About a year ago there was this product called ‘power balance’. I’m sure you remember it, you probably bought one but are too ashamed to admit it now aren’t you?

Well the story of this piece of rubber, made in China and slapped with a hologram sticker, was that it improved everything from your golf swing to your sex life.

Now seeing as both of those are relatively sublime for me (*tips hat to the people who said my last post was narcissistic*) I couldn’t understand how people didn’t realize this was the greatest con the world had ever seen!! It was a piece of rubber that friends bought, then more friends bought, people got them for xmas, gave them to bosses and bought them branded to rejuvenate corporate cultures – you ALL feel like F*@KING IDIOTS now don’t you!

You see this power balance arm band turned out to be exactly what it always was from the start – a piece of rubber made from a mold in China for 3 cents and sold for a packet.

This is kind of how I feel about the Facebook IPO.

I’ve had friends scrambling to try get their piece of the pie that will make them a fortune overnight, I’ve heard stories of Bono making more money off the initial listing than he has off music and while I know that this little website has changed the world forever I think that it’ll be the next power balance given time.

Yes, people will make FORTUNES of this (they did on PB as well), and yes it will take MUCH LONGER to implode than PB, BUT the principle is the same. You see a good marketing strat combined with public appreciation and a simple demonstration (in FBs case it’s the numbers) means that everyone jumps very quickly onto the bandwagon.

You see the FB numbers look outrageously good. Millions of photos, gazillions of likes and trillions of users which makes it as easy to sell to marketers as TIC on the Cape Flats. The truth is though if you ask any marketer what exactly the impact of their FB campaigns are they will have very little REAL idea, yeah they’ll argue it got views and clicks and likes but how many of the FB junkies actually went out and bought something, or at worst did the brand even spike on their overloaded GEN X,Y or Millennial brains? Marketers however will defend this to the absolute death for one reason and one reason alone, EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT and if everyone’s doing it, you don’t want to be the idiot who stands alone, instead you’d rather stand in a crowd of idiots hoping you’re all right!

At some point, someone is going to realize that the website, that by population is the third largest country in the world yet makes less money per person that a Starbucks cashier, is actually the biggest most impressive scam yet. It is nothing more than a nifty place to cyber stalk hot women, inflate your ego by pretending to have millions of friends and to tell as many people as possible when you finally emerge from the horse shit that is your life.

The IPO will go ahead and like most other fads it will be MASSIVE but do yourself a favour, don’t get caught up in the bullshit of it all, don’t praise it as a new religion and don’t worship its god Zuckerberg as if he’s anything more than a geek who got lucky. The candle which is FACEBOOK’s life is burning bright and strong but it will go out and when it does there will be a lot of people left in darkness!

Don’t be a sheep! Live, enjoy, appreciate success but never EVER follow blindly!

Yes strangely it is true, come the end of March STM (well only half of us for now) will be settling in, hopefully, HERE! The details remain to be negotiated but the move is done and dusted and ‘the relocation’ is on.

A lot of people have asked me what the hell I was thinking and I guess when you are a few G&Ts in on a weekend the response is kept short and mostly innacurate so I think its about time I told you all why, even if this post may be for my own reasoning process.

You see life is an interesting amalgamation of stages, there’s the school stage, the 16^th stage, the 18^th stage, the 21^st stage, the varsity stage, the first job stage, the engaged stage, the wedding stage and so on and so on.

What you find is ‘generally’ and I use that term loosely, groups of people will follow the trend within a time frame of a few years and so generations progress through life’s stages. Some part of that is accepting certain limitations about life, so for example in school we accept we cant drive and so our world is limited, our first job shows us we need to work rather hard to be able to buy our first car and so again we face limitations – you get the vibe of it!

As we grow so our world grows, we travel, we experience new friends, new foods, news cultures and we step out of our comfort zone in order to grow as people, but at some point that stops, well for the absolute vast majority it does. You see most people get to a point where life is ‘big enough’ for them and so they stop challenging themselves and accept the world that is now created. It can be your community, it can be your country it can be your school or your job and the truth is that’s OK, if you are one of those people who is satisfied and happy with the world you have experie nced up to a point then chances are you have found something the bulk of the world is searching for. The point of this is not to prove that I’m right in my decision but rather to explain it.

