I must say that these adverts that two of the banks run back and forth against each other, really don’t appeal to me. I may well be the exception, which is why it is always good to read the opinions of others on my blog, but I think they are a bit tasteless. I would like to associate banks with a higher class of standards than references to swear words by using the word “beep”, and I think that the adverts are rather rude, even if that is a more common way of speaking now. It may well be because I am an attorney, and we generally have a more conservative approach to those types of things, but I would associate those adverts more with nightclubs or something aimed at people in their late teens or early twenties, and while that may be the target audience for these adverts, certainly not all the people who do banking are in their late teens or early twenties. I think that the banks run the risk of alienating older and more serious clientele in the form of businesses, etc who may well think that these adverts are rather juvenile. What do you think?

New research published in the journal Science indicates that, apart from healthy eating and exercise, what decides whether one is thin or fat may also be determined by bacteria in your gut. The role of bacteria that lives in the gut is to digest foods, make vitamins and also amino acids. In a very interesting experiment, researchers looked into human twins wherever they found a fat twin and a thin twin, and took bacteria from their gut and transferred it into mice and the bacteria from the fat twin in each case made the mice fat and bacteria given to mice from the thinner twin led to the mice being more lean. The implications for humans are obvious, but the way that they plan to tackle it is not exactly pleasant sounding. The pleasant way of resolving it is that scientists plan to develop pure mixes of bacteria in future that can be given to fatter people, which will assist them in losing weight but until then, they are going to experiment by transplanting faeces from thin people to fatter people. Right now gym and a diet sounds like a better idea to me!

There is a Norman Catherine exhibition at Circa on Jellicoe Avenue in Rosebank. It runs until late October and I must say that I have always found his works of art most interesting and given that it is only 2 kilometres down the road from my offices, just off Jan Smuts Avenue, I will certainly attend. His work is not everyone’s cup of tea, but as the image alongside indicates, it is certainly different! The images range considerably, but often have an animated or cartoonish look or wildly bright and bold.

The one thing that I have always found fascinating about an artist is that their greatest fame appears to always be achieved once they are deceased and he no doubt will be very happy that he is very much alive, and his works are still commanding very good prices at auctions, in the hundreds of thousands, but it seems that everyone only really goes completely crazy about your work, pushing the price up into the millions, when you are no longer around to produce any more! It is incredible how many of the most famous artists made little to nothing while they were alive and yet now you could purchase whole suburbs, let alone a house, for the price of one of their paintings.

One of the things you learn in law, and I am not talking about clear-cut cases like motor accidents where somebody drives into somebody else from behind, is that there are two sides to almost every story. That is particularly true in divorces, most litigated matters and any matters involving two people or more! That does not mean that there is not one party who is more right than the other party, but typically speaking, things are never as clear-cut, once you have heard both sides of the story, as they are when you only listen to one side.

It is a lesson that all of us can learn, because it is not just in law that that happens – it is in everyday gossip, stories or the kind of idle chit-chat that we all make. We are invariably presenting or hearing one person’s side of the story, and while that makes for far more juicy gossip and entertaining discussions than presenting a balanced picture, most of the time it is not the whole story. There is often more to the story, and while generally whatever the rest of the story is does not affect most of us, whenever one takes part in such a discussion one must be aware that it is unlikely to be the whole story. You also have to take into consideration the personality of the person telling the story – some people have, for example, the “victim” approach whereby they feel that they are always the victim of some or other conduct or behaviour and you also get those who sensationalise everything – the lady who believes every man is obsessed with her or chasing after her, and only her, or the man that vastly exaggerates his exploits, whether in business, dealing in shares or otherwise! The bottom line is, if one person’s story was the whole version, we would not need courts or Judges! It seldom is.

The Legal Practice Bill is currently before Parliament’s Justice Committee. The government would like to see a unified regulator for the legal profession, with one body regulating both advocates and attorneys. The legal profession would like to see those bodies remain independent and separate. The motivation for fusing them is apparently for the purposes of transformation.

