Now the lifeboat needs baling
REMEMBER the Absa Lifeboat? It wasn't much of a secret at the time. The Treasury apparently gave the bank some sort of financial lift to get out of a sticky situation. Some of us – stick-in-the-mud codgers who objected to rugby adopting the terminology and values of American gridiron when it went professional – used to talk about "Lifeboat Stadium" when they changed King's Park's name to "Absa Stadium".
But that was yonks ago. Now the issue seems to have resurfaced. Investment analyst Dr James Greener revisits it in his latest grumpy newsletter.
"It's all turning very messy rather quickly. Most of it is very old news but now the events are being revisited in a sea of confusion, bad grammar and indignant vengeance, all fuelled by the vain expectation that the state might be able to get its hands on some sorely needed cash.
"More than two dozen years ago, the now very extinct Trust Bank was doing what badly run banks have done through the ages. It was lending money to people who were never going to be capable of paying it back. So when Trust Bank's inevitable sticky end approached, the government, very mindful that many of the bank's owners (in itself a messy story) and clients were Nationalist Party supporters, made the foolish and probably illegal decision to launch the infamous 'lifeboat'.
"Taxpayers' money was loaned to the ailing bank at a very low rate on the condition that it be used to buy much higher yielding government bonds and other instruments. The capital amount was probably therefore never at risk, but the net interest flow was from the lender (the government) to the borrower (Trust Bank). An interesting early example of negative interest rates.
"Just what became of the 'lifeboat', and what its potential recovery value to the state might be has long concerned the curious. In particular, the rash of bank amalgamations that have taken place since those days has complicated the task for at least four investigations into the mystery.
"The now leaked Public Protector's is just the latest attempt to follow the money. One investigation even was carried out by a commercial British outfit, who as well as charging a very large upfront fee in pounds, got the new government to agree to pay as much as 10% commission on any 'recovered' funds. Fortunately, it seems they recovered nothing, not least because Absa, which undeniably is a distant descendant of Trust Bank, strenuously insist that they acquired no liabilities arising from that particular wreck.
"The cold fact is that the money – actually now in today's terms a rather modest amount – is gone. Yet another memorial to every government's desire to carry out political allocation of assets."
Sergeant-major Spooner
FROM time to time I receive a missive, unsigned and addressed only by way of a cut-out of the Idler's logo – coffee mug and feet on desk - glued to the envelope. Now I learn it comes from a World War II ex-serviceman, identity still unknown.
This fellow says he always takes a book with him to meetings of his ex-servicemen's association, to read while waiting for the regimental sergeant-major to pitch up. This particular evening he had a book on the sayings of the Rev William Archibald Spooner, which by coincidence we discussed last Wednesday.
Spooner, a respected scholar and warden of New College at Oxford University, regularly got his tongue twisted when he spoke, to hilarious effect: "Those girls are sin twisters";";I was hocked and shorrified"; "We each had tee martoonies"; "He rode off on his well-boiled icicle."
When the RSM arrived, he took one look at the book my correspondent was reading and burst into spluttering laughter: "Kinkering kongs (Conquering kings); the Lord is a shoving leopard (loving shepherd); blushing crows; leave no tern unstoned …"
So Rev Spooner reaches also to the warrant officers' mess.
"Parade! Shun-ten!"
Tailpiece
OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: "Innuendo? Isn't that an Italian suppository?"
PADDY and Mick have been out on the marshes hunting duck, but they've had no luck.
"All day we've been here, Mick, and not a single duck. What's wrong."
"I tink we must make a new plan, Paddy. Next time dey fly over, we'll trow de dogs a little higher."
Last word
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
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