I’m different, I’m not sure if it was how I was brought up or if my environment has influenced me but I cant accept the size of my world knowing how much of it is still out there! I cannot stop exploring and learning at a stage in my life when hopefully I’m relatively green in the ways of the world. I still want to be out of my comfort zone so I can test how far I can go.

A year ago I did a course through a company called WPP (they probably own the bulk of any marketing company you’ve heard of – and a part of us) and the course is essentially for executives to spend an intensive week learning through world class facilitators. Being the youngest person there didn’t faze me as its generally the case (spose I make up for it being the loudest too often)  but I thought it a good forum to test myself seeing as these were global individuals running or helping to run massive businesses. At the beginning of the week, as is usual for this sort of thing, you put down what you want to achieve over the week.

My objective was to be evaluated on a global scale.

You see as South Africans far too often we get could up in this tiny little pond and fail to realize that if we want to measure ourselves (in an economic sense) we must go much broader. I said to my group that I was very comfortable in the world I was in at home and I wanted to know whether I could compete with the world’s best.

Now you may think this was a nice little hold hands and sing kumbaya session. The truth is we spent the next five days watching each other and tearing each other to pieces – for our own good of course! In the final session we were allowed to give overall feedback, mostly harsh because it’s supposed to push us more. I got told that I could without question compete in any of their global roles and businesses and be as successful as I wanted to be.

I’m not writing this for some kind of self-appreciation session but rather so you understand the context.

Did I allow six other individuals move me so far out of my comfort zone that writing this gives me chills just because I thought I could make more money or have more power?

HELL NO!

For all I know they could have been speaking absolute crap and just trying to appease my hangover! But they planted a seed . . .

In South Africa I’ve spent the last three years building a field force of about 3500 people, it’s probably the ceiling of what I can do here for now. While it is a commendable effort I guess I’ve been given the chance to go run a ‘startup’ of 14 000 in China and that’s just the beginning hopefully.

You see I wanted to go to the biggest market in the world with the most difficult conditions as far out of my comfort zone as I possibly could and try and prove that those six people I met a year ago were right, not only them but I want to prove it to myself.

I believe I can create something astonishing given some time, hard work and a little luck but as with so many dreams we create them over a few drinks and then they disappear as our hangover grows, this one I want to catch and I want to build it piece by piece until I can rest knowing that in this big world I can compete, succeed and along the way grow as a person, a professional and continue to learn about the world we are a tiny grain of sand in its proverbial desert.

I guess to sum it all up I described it like a break time activity in primary school.

“I’m tired of playing marbles with the young kids, I want to go play soccer with the big boys!”

If you havent been reading for a long time, you will no doubt be unaware of our ‘sometimes – mostly not’ correspondant aptly named Jack Spanish!

If you feel like the long version – go read his previous stuff! 

If not, here he is!

So!!! Where are we in the American Elections?

The Texan Rick Perry is out. Gone too, are the Pizza Man, who realized the tactics which worked for OJ – deny, and refuse to testify, might work in a court of law (yes it does), but not in a presidential race; the Prettier Palin, who realized that the Lord Jesus…still…sadly…works in mysterious ways (thank God); J Huntsman Jnr who realized that no one, anywhere, wants a person with Jnr anywhere near his name to be ruler of the ‘free world,’ EVER AGAIN. There is a Daddy’s Boy left, mind you, not quite a Jnr but still a Daddy’s Boy, his name is Mitt, and no one really knows what that stands for. At the moment Daddy’s Boy Mitt is squaring up against Our Newt (whose not quite honest bread) for the Republican nominee. Ricky Baby (Sanitorum) and the Old White Man Ron make up the Famous Four. Our Newt (whose not quite honest bread) is the momentum front-runner fresh off the lynching in South Carolina. If you ask me it was eerie the way the Texan Rick Perry withdrew on Erev South Carolina Caucus, and handed Our Newt his endorsement and the double digit lynching which put his messy campaign back on track. I can only think that a meetin took place in the South on a Ranch, and men with full heads of hair, big buckled belts, white teeth, and large hats covering their eyes, told Our Newt that he was now their choice, the way their Daddy’s once said the same thing to Nixon. After the meeting someone from that Ranch placed a phone call directly to Rick Perry, who shook when he saw the number, because he always shook when the number called, and that man said, ‘thanks son, you’ve put up a good smile, and your hair is great, but Newt is our new choice, and that means pardner that he is your new choice.’  

Evil just threw its lot in with Our Newt, I’m not saying that Our Newt (whose not quite honest bread) is evil…I’m just saying that he is evil’s choice.