There is no doubt that this is the type of legislation, affecting the very professionals who specialise in going to court, that is going to be challenged in the Constitutional Court and so it may well be some time before there is a Legal Practice Bill in place. Worryingly, there are also suggestions that legal fees should be regulated, but not for big companies whose work is largely done by corporate law firms but for other individuals. I am not sure how that is going to help access to justice, or indeed an individual, who for example litigates against a company who will now be represented by attorneys who charge a lesser rate than the companies’ attorneys charge. In a situation like that one would not be surprised if a number of the top litigators then join big companies and litigate only for the companies against the more junior and less experienced attorneys who will then represent individuals only, at a lower amount laid down by the government. It certainly does not seem to make sense and one wonders how that can possibly be constitutional – that one legal fee will relate to corporate entities and another legal fee will relate to ordinary people and those who represent ordinary people will be at a disadvantaged in terms of what they can earn and charge, compared to those who represent companies. It will certainly make for unequal litigation.

We all know that eating fruit is good for us, but new research indicated some fruits are better than others. Apparently, also eating a greater variety of fruits reduces the risk of Type 2 diabetes. The fruits that reduce your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes are grapes, apples and grapefruit and the best of all – blueberries. Having the fruit juices itself actually increases the risk – one would assume due to the sugar level but once again the research is showing that it is better for you to eat the fruit than to drink the juice. Fruits that were tested, but which showed no significant advantages included strawberries, oranges, plums, peaches and apricots. So make sure you have a lot more blueberries, grapes, apples and grapefruit!

This year’s Nedbank Golf Challenge will have a new format, with 30 players lining up, instead of the traditional 12 players. The big advantage of that is that typically, in recent years, with a limited field, there have only been about two players in the running by the final day. If you have a bigger field, you have far more chance that there will be at least four or five players who have a chance of winning on the final day.

It also makes it possible to get more players to South Africa than may have been able to come before, and early talk is that US Open winner Justin Rose, will be in South Africa, possibly Adam Scott who won the Masters as well as the recent PGA winner, Jason Dufner. Recent PGA Tour winner Henrik Stenson is also likely to return to a course where he has won twice before. If that is true, then we will have three of the four major winners in South Africa at Sun City. Last year’s British Open winner, Ernie Els, will also be back, so it is really going to be a top class field.

Around the world, and particularly in major countries, there are often lists produced of the best cities to live in. Other variations of these lists include the best cities to raise a family in, the best cities for young people, etc. We are a much smaller country, and that is probably why we have not seen such a survey, but one would find it very hard to imagine that any city other than Johannesburg, or potentially Pretoria, could win such a survey in South Africa.

Cape Town has a lot of natural beauty, but no really big business and Durban – well it just has the sea. Johannesburg certainly does not have too much in the way of natural beauty, but if you love the bush, the natural Highveld vegetation at this time of the year, particularly with the green trees and the brown grass really is very eye-catching for me anyway! We certainly have all the businesses, all the politicians, all the action, all the big sports finals, all the major sports teams, the Stock Exchange and basically everything of major importance that happens in South Africa from the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg to the various seats of power in Pretoria, happens within these two cities, 60 km apart.

We received a call today to tell us that one of our long time employees, Corne Romer, had passed away.  It was a sad blow for many of us who had seen a clearly very ill Corne over the last few months, who eventually was off work more than she was at work.  She had been expected to return to work this coming Monday.

Corne who leaves a husband and daughter behind was a top employee, a hard worker and a friend to many who she tried to help and teach.  Corne was very devoted to de Broglio Inc and to helping the firm's clients and will be missed by everyone who dealt with her.  Rest in peace Corne.

If there is one area that really is booming at the moment, it is the Sandton CBD. One would have thought, many years ago, that there was not much room to build anything anymore, but that excludes taking existing buildings, blowing them up and then rebuilding them bigger than before! I see that huge residential blocks are going up, additional office blocks are going up and those who had the foresight to get offices in the Sandton CBD some years ago really must be smiling these days. Almost any decent location is already gone and there does not really seem to be any more space to grow – until the next block is bought out, blown up and rebuilt! Sandton City itself has expanded massively and the only thing that they have not thought of in the area yet is how to get all of the cars out of the Sandton CBD at the same time every night when work is over. Traffic really is chaotic in the Sandton area at peak hours.

