The onlooker
SOMEBODY must have been writhing with laughter as Gordon Brown hung on in Downing Street, having lost the popular vote and captured less seats than his opponents in the British general election.
The stalemate of the hung parliament, and the desperate attempts to put together coalitions and rainbow coalitions, must have been especially funny for him.
Who is this mirthful onlooker? Why, none other than Robert Mugabe. He's lost at least three elections and he's still there. Gordon Brown is an amateur.
And Brown was one of his most severe critics.
"Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo! Ha, ha, ha! The capitalist imperialists haven't a clue how to run a democratic system. You just ignore the vote and klap a few people.
"These Brits know nothing!"
Deadly new threat
SOME alarming statistics come my way. The number of physicians in the US is 700 000. Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year are 120 000. Accidental deaths per physician: 0.171.
The statistics are courtesy of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
The number of gun-owners in the US is 80 million. The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1 500. That means the number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .000188.
The statistics are courtesy of the FBI
Therefore – or so this formulation goes – statistically, doctors are approximately 9 000 times more dangerous than gun owners. Guns don't kill people, doctors do.
Fact: Not everyone has a gun. But almost everyone has at least one doctor. This means you are more than 900 times more likely to be killed by a doctor than by a gun owner.
"Please alert your friends to this alarming threat," thIS document urges. "We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand.
"Out of concern for the public at large, the document continues, "the statistics on lawyers have been withheld for fear the shock would cause
people to panic and seek medical attention."
I've a feeling we're being had. The American gun lobby stops at nothing. Lies, damned lies and statistics! This clearly was written by some American gun fetishist who failed the entrance exams for both medical school and law school?
New airport
READER David Pagan takes me to task for describing the new airport as "far from human habitation".
"As a resident of Ballito, I was astonished to read that the new airport is far from human habitation. It is situated 10 to 15 km from Ballito and surrounds, and is even closer to Tongaat and Mount Moreland.
"What does your statement mean? That 10 km is 'far'? Or, more sinister, that Ballitans and Tongaaters are not human? Has our secret been found out? Are we linked to the alien invasion of the Bluff? I think you should tell us.
"The noise impact of the new airport in Ballito is very noticeable in spite of residents being assured by the environmental impact people that 'we wouldn't hear a thing'. I believe Salt Rock has it worse than us and it must be really bad in parts of Tongaat and in Mount Moreland.
"I was sitting having lunch on the terrace of an alien-friendly restaurant in Ballito last Friday and 10 jets roared overhead to land in just over an hour. But who are we mere mortals, or aliens, to doubt the results of the environmental impact study or ask whether one was even carried out?"
I must confess that I wrote from the perspective of a resident of the Berea, rather than Ballito. My two trips to King Shaka have been at night and, in the inky blackness of the canefields, it felt as if it was a long way from human habitation. I'd no idea it was so close to Ballito, Mount Moreland, Tongaat and Salt Rock.
I can see I'm going to get it in the neck from the barn swallows as well.
Tailpiece
A TAXPAYER is being interviewed by the Sars official who has come to inspect his records.
"As a citizen you have to pay your taxes," says the Sars man. "We expect you to pay them with a smile."
"Thank Heavens for that! I thought you were going to ask for cash."
Last word
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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