world rating, that they would not. I have always hoped that the countries that support South Africa in tourism the most, and are the most likely to do so should their teams continue to advance, are the ones that do best in the tournament! For example, North Korea patently does not have many supporters who can travel to South Africa, so it would hardly help us if they actually go on to make the final.

In short, I am hoping that countries like England, United States, Japan, etc all progress relatively far. Of course, for the nations that don’t progress that far, would still get considerable coverage of the country. I see the World Cup as the most expensive advertising campaign in the country’s history, and as long as the focus of that advertising is generally good, I believe that it will turn out to be financially worthwhile. If one really wants to see the importance of the World Cup and the coverage you get, you merely need to look at Sky News, CNN or even more arbitrary channels like Russia Today, to see the non-stop coverage at the moment of South Africa. Even if you are watching a major golf tournament in America, and I mean a major in the form of the US Open, the commentators will be going on about the World Cup in South Africa and how all the golfers are watching the World Cup games in the morning before playing their rounds in the afternoon.
 

Google Maps has released the latest updates for South Africa and they now include street views. Undoubtedly timed for the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa, the street views feature not only wonderful shots on the inside of each of the World Cup stadiums but they have also travelled down all the main roads and photographed them so that, for example, if you go onto Google Maps, you can see a very clear image of the front of my offices together with cars on the road and then advance up and down Jan Smuts Avenue.

Car registration numbers and faces have been blurred but they seem to have captured my part of Johannesburg at least, on a bright sunny day. I just hope our thieves are not sophisticated enough to use these in more residential robberies, because you really can now pick up quite clearly whether somebody has an electric fence, how many strands there are to that electric fence, whether they have video cameras on the gates, in which direction those cameras are pointing and various other details such as the type of gate, the size of wall, that would really allow one to prepare extra carefully for any less than honest plans.

There will be less and less privacy in an Internet-driven world, but some people, when they see the outside of their house all over the Internet, are going to be somewhat shocked as to the detail that anyone can now view and study, without necessarily having to stand outside the house for hours.
 

Jim Rogers, who is one of my favourite gurus to follow, has come out with his new book – “A Gift to my Children – A Father’s Lessons for Life and Investing”.

He co-founded the Quantum Fund which gained 4200% in its first ten years at a time while the broad market only advanced 47%. Then he decided to ride around the world on a motorbike with his very young girlfriend and became a best-selling author telling the tale in his book “Investment Biker”.
His latest book includes the general advice for his daughters and for investment and he is someone who takes things very seriously - so much so, that his daughter is tutored in Mandarin and the family has moved to Singapore on the basis that he is quoted as saying, “If you were smart in 1807 you move to London, if you were smart in 1907 you move to New York City and if you are smart in 2007 you move to Asia.”
 

I had tickets to the FIFA World Cup opening concert, but I must say I did not fancy the thought of being out late at night in such cold temperatures and gave my tickets away to a relative. The fact that it was broadcast in HD, which is basically a better view of the concert but without the concert atmosphere, made it an easier decision.

Shakira in particular, was brilliant and I think her performance of the Waka Waka song was fabulous together with the backing choir. The concert was professional and full of stars and capped a very interesting three weeks at the Orlando Stadium which already had hosted the Super 14 Final which the Blue Bulls won.
 

I was very impressed by the play of the Brazilian team. There first goal was spectacular, and the second goal was really a classic goal where you cannot blame the defence for anything, and Brazil just played the angles beautifully.

For me, they, Argentina and Germany stand out at first glance, although it is hard to judge how good Germany is given that Australia did not really come across as strong opponents. I would far rather prefer Bafana Bafana to have opponents like Australia in their group for the 2010 World Cup.
 

I think one must, in fairness to Bafana Bafana, start by saying that really they were the weakest team in the World Cup and they would not have qualified for the tournament if they were not hosts. Having said that, I do think that they have tried their best, and probably the biggest failure is their defence which is quite weak.