New research by Statistics SA says watching TV is the top leisure activity for people in South Africa. Most people in South Africa spend an average of 2 hour 43 minutes per day of watching television. Sitting in front of the TV certainly can provide relaxation but an average of 163 minutes a day seems a bit high! The least popular things, according to the survey, to spend time on include cooking, eating, drinking and listening to the radio. That should certainly mean we should all be more in shape but it is always sad to hear that cooking is not popular, because good cooking and a healthy diet certainly go together.

The average person apparently spends 67 minutes a day travelling, which is about half the time that I spend, and women apparently only spend 50 minutes a day travelling. An additional 1 hour and 8 minutes is spent a day travelling to social events. I assume by social events they largely mean moms having to cart children around, because I cannot imagine anybody socialises every day to such an extent that they have one hour of driving, even after getting home from work!

Planet Fitness has lodged a complaint with the Competition Commission against Virgin Active. They apparently claim that whenever they identify a suitable location to set up a Planet Fitness, that Virgin Active then approaches the landlord and encourages them not to enter into a deal with Planet Fitness. I know that the Competition Commission gets its fair share of nonsense complaints, and certainly the one about Phumelela some time last year was a prime example, and this one just has the sounds of a complaint that is not going anywhere.

That does not mean it is nonsense, it is just that even if it is true that landlords when approached by Virgin Active, decide not to do a deal with Planet Fitness, it may well be for a number of other reasons. They may, for example, decide that Virgin Active is the more prominent and more famous gym brand, and having them in the shopping centre would lead to more trade and traffic than Planet Fitness. It may well be that Virgin Active can always make a deal to place their gyms in three or four of the centres owned by that particular landlord and thus appeal on the size of the group. I have empathy for Planet Fitness, but from a different point of view altogether and that is with so many gyms in South Africa having gone bankrupt over the years, although none recently, it must really be hard for them as a smaller player to attract people. They end up having to do it by building over the top facilities in certain areas, which, once you factor in the cost of the lease and the equipment, may take many years to break even.

In a display of political openness we were recently told that Mamphela Ramphele is one of 71,000 South African dollar millionaires. In a report by Credit Suisse, it was estimated South Africa will have 240,000 dollar millionaires by 2016. A dollar millionaire is apparently an individual who has assets and liquid assets worth $1 million or more, excluding the value of their main home.

The SA Revenue Services, according to a report I read in the City Press, apparently have another definition of the ultra-rich and that is people who are worth more than R75 million, and on that basis Mamphela Ramphele with R55 million does not make the list. On SARS list of the super-rich there are apparently only 9 300 people in South Africa. One would assume that includes Dave King who recently settled a R700 million tax assessment with SARS. No doubt the 9 300 are subject to close scrutiny by SARS! Whether this in fact will work, in terms of her openness in getting votes, is another story, because most people are put off by wealth, but on the other hand we have a State President who, when he leaves office, will keep his house and we all know how much we paid for that!

It is very disturbing to read in recent media reports that the Public Protector has been asked to give up her investigation of Nkandla. Nkandla is of course the R200 million plus project of allegedly adding security to Jacob Zuma’s house, which security includes a Tuck Shop for his wife, a sports field and various other added features to his personal dwelling.

Apparently, approaches were made to her to consider letting another arm of the government investigate this, namely the office of the Auditor-General. She has refused and is intent on proceeding which is of course good news for us as citizens. It is certainly worrying for the Auditor-General, because it does give an impression that the office of the Auditor-General is considered to give opinions more “friendly” to the Presidency than that of the Public Protector. When one reads that the desire from high placed politicians was rather to have the Auditor General do the investigation, one’s automatic thought is, “I won’t take anything the Auditor-General says in future as seriously as before.” The Public Protector is there to look after our interests and given that R200 million of our tax money has been spent on this project, we are perfectly entitled to know whether it has been legitimately spent or not. Understandably, with an election approaching, politicians are not eager to have a report out that they seem to think could possibly be damning. I am not sure why they think it is damning, because all of the statements in Parliament have all made it quite clear that there is allegedly nothing wrong – and if that is the case, they should have nothing to fear from the Public Protector doing a full investigation and releasing her report to all of us.