That gives Ricky Baby (Sanitorum) One, Daddy’s Boy Mitt One, Our Newt One, and the Old White Man Ron zero as they move into Florida, that little old place by the water that gave us inconvenient truth. What I think about Florida is the same that I thought about Iowa, and New Hampshire, and South Carolina – if any of the Famous Four make their way into the White House the coffin containing the last remnants of the American Dream will be nailed shut, and buried: deep.

I suppose some might ask why anyone who is not an American might be interested in the election? The answer is simple – I just can’t stop myself it – it’s like trying to ignore a car crash, a nun with a javelin through her head, or two women kissing on the train home after work. In 2012, THIS is the greatest show on earth – the American Elections makes X Factor look like a pancake, the FIFA World Cup a raison, Danny Boyles opening ceremony at the London Olympics a piece of string. It’s a jerk off the likes of which this world has never seen – and I for one am always up for a good jerk off, especially when the cock is Democracy.

Jack Spanish

27 January 2012

I brought up Barack Obama’s bailout briefly the other day to try and illustrate how powerful transparency of expenditure can be for a government.

With a simple website and something long forgotten in politician school, honesty, the President went from being the most untrustworthy first citizen to someone the masses could get on board with. He essentially managed to convince a nation that had recently lost everything to, not only give him more money from their tax coffers than ever before, BUT ALSO without the widespread chaos that I expected. Fast forward to today and for the first time since the bankers destroyed the world in 08 the employment numbers are up, those bailed out are now making more money than before and it seems for now that part of the Presidents problem seems to be solving itself.

So what’s my point here? Do I think our government should be handing out money to try fix the massive social and economic decay facing this nation?

Plainly, F*@K NO I wouldn’t let them hand out food stamps – you saw what happened when they tried to hand out condoms at the ANC centenary (in other news get ready for an influx of baby JUJU’s)!

However, imagine for a moment a country that prided itself on truth, honesty and integrity.  A nation not scarred by previous regimes, a country with leaders not out to spend their time in office filling their pockets, but a democratically elected leadership who told its citizens where exactly its tax money was going.

A small smile creeps up my face as I can feel your skepticism – don’t worry we, like an abused single mother, have been hurt too many times in the past to trust again that easily.

Most people don’t really understand budgets (the country’s credit card debt numbers are evident of that) but here’s a ‘budgets for dummies’ for you.

No matter if the budget is R1000 or R100 billion – the principal is the same. At the start of the fiscal year you start out with a number and you divide it up based on the expenses, you use the previous year as a guide and the coming year as an influence and you make the best decisions you can to split the money in such a way that you will cover all bases. You then hope that your projected income is delivered and then the sums should make sense and you make some money. The theory is really rather simple – the practice however is slightly harder but you get the basic understanding.

Now imagine you as a citizen of a country could log onto the governments website and see exactly how this money was split. What healthcare was allocated VS education VS safety and security VS (most importantly government housing allowances).  I’m not talking about an auditor general’s report that comes out and has so much grey area that it may as well be London in autumn, I mean an easy to use easy to understand website. A place where ALL expenses must be channeled through and explained. Surely if there is an expense it requires some kind of explanation, and surely that explanation is not illegal or unethical then there is no harm in sharing it with the public.

You see under the cloak of governmental darkness, things can be hidden, that’s where people take chances and thats where corruption starts it cancerous life and is fed until it becomes the deadly stage 4 and a country is on life support.

As citizens who are united only by our distrust of this and every other government we need to start asking MORE or our elected officials! We have forgotten who the customer in this relationship is quite simply. You may not realize it but we pay for services that we expect to be done and when they are not, and when our money is being stolen so blatantly surely we have to be stricter on our service providers and in this case it’s the government.

At the end of the day the public, the paying public has the power. You see WE are the ones depositing billions into government funds every month to use ‘to run the country’ and if we don’t, well, at first there will be a standoff (and all the chaos that comes with that) but at some point one party will have to cave. I truly believe with the correct public leader and the right process we can change democracy in a way that will affect future governments around the world.

Imagine that, South Africa leading the fight to a transparent democracy, one where the citizens have the right to see where their money is going. Seems so simple doesn’t it!

Last week the auditor general brought out a report on the last financial year and the way our government managed the funds.

