Political pantomime
TURN again, Whittington … They go to the polls in London today to decide whether they will have for Mayor the rumpled figure of a former public schoolboy with a penchant for Cockney slang, one who loves whizzing about on a bicycle; or whether they would prefer to give another turn to a fellow who keeps newts as a hobby, presides over a coalition of minorities and delights in hobnobbing with the more outrageously anti-Establishment figures from about the world.
The sitting incumbent, Tory Boris Johnson, and his challenger, Ken Livingstone (only relatively recently re-admitted to the Labour Party), in many ways represent a clash of eccentricities. Nothing dull there.
It was Dick Whittington's cat that swung good fortune in his direction. Yet neither Johnson nor Livingstone seem to have employed a cat in their campaign. Perhaps that's why the outcome is so uncertain. Bikes and newts just don't cut it the way cats do.
But if Livingstone should make it – well, Julius Malema has a new political home. He'd fit snug.
Political fireworks
WOW, THEY'VE tossed a match into the fireworks factory. The House of Commons select committee investigating the phone-hacking business in England don't mince their words when they describe transatlantic media magnate Rupert Murdoch as unfit to run an international company and as being ultimately responsible for the misdeeds of his newspapers.
What happens next? Plenty of whizz-bangs and Chinese crackers, that's what. Will Murdoch or other executives and former executives of News International be forced to appear at the bar of the House? (This doesn't mean drinks in the pub, it means having to stand there and grovel at the entrance to the debating chamber). It hasn't happened for 56 years.
What happens if they're domiciled in America and aren't British citizens anyway? How are Murdoch's newspapers in Britain going to react?
This one will run and run. Who could imagine that the sensationalist News of the World and its sister newspapers could have themselves set up such a display of pyrotechnics?
Whoosh! Bang! Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Counter-measure
WHO CAN TELL what the financial/economic ramifications of the e-tolling fiasco in Gauteng will be? Maybe the government should take a look at a suggestion currently doing the rounds, as a counter to the possibly massive negative impacts.
The Patriotic Retirement Plan is simplicity itself. There are about 10 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them R2 million each as severance allowance for early retirement, with stipulations:
· They have to retire – which creates 10 million new jobs.
· They have to buy a new car – which fixes the motor industry with an order of 10 million units.
· They have to either buy a house or pay off their mortgage – which fixes the housing market and the building industry, at the same time solving much of the housing crisis.
· They have to send their children to school or university – which brings down the crime rate and educates the workforce.
· They have to buy R500 worth of alcohol or tobacco a week – which brings in duty and tax for the government.
It seems an elegant solution. But, as so often in such cases, there could be hidden flaws and contradictions that make a nonsense of it.
Perhaps the people who devised the e-tolling system should be called in to take a look.
Hot number
THIS is one hot lady. Virginia Fike, of Berryville, Virginia (oddly enough), in the US, bought two lottery tickets at a truck stop. Later on television she saw there had been two winners of $1 million each.
She said to her mother: "Wouldn't it be funny if it was us?"
Well, it sure was funny. Both winning tickets were hers.
This is the kind of gal you need with you when you go to the casino. Hot, hot, hot!
Drop-out
DID you hear about the fellow who dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx?
Tailpiece
"Hi Darling, I'm back."
"Good grief, what have you bought? I thought you went out for a six-pack of beer."
"I got three cases of beer, two boxes of wine, a bottle of whisky and two bottles of vodka."
"Whatever for?"
"I think I'm a shopaholic."
Last word
A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
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