Tokyo has won the 2020 Olympics, and I think it is a wonderful win for Japan. It is also a wonderful win for tourists and sports fans as well because Japan is a completely different and very fascinating country to visit. You will eat food that truly is different to anything you have eaten elsewhere – whether it is eel or something else, and you will get to visit some incredibly exotic and beautiful locations. I had one of the best holidays of my life there - from climbing up mountains, visiting temples and riding a speed train to Kobe, to go and eat Kobe beef in the city where it originated - I really had a fabulous time. 
Tokyo itself is a massive city, extremely vibrant, busy and with a wonderful transportation system which can be somewhat overwhelming at times to work out. We went to what is the busiest station in the world, and I think there are more than 2 million people a day that pass through that particular station, and it was quite a sense of achievement once we worked out how to use it to get around. It’s not always easy to get the hand of things when thousands of people stream past you and Tokyop certainly seemed far busier than London for example. It is just one of those destinations where, apart from watching the Olympics in Tokyo, you will be able to visit many other parts of Japan at the same time and no doubt at one-third of the cost of staying in Tokyo during the Olympics, and take in a wonderful and magnificent country.

Apple is apparently going to be releasing cheaper models of their phones as well as a phone with an improved chip. One of the factors affecting Apple’s profitability is that apparently people do not change high-end phones as quickly now as they did previously – probably because they don’t introduce that many new features in each model. They also have the problem that a lot of phones are being produced with tons of gadgets far more cheaply than Apple.

Apple is of course still the leading brand (and certainly is so by market capitalization also) and experts say that if Apple can produce a lower cost phone, perhaps in the $300 range, that that will convince a lot of people to pay an extra amount to have the number one brand in phones. At the moment, a new iPhone costs in the region of $650 around the world, and that is out of the reach of most. If they can produce a model, perhaps missing some of the bells and whistles at half the price, it will allow them to attack the android phones with more success that they have had thus far. That will then also give it a far more chance of making big inroads into the market it really wants, i.e. China.

It never ceases to amaze me how economists and financial experts can always, once a clear trend has emerged, detail how obvious it is. They cannot tell you, six months before the Rand and every other emerging economy’s currency starts weakening, that they will in future, but once it has already happened or is in progress, they can then tell the story with incredible authority and explain why it has happened. They may as well be historians and not economists!

The part that worries me when I read the articles, and I am largely talking about articles in Fortune Magazine, Forbes and Barrons, is that they all say the same thing, and that is with the US Fed indicating that it is going to stop buying bonds and putting money into the economy, money is returning home to America. That means it has been taken out of emerging markets and it has been taken out of emerging markets just on the basis that the Fed is going to start tightening its policy. One can only imagine what might happen once the Fed actually does that and actually starts reducing. They basically say that while the American government has made money available at little or not interest, that money has been used to invest in emerging markets, and now that that trend is reversing the money is going to leave the emerging markets. It is not just the Rand that is affected and India’s currency is down 17% alone this year, and it does mean that we may see levels not of R10,50 but of past R11,00 or maybe R12,00.

On the other hand, we can hope that as usual people react badly to the news, which is now, and when it actually happens there will not be any further developments. That would then allow the currency to stay where it is but if it does not happen we are going to have an absolute horror story of rising petrol prices, striking workers in the mining sector demanding higher salaries, all-round higher inflation, etc, etc. The economists however will, once it has happened, tell us what happened.

I know that a number of attorneys browse the website www.saflii.org. It is the website of the Southern African Legal Information Institute and it publishes, free of charge, case law and legislation from South Africa. It also contains judgments from some of the surrounding countries. It says that it does so with the aim of promoting the rule of law and judicial accountability by publishing legal material for open access. I think that is a wonderful goal, and certainly it does tend to have the latest judgments, whether they are important or not, up on the website fairly quickly. It is apparently a project of the South African Constitutional Court Trust and as it says itself, and this is no doubt true, it is currently the largest free access collection of online legal material from South Africa – so it is very valuable, not only to law students and attorneys, but members of the public who can research any judgments and also have access to the latest judgments.