Now as taxpayers, if you didn’t know, we have a vested interest in this report. You see you give a portion of your salary (well maybe you don’t you tax evading bitch!) to the government every month and other than knowing they use it to give to their tenderpreneur (yes it has a Wiki page!) mates for their Breitling collections, surely you want to know what the hell they do with it?

Well it turns out they fuck around with it (yes I hear you all saying ‘surprise surprise’) but, I consider myself fairly cynical when it comes to our joyful leaders in parliament, and not even I could have imagined to what degree we were being screwed.

Let me give you the number R20 BILLION!

Yes, R20 BILLION of our hard earned and paid money has been wasted. I suppose you want to know what the hell they spent it on. The list is sadly a long disgusting trail starting from just bad management of fund to fraud to tenders paid for but services never delivered!

What I find most incredible is we go on living our lives, paying our tax and not making a noise about any of it until we are drunk at a braai and we start to whine about how this country is getting raped – WELL START TO MAKE SOME FUCKING NOISE ABOUT IT THEN!

If I wasn’t moving half way across the world in the coming weeks I think I would start to create a movement, not one to over throw or fight but one that wants transparency. A movement that tries to get like-minded people to forcefully ask for honesty, openness and most of all a government that at least tells us when and how they are going to rape us. To have a system that allows citizens to see what is happening with their money similarly to that of Barack Obama’s bailout policy – probably the most successful expense of any government in recent history!

I want and I demand as a citizen to know that my tax money is being spent on things that are helping change this country for the better, not being used to fund 100^th anniversary parties, not private jets where they’re not needed and certainly not to pay tenders on jobs that are never done and the fact that South Africans don’t seem to care makes me insanely angry!

Once again I turn to the, perhaps clairvoyant, Zapiro who years ago showed our fearless leader JZ like this – who could’ve expected anything less of the government he installed than to rape the rest of its citizens !

So STM decided to stick out the quiet and peaceful Joburg until all of you animals started returning – now it’s our turn!

First a small hop to Dubai on the new A380 Business Class (don’t worry we know we’ve let you down but next trip will be First I promise) but still I fear a few glasses of Champaz at the bar are necessary to kick off the holiday (yes there is an on-board bar)!

Then I think there shall be an important focus on TV, movies and perhaps the needed few hours of work!

Finally after a sleep in the hotel in Dubai and a leg to Zurich its time to hit the majestic KULM hotel . . .

For a bit of a relax . . . .

Some superb dining . . .

And most importantly to behave like absolute animals on the slopes!

Don’t worry though, I may decide to write something or other, but if I do just know that I will be lying on a deck chair overlooking the crisp white mountain with some kind of vodka concoction in hand in the middle of this!

Don’t HATE – its just not nice

I may be a little biased due to the fact that this little bastard cost the last African team left in the 2010 soccer world cup their spot because, let’s be honest here, he’s a fucking cheat! I hated him when Manchester United threatened to sign him and I hated him the most when his cheating antics landed themselves at Anfield (a club I respect tremendously – even more so under ‘King Kenny’)

The fact is the man is a VERY good footballer and I suppose as the season went on a bit I started to hate him less for being a cheat and more because of his and Liverpool’s new found success (if you are a football fan you will understand this is a normal and very acceptable hatred of other teams players)

Then one fine winters day Suarez came to Manchester and without question racially abused Patrice Evra (a guy who at his worst is a tough no nonsense footballer) over and over again – the cheating hatred began to come back. Over the coming days video evidence proved the abuse and Suarez was given an eight match ban!

In support his fellow players decided to warm up in Suarez shirts I support of this now proven Nazi! (even King Kenny who I’ve downgraded to a Nazi SS footsoldier)

What I cannot understand is why and how firstly this kind of racism is allowed in football, this coming from me, who wrote an article in ‘defense’ of Sepp Blatters so called racist remarks, and secondly how teammates of this idiot can come out in support of someone who was PROVEN guilty!

Liverpool has been an amazing club for me over the years. It’s had the same tradition, passion, heart and players that I’ve grown to love about the English Premier Leagues great old clubs and this event and more importantly the way the team and club handled it has really put them into a new realm of darkness for me. I understand supporting your players no matter what, but, there really are better ways of handling a situation like this!