Having said that, you could have hoped that the referee was at least neutral and did not make a horrendous decision in firstly not ruling the Uruguayan player off-side, when he clearly was, and secondly, in actually awarding a penalty and sending off our goalkeeper – thus really not only ruining our chances of coming back to snatch a draw, but putting the team under considerable pressure in their next game where they will be without their first choice goalkeeper.
 

Times must be tougher in the motor industry than recent figures indicated. The new radio advert for the Subaru Forester positively ekes desperation. The buyer of a Subaru car says, in the radio ad, that as a result of buying a Japanese car, her boss gave her a promotion! It seems somewhat desperate to suggest, and not tongue-in-cheek, that if you buy a new car of a certain make, that you would be likely to get a promotion!

I attended the game between the Netherlands and Denmark at Soccer City on Tuesday. I was really impressed by the stadium and the fantastic, clean and great condition it is in. I loved my seat – only 7 rows back from the field and was surrounded largely by foreigners.

Yes, there was a constant noise of vuvuzelas and while I don’t have a problem with them, it would probably be nicer if there is a little bit more applause, cheering and other noises, which would also add to the variety every now and then. Probably the least impressive performance was that of Denmark, who on the basis of that performance, assuming that their game tactic was not to simply play for a goal, will be on their way back home quite shortly.

They really appeared to make no effort to go on the attack and never ever looked like they would score a goal. So far, when it comes to teams, I have been most impressed by Germany – but obviously a few big guns still to play.
 

It is understandable, from a worker’s perspective, that they would use the pressure of the World Cup to strike and not back down on their demands. We have had a whole slew of strikes this year and they have been settled at increases generally quite far above inflation.

Just like Julius Malema will no doubt resume his speeches some time after the World Cup, you can rest assured that next year’s strikes will be different. Employers involved in transport and in any way connected to the World Cup will not have the fear of embarrassing South Africa and will undoubtedly take a far harder line. I would not be surprised if we see one or two prolonged strikes, buoyed by this year’s successful results that will result in very poor settlements in terms of the employees.
 

A presumably jealous competitor of mine laid an anonymous complaint with the Law Society about this blog. The competitor has a problem with the fact that to the right of the blog there is a link to my website accidentclaim.co.za and that there are some figures indicating settlements that we have achieved for our clients.

The complainant obviously does not feel that members of the public should be aware of successes of achievements of attorneys and have referred the Law Society to an old rule which specifies that attorneys should not publicise any of their successes or achievements!

Unfortunately, for the complainant, that rule has changed and in fact the rule now reads that you cannot refer to your success rate – in other words, you could not have an advert for example, saying that you have a 90% success rate. I am not sure that I agree with even that rule, particularly in light of the Competition Act, and our Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech, which includes commercial freedom of speech, but that is the rule how it stands at the moment.
 

I am quite sure this Friday the roads are going to go deathly quiet at around 3.30 pm, 30 minutes or so before South Africa’s opening game against Mexico in the World Cup. I remember the feeling from the 1995 Rugby World Cup, 15 years ago, and this is so much bigger, that in fairness the two are not comparable. It is time for the World Cup 2010!

You never work as hard as you do when you own your own business or do your own contracting. You miss out on all the benefits of sick leave, annual leave as well as the certainty of an end of the month salary. I think the stress alone will put many people off it but when things are going well, of course the staff think that they are doing all the work and you are just relaxing. They never see the e-mails that you reply to at 7 in the morning or 9 at night or all the dictation, administration and other work you might end up doing all weekend when they are relaxing.

When things are going well, they certainly would not believe that the amounts one pays in tax and when things are going badly, of course they are not interested in anything other than that salary at the end of the month. There are certainly benefits to running your own business, but I wonder how many people would live far longer lives if they did not!
 

