The JSE
reached 60 589 on Tuesday and breaching a level with four zeros in it (60 000)
gave everyone something to write about in a market that is very hard to
explain. The fact is that year on year growth in earnings of the main
non-mining sector shares is almost zero. In simple terms the average business is
making about the same amount of money as a year ago. Yet rents, costs and wages
are all rising. The outcome is less fun. Unless one is on a gravy train of
course.
News broke of
yet another huge data leak. This one was dubbed The Paradise Papers because it
originated from a tax consultancy firm located somewhere exotic and with
imperfect IT security. Frankly these leaks are getting pretty boring and
commonplace. There is just one theme. People everywhere mostly resent paying
tax and devote much time, energy and money to avoid doing so. The largely left-leaning
media journos find this attitude an affront to civilisation and deem it worth
splashing all over their pages and websites. As the old saying had it: Never do
anything that you would not want to read about next month on the back page of
the (South African) Sunday Times. Today
that warning extends to not recording your dodgy doings on a computer which is
connected to the internet. This of course is virtually impossible and
inevitably leaks will happen.
The huge furore
which overtook the Paradise Papers story was about the publication of a book
which claims there is evidence that Number One himself is also not a keen or
compliant tax payer. Which means he’s just like the rest of us except on a grander
scale with a generous serving of hypocrisy
Author
Jacques Pauw’s tell-it-all book is a welcome relief from the stultifying petty
squabbling that’s taking place ahead of the ANC’s conference to find a successor
to JZ. If the conference is held at all and if it produces a victor not to the
Big Man’s liking, there could well be some serious court-room shouting and the
legal fraternity will be on the phone to their architects to order further lavish
office extensions. Further reasons to resent paying tax.
A feature of inquiries
conducted by some external parties into alleged naughtiness at state entities is
the clinical disinterest shown by the investigators for anything they deem to
be outside of their terms of reference. Not for your average forensic lawyer or
accountant to show the slightest curiosity about something odd on the page
opposite the one they have been tasked to read. It’s like stepping over a dead
body on the way to see if the toilet’s blocked. And then reporting to the
client only that a better grade of paper will solve the problem. Sticklers for
process they are. Move along folks. Nothing to see here. What dead body? In
fact, charge more for having to look away.
In the meantime,
state and provincial education departments are working up a piece of legislation
which will surely even further trash what little hope remains for the nation’s
school pupils. The government has decided that parents and governing bodies are
not competent to choose new principals and that such appointments will in
future be made by bureaucrats at head office. Undoubtedly this process will be
used to further the government’s race preferment policy and reward party lackeys.
It will not necessarily appoint competent school principals. This centralisation
of decision making is a calamity.
These four
back-to-back outbound tests for the ‘bokke are brutal. The sole bright spot is
that they meet Ireland, the All Black slayers, at the start of their tour
tomorrow. The rumour that team management have chartered a flying ambulance to
remove injured players from Europe and deliver fit ones may not be true but let’s
hope that for the survivors it will indeed be a merry Christmas with some nice
scalps hanging in the trophy cupboard.
The tide will
now be out until mid-December since it time for me to go to the bush.
James
Greener
Friday 10th
November 2017