Suarez is and always has lived on the edge of the law with football and for top flight players I guess that’s sadly become the norm but to be a proven racist should really mean he now must become a pariah (Darren Scott must have his hands in the air somewhere asking how come he was so vehemently outcast)

You see I’m part of a generation that doesn’t get the concept of long term reward or damage – that’s why we all smoke you see. It’s fun at the time but we don’t understand that it may kill us! Same with jobs – we want lots of money right out the gate because we just don’t get the ‘building a career’ nonsense.

We want the answer to a question, we GOOGLE it. We have an argument about movies and we IMDB it – we want things NOW! Simple as that.

So when it comes to your teeth you generally skimp on them because lets be fair, you have no idea what they look like, what damage you are doing and really in six months the dentist will fix any of the shit anyway!

So for mine and the disastrous millennial generations here is the solution – this things transmits images from the brush to your mirror so you can see where you need to hit, how long you need to brush and basically how disgusting you’re teeth are!

Maybe that’s being a little excessive but tell me when you see this concept ad from Korea you don’t get that same tingling you used to get when you first saw Pam Anderson naked!

Now I’m a rather large tablet junkie, I think I currently own 5 of them in various shapes, sizes and brands. The reason is because I can’t wait for the world of tech to become as mobile as a cellphone but as interactive as a laptop – hence the tab crush.

But as sexy as tablets are, they are still inefficient, clunky to a degree and don’t seem to be quite the future I was hoping for, and then I saw this. These clever boys and girls at Samsung have given us just a taste of the brilliance they are planning to unleash on us all. I just hope that this doesn’t turn out like the classic concept car scenario, you see this magnificent concept car at a motor show and a year later a generic piece of design feces pops out of a factory somewhere!

Somehow with Samsung driving this I doubt that’ll happen – take a look!

Last year the title of the article I wrote on Google’s annual Zeitgeist was ‘the only review that matters’ (if you haven’t seen last one – SLAP YOURSELF CAUSE YOU’RE AND IDIOT – then go watch it – it literally reduced me to tears when South Africa answered the phone) I’m pretty sure this year I won’t feel any differently when every auditory sense of mine is bombarded with best this and that crap of the year, over and over and over until finally the clock ticks over to 2012!

These guys at Google make my entire body tingle most of the year and when they combine all that has happened on our little blue planet in 2011. A video that, for the cynical *slowly raises hand* is a marketing campaign for all of their products but when you have a bouquet of produ8cts like they do its like watching a Victoria Secret show (not quite as fun but you get the picture).

If you live on this planet, best you sit down for the three odd minutes that this will take (Six minutes if you are completely useless and need to catch-up 2010 as well) and absorb how many lives were lost, families destroyed and saved, t3ears were cried and smiles were smiled. How many heroes and villains we lost in the fight and how nature continued to fight us back at each turn.

If you are a part of this world then just sit down and watch!

This last week saw, probably one of the most controversial things happen to a South African citizen outside of our borders in a long time – Janice Linden was put to death in the People’s Republic of China (in SA you can get shot and killed no prob – it’s just outside our borders we have an issue its seems) for trafficking TIK, of all bloody drugs, three years ago.

The public outcry has been immense. Why didn’t our government intervene? Why didn’t they stop this? This is a human rights violation – where was the UN? The list of questions as to who or what should have been done goes on and on and I suppose if you are a human rights activist I can kind of understand your perspective – I don’t think anyone should be able to decide if someone’s life can be taken from them for whatever reason.

Or do I?

If we look at the world around us, we bitch about human rights but it seems to be more of a reason for us to feel good about ourselves than anything else. We live in a world where human rights are butchered into tiny pieces in pretty much every society across the globe and we want to save a women’s life that was going to pollute thousands of people’s lives with TIK!

Have we lost all shape and form of moral compass?

This person was going to let one of the worst drugs be sold to children across China and we want to blame their government for killing her? If my kids (well my unborn or illegitimate ones at least) were one of her customers I would have killed her myself.

So much bad happens in this world as it currently stands, can we afford to be so lenient on people who want to make it worse just because she wanted to make a quick buck while the rest of us have to battle through life earning it piece by piece.

Talk to me about human rights for a drug dealer when women who are raped, murdered and tortured in the middle east comes to an end, when genocide and child soldiers torn from theirs families in Africa stops and when dictators stop destroying countries by oppressing and massacring their own people. Don’t cry at our government to intervene with their biggest trade partner in the world to ask for mercy for a TIK peddling fiend! WE HAVE BIGGER PROBLEMS!