I found the FIFA statements that the World Cup will not be run on African time quite interesting. They said that people in South Africa need to learn to arrive at stadiums a little bit more than 30 minutes before a game and that they cannot sit 83 000 people and 53 heads of state if people arrive with 30 minutes to go. I am sure the bigger problem of course is with sitting the 53 heads of state than the 83 000 people, but it is true that we do have a tendency to enjoy arriving at the last minute, something I am also guilty of.

I collected the tickets that I wrote about quite extensively on www.lawblog.co.za, when I went through the trouble of booking them on the Internet, some 18 months ago. Collecting tickets is a painless process, apart from finding parking, and simply involves swiping your credit card through a machine whereafter it prints all of the tickets.

There were fairly lengthy queues, and a noticeable excitement in the air, not only at the ticketing centre but at Nelson Mandela Square where there must have been at least three TV camera crews wandering around filming people on Tuesday and another two or three at the ticket lines. I noticed a considerably higher level of excitement in and around Sandton, as opposed to any other areas, but there is no doubt that this is going to bring the country to a standstill!
 

The practice of insurance companies directly approaching people who have been injured in accidents and trying to settle them quickly before they see attorneys is known in England as “third party capture”. It is also known as “third party assistance” and the goal of insurance companies in such cases is to assist the victim without the victim seeing an attorney. Insurance companies will obviously say that they don’t understand why there should be any fuss about this, and that it is a low cost system.

The President of APIL in England said, “It is fundamentally wrong that an insurer can approach an injured person with a cheque without that person being given any independent advice. There is a blatant conflict of interest.” The Road Accident Fund in South Africa is beginning to approach claimants directly, and claimants should be very careful because once again there is an absolute blatant conflict of interest and the Road Accident Fund cannot play both roles.
 

I have always thought that the Comrades Marathon is a unique, one of a kind event, in the world. I am bias, because I have run three Comrades, and I in fact have photographs of me as a 10 year old applauding Bruce Fordyce at the Comrades finish, so it is something that has always been in my blood.

The coverage has unfortunately been shocking over the years, and particularly from a commentary point of view. I thought this year’s commentary team was much better, but unfortunately there is still an obsession, particularly with Ian Laxton, to always talk about a record. They hype up a new record every year so much that they detract from the event itself, when a record is not established.

The event is run every year, either up or down, and in the circumstances there are only two records, and they cannot be broken every year. In any event, this obsession of theirs is also somewhat false, because on a stinking hot day you could run the best run of all time, but not get a record, just because of the weather circumstances and people forget that the route undergoes a number of minor changes every year which may take out a 200 metre hill this year and put it back in the next etc, and the distance of the event has ranged by as much as 3 kilometres from the shortest distance to the longest distance run and while it is pretty much the same each year, the weather conditions certainly are not. I can say with confidence that I belive one should never say never, but we are not going to see another man win an event like this 9 times like Bruce Fordyce did.
 

South Africa has dropped a number of slots on an international ranking of the International Finance Corp, which currently ranks South Africa 67th in the ease of starting a business in the country concerned. Apparently all the papers and documentation required make it really difficult in South Africa and we lag behind countries such as Rwanda, which is 11th in the world after improving from 64th the year before.

Clearly, some improvement can be made. If there is another problem, and I think that stops people investing in South Africa, and it is a major problem, it is the CCMA procedures and rulings which really do tend to favour employees and waste considerable amounts of employers’ time. While there are no doubt cases of unfair employment, it now seems that almost no labour dispute ends up anywhere but in the CCMA, and it is for example, a pity that you cannot get cost orders against the other side. In other words, you win your case and prove that the person was fired, or that they just marched out on the job and resigned without any reason to do so, but you end up not getting legal costs against them, which means that the employer is going to lose either way – either on time and legal fees or in money.
 

A major, ten-year international study across 13 countries, has just released its results on the use of cell phones and possible links to brain tumours. It appears that their findings are somewhat inconclusive, although they have found that heavy users do appear to have a 40% higher chance of brain tumours. Heavy users are unfortunately defined in terms of how many dollars they spent on their phones over the time frame of the study, so that does not really help us much in South Africa.

