I was interested to read the Council for Medical Schemes’ report on Medical Aids.  It listed seven Schemes that have a solvency level below the statutory requirement of 25% during 2014.  One of those is the Government Employees Medical Fund, namely GEMS.  They have a solvency rate of 10% and only Resolution Health at 9,4% has a lower solvency rate.  I am not surprised to see GEMS there because it is after all a Government Employees Fund, and not only do they get extraordinary benefits but they are also the only Medical Aid in the country where, if one of their members is injured in an accident, the Medical Aid not only pays the money to all the doctors and service providers, but lets the member keep the money at the end of the case!  It clearly illustrates that this is not a viable policy, and I am sure this is not the only reason for the Medical Aid having problems, but it does indicate that it is an extraordinary generous offer by a Medical Aid.  Of course, government employees are ultimately paid by taxpayers, and so one can be extraordinarily generous with their Medical Aid in any event, because you are not running it like a business – if you really get into problems, you will just get more money from the members of the public and not the business that is being run so badly.

We get a tremendous amount of CV’s, sometimes 5 to 10 a day, but very seldom less than 3 a day.  I try to give all of them a reply and at least forward them to our HR department, but I must say that I am astounded sometimes at the quality of those CV’s.  I am astounded by attorneys or would-be candidate attorneys who will address an e-mail to 30 firms all at once, list them all in the e-mail and then mention how much they would really like to work for the “prestigious firm” they are writing to.  

It shows a lack of effort, and while it is certainly saving the person time, I am not really interested in an e-mail that has been sent to some firms that I do not consider prestigious at all, as well as to me.  I am equally concerned about what I see in CV’s these days and that is a lot of job hoppers.  The problem with job hoppers is they always have excuses as to why they have been through so many different firms before your firm and how they are going to stay with you, but invariably they go.  When they go, your staff members look at you as if you are the problem, but they don’t have the background of having seen that person’s CV and seeing that the person really did not stay at any firm they were ever at.  We probably all should invest more money into personality tests and spend more time on interviews before hiring people, but I have learnt that it is a waste of time to hire people who frequently move from one company to another and I like to look at people who have remained with a company for a long period – at least 5 years, if not more.  There are so many people whose CV’s are littered with one firm after another where they have stayed either 6 months, 1 year or 2 years – and of course that is really illuminating.

I get asked so often, especially by young candidate attorneys or attorneys what it takes to succeed.  I really believe that the answer is simple and it is hard work.  Yes, you have to be reasonably clever, yes, you need to have a good sense of logic and yes, you need to communicate well with people, but there is nothing that cannot be achieved if you work hard.  I think the biggest problem these days is probably what most people consider by working hard really is not working hard.  They have not done the research to read that the CEO’s of most international companies are working 80 to 100 hours a week.  They think working Monday to Friday from 8.30 am to 5pm and taking a lunchbreak is working hard.

I am not saying that that is not working, but doing just 40 hours a week is never going to get you to where you want to go, and some people are not even logging up 40 hours a week but are doing less.  If you want to dedicate yourself to success, if you want to get ahead of the pack, I really believe the absolute minimum you need to be doing is 50 hours a week and quite honestly I would normally do about 60 hours a week.  I don’t think that there is anything wrong, or that my weekend has been taken away from me, when I spend 3 or 4 hours on a Saturday on work, nor when I spend another 4 hours or so on a Sunday working.  My staff members are used to getting e-mails from me that is sent at all times, but most people will never reply to you after hours when you send the e-mail, even if Amazon.com and modern companies expect you to, and I await my answer patiently until 8.30am on Monday.  I don’t believe in a modern wired world if you are making people wait until 8.30am on a Monday to reply to their e-mail that you truly have what it takes to get ahead in any event.  You have to be available around the clock, and while you don’t have to answer something at 11pm on Sunday night, an e-mail that you received, for example, on Friday evening at 7pm should not really be waiting until Monday at 8.30am to have its first acknowledgement.  Even if you don’t want to reply to it in full, but give a brief reply earlier, I think that that is quite possible.  At the end of day, as I say, it is about success and not everybody aspires to the same levels of success and likewise I don’t expect everybody, including my own staff, to have the same standards as me, but for the people who ask, the answer is hard work and I think answering all your e-mails, around the clock and when you can, and tossing in 50 to 60 hours of work a week are the basics.