Now I see every person who thinks I’m being harsh stumble across the words ‘trade partner’ and say “you see they did it for the money”. Now, YOU IDIOTS, if you are a reader you understand my view of our relationship with China (yes – I agreed with locking the Dalai Lama out to make them happy) so if you think I’m going to back down over this you must be buying some of this chicks TIK!

The bottom line is we cry about human rights about someone poisoning the fabric of society yet we go on living in our houses and crinkle our noses at dinner parties saying just how terrible those Chinese are – I say thank goodness someone has the balls to do the right thing.

They run a country that works, end of story, and the reason is they do not have time or effort to care when there should be no leniency given. They make decisions based on fact and in this instance they were absolutely spot-on!

You are just too scared to say it – the world is better off without one more drug dealer!

Right at the beginning of the 90s I started supporting Manchester United.

Probably not for any other reason than I was just a kid and my older brother who I worshipped supported them. I guess I was lucky that I started watching them at the beginning of dynasty, it could quite easily have been Liverpool who was just about at the end of theirs.

I quickly started to realize that this club was different to most other teams I had been a supporter of. It seemed as a player it demanded more of you, it demanded a level of commitment to excellence that I’d seen few other times before in my life.

Quickly my walls were coated with players like Bryan Mcclair, Dennis Irwin, Lee Sharpe, Bryan Robson & Mark Hughs! I had team photos, I bought the magazines and I watched every game I possibly could. I saw an empire being created led by a dynamic and passionate general in, at the time, just Alex Ferguson and on the solid cornerstones of giants among men like Steve Bruce, Gary Pallister and Peter Schmeichel and on the creative talents of Paul Ince and strength of Roy Keane in midfield. I had the priveladge of witnessing the magic that was Eric Cantona. I saw the birth of the team they said were merely ‘kids’ that eventually went on to take the treble together! I’ve seen almost 20 years of Ryan Giggs and will have the memory of him tearing solo through Arsenal on-route to part of that treble winning season, I’ve seen the genius of David Beckhams right foot and strike partners of Andy Cole, Dwight York and solo strikers like Ruud Van Nistelrooy. I’ve been through the best of goalkeepers and those that made my stomach turn whenever they got close to the ball like Fabien Barthez and the other 9 including an aussie and a tourettes spewing yank before sanity returned in the form of the gracious Dane Edwin. Ive watched in awe as a little ginger kid called Paul carved passing lines through defenses like a sniper. I saw the birth of Wayne Rooney as a United legend and the metamorphosis of a scrawny Portuguese winger who turned into a worldwide phenomenon called Ronaldo! The list of truly magnificent footballers than I have been honored to watch goes on and on.

I’ve experienced wins, draws and losses in the hundreds. I’ve seen the greatest heights in Europe when the baby faced assassin Ole Gunner Solskjaer scored and then Teddy Sheringham the second to bring us the Champions league for the first time in my life. I’ve seen captains hold up Carlings Cup, UEFA cups, Super cups, FA cups and Premier league trophies and I’ve seen our fearless leader being knighted by the Queen for his services. I’ve gotten drunk on success and I’ve thrown furniture around my house in anger.

The reason I tell you this is for no reason other than to establish myself as a fairly knowledgeable United fan.

Throughout my twenty years of supporting one thing has always been abundantly clear, our manager, our players and our fans have always demanded more! We are and have always strived to win and although it’s not always possible to do so, there was always a burning desire for it! Every player who has ever pulled on a United jersey has given their heart and soul on that field and THAT is the reason I watch them day in and day out for twenty seasons. That is the reason that I cheer and cry and praise year after year.

On Wednesday it is the first time since 2005/6 that I’ve felt that heart slipping slightly. Back then the world called for Sir Alex’s head, they said he was too old, not hungry enough and it was time for a new leader. I’ve never felt that way – the man has built something that I can’t ever imagine will ever be equaled in my lifetime and regardless of results he should be able to go on his own terms. He is, for me, the embodiment of greatness and my only regret is a I sadly will never get to take him a great bottle of red and talk football with a man who has stood on the front lines and won battle after battle with dignity, strength and courage.

For me, I felt for the first time we started to expect to win instead of fighting tooth and nail for every inch of it! That made me sadder than anything. On Thursday morning I woke up with a very sore head and a sadness in my heart that I haven’t felt in a long time, not anger not depression but sadness that for the first time in a long time this team of men, this club and this dynasty that I have spent most of my 29 years being a part of seems to be battling and what aches most of all is I don’t see the players hurting.