The overall summary seems to be that more studies are needed. I must say I am naturally suspicious of anything where I am told that the surveys are inconclusive and more studies are needed and while some people would take it as a sign that there is nothing wrong, that always sends off warnings signals in my brain and tells me that in fact there is a problem, but everyone is too scared to make the link right now. Critics of the report also pointed out that it only included people aged 30 to 49, so they have not studied the effects on children and young adults whose brains are more susceptible to receiving radiation, and interestingly enough, the average user included in the survey uses the cell phone approximately 2 hours a month. That surely must be way below the average consumer these days? Obviously, we have not heard the end of this story, but I very much doubt that cell phones can possibly be healthy for your brain.
 

It is only when you have children that you realise that you are surrounded in your house by a myriad of different poisons, all capable of taking a life or leading to serious injury. In my case, the previous tenant of the house I am currently renting, left a big chunk of red Rattex in a bar cupboard. We don’t really use the bar, and had never checked inside the cupboard.

Our soon to be two-year old daughter did, and we found our one daughter holding a chunk of Rattex. I decided, also for perhaps the wrong reasons, such as making sure both children were in the same boat together, to have them both tested and surprisingly enough the test revealed that the Rattex had been eaten, not by the child who we found the Rattex with, but one of my other children. The active ingredient basically thins the bloods and leads to uncontrollable bleeding and death in rats. Fortunately, it appears with humans you need a bigger dose before that happens and everything is okay now, but it is just another reminder as to how careful you have to be – even when visiting a friend’s house where there are plugs, chemicals, swimming pools, buckets of water and who knows what else.
 

MultiChoice has launched a new affordable PVR decoder enabling watching HD TV at an affordable price. Their timing with the World Cup 2010 is a stroke of marketing genius.

The decoder called HD PVR 2P costs currently R1999 and can be connected out of the box without any installation or dish modifications to immediately watch HD TV.
To enable advanced features like program recording the LNB (the receiver on the dish) needs to be a twin LNB (my friend paid about R850 to change a single to twin LNB by an installer), this can be left for a later stage – you can watch HD by just connecting the new decoder to your existing installation.

I have written about HD before and really there is no comparison to the old “normal” TV – so do yourself a favour and upgrade!
 

We are getting closer and closer to the World Cup, and the excitement is visibly growing in South Africa. Soccer Fridays and flags are helping promote everything very well and I just hope that when the world media descend on us, within a week or two, that they really transmit images of an exciting country and some good news stories in between all the bad ones they seem to obsess themselves with all of the time.

I have been reading a book by Michael Lewis called “The Big Short” and have thoroughly enjoyed it. It is all about the collapse in the sub-prime mortgage bond market in America and it really goes into the people who thought that this was going to happen, and took big bets that it would happen and as a result became very wealthy. We always focus on all the people who have lost millions and billions every time there is a disaster, but what we forget is that there is always, especially in stock market terms, a winner on the other side and so of course, the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in America has made some individuals particularly wealthy.

They were largely guys who spotted the signs that money was being loaned to the wrong people, especially in terms of mortgage bonds in America where some bonds were even granted on the basis that you don’t have to make payments for the first two years and you don’t have to disclose any source of income – which led to people who had no jobs at all, applying for bonds and once the two years were up, they could not start making payments. The guys essentially took bets against this and much of the collapse of the market is to do with their winning bets, as opposed to the poor bonds. In other words, there was a much bigger amount of money involved in the actual bets on the sub-prime bonds than there was involved in the bonds themselves. You really come away with a sense that most of the big banks and stockbroking firms were led by idiots, and the guys who made the money basically make comments like that all of the time. For example, they think the rating agencies, and we are talking about companies like Moody’s, are generally staffed by people equivalent to those that work for the government.