I was quite interested in reading a recent article on the Moneyweb website, advising that South Africa had gained 400,000 white people since 2009.  I am not sure that one can draw the exact same conclusion that they have, that that growth is simply because of white expats returning to South Africa, but no doubt that is part of the story.  They seem to have discounted birth and population growth as a result that way.  The article essentially points out that the white population of South Africa was 5,9 million in 1973 and by 2009 was down to 3,9 million with the considerable number of people who immigrated.  They say since then the white population is now back to 4,3 million.  That is still of course 27% of the white population who have left South Africa, or died at a higher rate than being born, but it is good news that people are returning.  The article quotes an employment agency saying that there is a lot of demand for South Africans returning from overseas countries who have degrees and that they have also discovered, since the crisis in 2008, that there overseas jobs were not as secure as they had thought beforehand.  They obviously bring a lot of experience back with them and apparently they have been hired by a number of medium-sized firms doing business throughout Africa, particularly in the construction and engineering sectors.  The article estimates that some 2 million South Africans still live overseas.

Today is the day when Apple announces its new products.  So that may be an Apple TV or the new upgrade of the iPhone 6 and no doubt we are going to hear a lot about whatever new features have been added.  The dramatic changes come every two years and this is now one year since the iPhone 6 was launched, so one would not expect anything too amazing, but the company does need to keep pleasing shareholders.  It has been a tough time for Apple recently, with the slump in China affecting its sales, and the share price down approximately 30% over the last couple of weeks.  

It is still the biggest company listed on the American Stock Exchange, despite that 30% slump, and all eyes will be on the launch to see whether or not the upgraded versions are revolutionary and going to be popular or whether they appear to be disappointing.  I wonder if there will be any comment on the Apple Watch, because that is a product I really did not believe would take off, although there certainly are a fair amount of sales of the Watch, it has not been the success that some Apple fans were expecting.

There has obviously been a lot of coverage recently about the killing of the lion called Cecil in Zimbabwe by an American dentist.  He has been hounded in that regard and it is certainly going to turn out to be far more costly than what it cost to hunt the lion.  We don’t always appreciate however how big a business this is in South Africa and Zimbabwe and how the hunters pay as much as US$50 000,00 to hunt a lion once you count in the plane tickets, the guides and the hunting fees that they have to pay.  The hunters say that they are not cold-hearted killers, they have a connection with the animal and are often conservationists, but of course those that are anti-hunting will say that is a load of baloney.   I must say that I am against hunting, but one does worry about the approximately US$200 million a year that will be lost throughout Africa if hunting was banned and I would love to know your thoughts.  

Ashley Madison has been in the news recently because of all the data that was hacked from it.  The e-mail accounts of 36 million people, who are using the website had been released and that has frightened a lot of people.  It includes prominent Judges, for example, in America as well as partners at various law firms and of course some people will say that their account was put up by somebody else fraudulently and others are going to say that they were just looking, but it will nevertheless be somewhat embarrassing.  

One assumes that the owners of the site will get sued for more than a few divorces that will probably now take place as a result.  Interestingly enough, another court case in Canada alleges that most of the female profiles are in any event fake.  A lady alleges that she was hired by the site to write Portuguese language profiles for the Brazilian version of the site and that her job was to create more than 1 000 fake female profiles in a three week period – in other words just invent fake profiles of non-existent Brazilian ladies so it looked like there were more on the site than there were.  This was obviously to make potential male members think that there were many more women on this site ready to cheat than there actually were.  The court case alleges that the “purpose of these profiles is to entice paying heterosexual male members to join and spend money on the website”.  

There is a site where you can check to see if any e-mail addresses that you know have been used on Ashley Madison and you can find it here: http://www.trustify.info/check Even more embarrassing for all those listed, the data leaked includes all the sexual interests they have listed that they are interested in.