By no means do I think this is anything near the end, all I can say is that I hope when those men, who get to put on that sacred jersey, are all alone late at night, without twitter, newspapers, annoying reporters and loud mouthed fans of their own and other teams, that they think about the honour they have of wearing that crest over their hearts. I hope they dig deep down and they find the fight that MY United have always had.

I hope those men take the pain of bitter bitter defeat and turn it into the pride and spirit that I’ve seen shown through my years and years watching this glorious club.

I hope to see MY MANCHESTER UNITED again . . .

Let us forget for a moment the world class slime fest that is Shabir Shaik shall we, because it seems that South Africans have just accepted that this cheating bastard should not be in jail because he is on the verge of death!

Please see the pic below for proof of his illness (sounds like the defense’s argument for his release on Medical Parole)

Let’s rather look at the next one who is playing ‘the hospital card’!

Thanks must go as always to Zaprio for his magical command of the political scene with merely a few sketches!

Now after I saw Jackie was headed straight to the emergency room, I decided to take to twitter and try rally some support, the response I got was a little more naïve than I expected from our normally beautifully cynical Mandy Weiner!

You see maybe I’m just of the mind frame of ‘Once bitten, twice shy’ but I cannot believe that dear Jackie Selebi has managed to get terminally ill in the five minutes that his appeal was rejected. Yes, yes I know those of you who are corruption fans will be shouting that he has been sick for a while. I don’t deny this BUT can you idiots please understand that I’m sure he had a backup plan since day one. It’s not like he was going to be healthy all the way through then keel over as the appeal ended – he’s been playing you all for months people!

I guess overall I’m just tired of getting screwed as a citizen, I mean we pay high taxes, our money generally gets stolen one way or another by our government and their friends and to be fair I’m happy to pay that toll to live the lifestyle in the country I do. BUT, when a man gets freed from jail because (again let me emphasize) HE WAS GOING TO DIE, and then we find him getting in a mosque-brawl (yeah my first time too) and still this doesn’t seem to violate his parole enough to stick that sneaky bitch back in jail – something is wrong people!

Time will tell whether or not Jackie playing the same game here but the difference between Shabby and Jackie is that Shabby is on the Zuma team, I mean he was the one who gave the Prez the corruption cash so you can only expect he can call in a few favors when he needs them – Jackie sadly can’t (well he can but Glenn Aglitotti has been in enough shit himself) so they are not likely to make any difference!

I have said I will reserve judgment on Jackie but let’s be honest, the innocent until proven guilty scenario really is tinged with irony right now. The fact of the matter is that another convicted fraudster sits in a hospital bed working out just which way is the best to bypass the legal system and cheat every single honest South African. If that doesn’t make you a little angry then get out your golf bag and book a tee off time with Shabby because you are clearly in on it as well!

After having dinner with a couple of very intelligent people at the base of the Stellenbosch Mountains, the inevitable happened after a few bottles of wine, a philosophical discussion was sparked. The subject of which was why certain countries succeed and some don’t?

First it was decided that we’re probably all destined to fail because with the rate at which populations are and will grow we will suck up every natural resource the earth has and probably in our lifetimes civilization may very well collapse. So we turned our attention to the current successes and failures.

There are an obvious reason of resources, infrastructure, perhaps good governance and the fact that they were left alone and never colonized (which is actually the politically correct word for RAPING a country). Most of these reasons were used in the defense of why African nations tend to implode!

The truth is there is little defense for the behavior that has gone on in Africa post colonization. There are basically no examples on the African continent of a country that has left the shackles of colonization and bettered itself through hard work, positive focus and a lack of corruption. In fact it’s like an African template.

People revolt against colonialism (rightly so by the way), new leader takes over, new leader likes money, new leader gets greedy, new leader refused to leave, new leader becomes a dictator and proceeds to fuck up every positive thing the country had going for them (maybe a slightly generalized view but please tell me I’m wrong) and finally turns to killing, raping and torturing any opposition in their way. Its become so ridiculous that we’ve seen ad campaigns based on it (and they’ve gone viral globally)

The only difference in South Africa is two things, one is the leadership, courage and selflessness of one Nelson Mandela who basically stopped civil war by himself (if I was him I would have come out of those prison cells with two shots guns and pretended I was in a scene from zombieland!) and the other is that our young democracy hasn’t been given enough time to be tested – as we speak it is faltering not even twenty years on!