It is becoming quite hard to keep up with the changes on the DSTV bouquet at times. First Bloomberg was gone, then it was back and then before we knew it ANN 7 had bumped Russia Today out of its position on DSTV 405. ESPN, which is the sports channel on which Mickey Mouse is funded – it is Disney’s biggest profit centre and has basically subsidised the rest of the business during some tough times, is now gone from local television.

That apparently is beyond DSTV’s power, with ESPN deciding it no longer wanted to be broadcast in Africa at all, so many fans will lose out on Nascar and quite a lot of American football. ANN 7, which some people call “Gupta TV”, got off to the most cringing and embarrassing start that anybody could imagine. Videos on You Tube indicate shocking presentation, with presenters looking at each other and almost egging each other on to talk, while you can clearly hear producers and people in the background trying to give them instructions on what to do. The clips on You Tube are so embarrassing that some of them were soon blocked due to copyright claims – and you can guess why and by who!

I have listened to so many staff members and people in general over the years explaining how when they next get an increase they will start saving and why they cannot at the moment. I started saving with my very first salary as a candidate attorney, although if truth being told, I started saving long before then.

I set aside 10% of my salary which was then R1 500,00, probably the equivalent of about R3 500,00 these days, and continued to do so and at times setting aside more than 10%. I think it comes down to discipline and that always hits home when one reads about the latest tax dramas of some or other pop star, including Michael Jackson’s estate, or actor or actress who suddenly got themselves into big tax problems because they have been spending all the money they earned and not paying tax. The reality of the matter is that it is not about earning more as these tsars do and who also can’t pay their bills, it is not about having a few more Rands before you can start saving, but it is about discipline. People without discipline will always find an excuse why that month’s salary has to be spent on essentials and the definition of essentials has stretched to include tickets to a major party, drugs for the party, cigarettes, alcohol, more and more time on the cell phone and considerable amounts of entertainment.

If that is the life you live, and many do live it, you will certainly have more fun while you are young than the rest of us, but one day when you pay the price in terms of a sudden emergency where you have no money, or even if it takes until retirement, you must remember that you always chose to indulge yourself, you always chose a short-term gain and you never saved. It is true of anything – including a business. Some business owners will take out all the profits and never reinvest in marketing, computer systems and improving the client experience and as a result they will over time fall by the wayside. They may think that others grow bigger than them because the others are lucky, the others had more opportunities and sometimes that is true, but more often than not it is about discipline. They asked the Mayor of New York recently about why he is more successful than other people and the answer from Michael Bloomberg, who is a billionaire, was essentially that he starts work earlier and he ends up working later than other people – in short, he works harder and longer than others. It all gets down to how much you put in and how much discipline you have. If you don’t have it, it is not the end of the world – just don’t complain!

I was fascinated to read about an application that used to be available on the Google apps website, called “Boyfriend Tracker”. This application, which obviously required you to get access to your partner’s phone, allowed you to load an application onto their phone which not only monitored their movements, but sent you copies of all their text messages as well as allows you to dial in and listen to phone calls.

Google removed the application citing privacy concerns but it was apparently extremely popular in Brazil. I think those types of applications are a double-edged sword, because for every person who really does want to know the truth, there are those who would claim they want to know the truth but who don’t really want to know it. Those who you know must know that their partner is up to something, with all those late night “boys only” drinking nights with the “boys”. Another common story one hears is the constant claim of going away for bachelor nights or stag weekends where people continually have old distant friends whose parties they simply have to attend because they are getting married now.

Inflation has now gone through the targeted maximum of 6%, touching 6,3%. No doubt this is partially because of the rising petrol prices and unfortunately, this tends to result in a vicious circle. As further price increases as a result of increased transport costs over the last few months are factored into the economy, inflation will rise more.

The rise in inflation has led to a decrease in our currency which in turn means we will end up paying more for petrol, which in turn means six months later there will be may well be more inflation in the system because of the increased petrol price! One really has to hope that something is done to protect the currency, so as to stop inflation filtering in via the petrol price but this means that hard decisions have to be made, and those decisions might include, for example, raising the interest rates to make our bonds more attractive to foreigners. Generally, high inflation does lead to increased interest rates and of course that then, while in some ways helping with the cost of commodities, increases the interest one pays on motor vehicles or any financing.