A nation of malcontents
PEOPLE must stop making a fuss about National Parks clamming up on information about rhino poaching. These reports in the newspapers only cause public alarm and distress and they encourage the poachers.
Let things be. Let rhino poaching downgrade to the marginal activity it undoubtedly is. Give it a year and everyone will have forgotten about it, everyone will be happy and, in time, people will have forgotten altogether about rhino, what they even looked like.
Be positive! Concentrate on the wonderful things that are happening in our country, not on ugly prehistoric beasts.
But unfortunately our society seems to be full of malcontents. They continually harp on the negative. They carry on as if the Protection of Information Bill is some sort of sinister political gag, not what it quite clearly is: a sunshine measure to promote national happiness and contentment.
No longer will people have to read daily in their newspapers distressing and alarming reports of fraud and corruption in high places; of incompetence and massive waste; of unchecked violent criminality. Even irresponsible suggestions that the country is headed down the drain.
No, instead they will be able to share the enlightened and uplifting thoughts of our political leaders; look at photographs of they and the Gucci elite hobnobbing at social functions, drinking champagne on behalf of the masses. This is the real news.
And back to those disappearing rhino. Don't we owe it to our new partners in Brics to allow them a bit of extra zest in their love lives?
More malcontents
SIMILAR malcontents are causing a fuss about the Ministry of Defence insisting that General Carlo Gagiano, head of the Air Force, should brief parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Defence on the state of the air force, only behind closed doors.
They suggest – irresponsibly and mischievously – that the government are terrified Gen Gagiano might repeat what he said at the recent annual Air Force Parade and Fly-past (where this time there was no fly-past) – that the air force can no longer afford to put aircraft in the air.
They suggest also that Gen Gagiano might be asked his opinion of the recent operation in which two chartered jets "shadowed" President JZ's airliner to New York, at a cost of maningi millions – and the government are terrified of what his plain response might be.
Oh, I don't know. People are surely misinterpreting Gen Gagiano. It's quite possible he was merely putting in a plug for a Gilbert & Sullivan season.
What's that you say? Gilbert & Sullivan wrote in the days before the Wright Brothers, when there wasn't any air force anywhere?
Oh, I don't know. Our air force takes military ranks.
In short in matters vegetable, animal and mineral
I am the very model of a modern major-general …
As Pieter-Dirk Uys says: Adapt Or Fly.
Follies of youth
LOUIS Sarkozy, teenage son of the French President, threw a tomato at a policewoman from the Elysee palace. Splat! The president himself later met her to apologise.
The female gendarme was on the street outside the palace while Louis and some friends were playing in a courtyard.
This quite obviously was a game of dare, and the French are not making too much of it. It's a perfectly natural urge anyway to want to throw a tomato at a policewoman.
In fact I think when Prince Charles was a kid he used to throw his dinner out of the window at the guardsmen at Buckingham Palace. Or am I thinking of Julius Malema and the Presidential Guard outside the Tuynhuis in Cape Town?
No gossip
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
Tailpiece
| A MECHANICAL engineer, an electrical engineer, a chemical engineer, and a computer geek are driving along in the same car when it breaks down. | |
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Last word
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome
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