The question is, why is this an AFRICAN PROBLEM? Countries like India have had the colonization problem and now they are emerging as one of the globes superpowers along with China.

After much discussion there was no clear answer. Is it that the culture in Africa is different, one of greed and power mongering? I don’t think so, I think that’s a global problem not just ours. Is it because our leaders are just more prone to dictatorship? Not really, dictators have ruled countries all over the world throughout history.

I guess the only rational thing I can think is that our countries are, relatively, too young. We haven’t made the mistakes yet that other first world countries have made. Germany learnt their dictator lesson in WWI & II for example and they had almost 70 years to rebuild to where they are today. But then you think of places like Sweden, Finland and Switzerland that just sort of worked from the word ‘go’.

The only thing I’m scared of is that we as Africans are not as fast learners, I’m afraid we have an animal farm mentality and we may continue to make the same mistakes for a while. The mistakes of corruption and greed creating too much poverty and too much resentment between classes that it can’t ever be fixed!

In the meantime though we are wasting what is, without question, potentially the richest continent on this planet. We have natural resource gushing out of the earth and yet we still manage to screw it up. Before long we will have raped the resources dry and then where will the narcissistic nouveau –riche dictators of Africa be? Sadly on a private yacht in the Bahamas I guess (our legal systems are probably the only thing worse than our dictators)

So finally, today the world has someone to point the finger at for the death of the most talented musician in a generation.

BUT, is it fair?

Since his death we have been scrambling to find some sort of closure and someone to blame for taking the King of Pop so soon and Conrad Murray was the perfect candidate. I mean, he was found guilty in the court of public opinion months ago and the trial was merely a formality really. The dude never stood a chance!

Leading the charge with pitchforks and torches was of course MJ’s family and why shouldn’t they be this evil Dr Kevorkian had stolen their precious Michael, oh the grand canyon of irony. These precious people who sat in the courthouse crying and screaming at the accused about how he had murdered their boy had absconded ALL responsibility for why the man needed rucksacks full of drugs to get some sleep!

I don’t absolve the doctor completely let’s be fair now – he was a fucking idiot after all, he was greedy, he was sloppy, he was arrogant and he was stupid but tell me ANY of these are out of place in any office in Wall Street over the last 5 years? I don’t see any of those ‘summer in the Hamptons’ bastards getting metaphorically lynched by the world? In fact I don’t see any of them in jail for crimes that financially crippled half the world. Justice system? Give me a fucking break people!

Murray was the man’s private in house doctor and he was begged by MJ to give him something to make him sleep. It’s not Murrays fault the only thing that could get the pop star to sleep was a rather strong horse tranquilizer and I really don’t think it’s his fault he gave it to him. Michael was clearly in pain, he was clearly in need of help and his doctor decided to give him what he wanted to ‘help’ him.

If we find a heroin junkie in an ally with his brains blown all over the wall we don’t go out to try prove the guy who sold him the gun is actually a murderer! WE say sad tragedy and MOVE ON! But for, arguably, the globes biggest musical star we needed more – we needed a reason to hold someone responsible, sadly as people when we are sad and frustrated that’s what we generally do and Murray was the easy way out!

The miserable fact is, the reason MJ needed these swimming pools of sedatives were the exact same idiots looking for justice. We know his family as a whole are mildly psychotic and as individuals are downright unplayable! We know his father used to beat the family for most of their lives while in between making them perform relentlessly like circus monkeys for cash.

We know that his mother pushed all of them to their limits as kids when they should have been out kicking a ball and enjoying the freedom that being a child is supposed to be. MJ was a performing genius from so young and for so long that we saw the damage it did to him – he was bombarded with publicity so much that lets be fair he was slightly bonkers.

His family was at the front of every queue for handouts, collaborations and constantly pushing and pulling him in every direction – no wonder the man spent his life paying a doctor a fortune to drug him, if I had his kind of money I’d do the same and I can barely say I’ve dealt with what he had.

At the end of the day the world was heartbroken when we lost MJ for many important reasons but do we really believe it’s fair to send another man to jail for four years because of he gave a neurotic paranoid and sleep deprived pop star some drugs to let him have a few moments of peace and because Murrays own stupidity – I’m not sure we should!

We were sad, angry and shocked and our behavior reminded me of an old story of how you catch a crocodile – you find a lizard and then beat it until it admits it’s a crocodile – Murray was our lizard!