Saint in Paradise

The day I post even 30% of the rubbish you post will be the day I am taken away in a strait jacket

OUCH !!!! Dubai, where property prices have surged more than 40 percent this year, will allow landlords to increase rents at a faster pace as economic growth in the emirate accelerates. Under the decree, issued by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, landlords can raise rents by 20 percent if contracts are 40 percent or more below average prices, as measured by a government index. Previous guidelines allowed for increases of as much as 20 percent for rents that were 55 percent or more below market value. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-22/dubai-to-allow-rent-jumps-of-as-much-as-20-.html

Oh dear looks like the US security lot will keep a very close eye on you lot if you go to the US :lol: When that film came out, the FBI labelled it as subversive - a vessel for communist propaganda. During the Red Scare after World War II, FBI informants claimed the film's portrayal of wealthy banker Mr Potter as a greedy villain was a sure sign of communist influence. Recently-published FBI documents also reveal that investigators had their eye on 'It's a Wonderful Life' and screenwriters Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, a husband and wife duo who were accused of associating with known communists. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2528752/Was-Its-Wonderful-Life-really-communist-propaganda-FBI-investigated-classic-Christmas-film.html

How very sad that card is.

Get used to the Govt. apologising as if it's anything like the Govt. over here in NZ they keep on saying sorry and giving lots of money out as compensation to a minority for events that happened in the 1800s. Resentment might only be growing very slowly but it is growing. It is a very long way from the amount of resentment in the UK about the UK being in the EU mind and all those stories against immigration etc that the Daily Mail likes to print. Oh yes and Merry Christmas to 99% of you ( it's been Christmas Day here for over 8 hours now .

Agree with this and also what Verbal says is correct. As it's Christmas I shall refrain from making any derogatory comments about some posters but they did make me smile and shake my head at their innocence and lack of real world knowledge.

With a man in charge like NC do you really think that any player wouldn't try his best? Just because they don't seem to be playing at the high standard demanded by some supporters doesn't mean that they should be vilified on a football forum. God it must be hell for those perfect people on here having to live with mere mortals.

Perhaps one of his children or another close family member is not very well ? Now that would stuff up most normal people. Maybe he has heard rumours that Saints want to sell him and he doesn't want to leave so by playing not at his best no-one will try to buy him ? The opposite of how some players wanting a new contract play well until the new contract is signed then they go off. At the end of the day it isn't really anything to do with supporters it's between the player and club.

You do know she used a body double ( Shelley Michelle ) in her 1988 film "My Stepmother is an alien" ?

In his BBC interview he said that "some can't even train on a daily basis" ( not moaning about agent Connolly surely??? ) He was asked if it was because of fitness and he replied "many different reasons". I wonder what they are then? Better not post my theories

To whom on here it may concern. https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/1503419_10203256200872961_832049680_n.jpg .

How long before "diversity training" gets harsher as people are still not being "educated" as well as the lefties demand? All dictatorships usually end up with "camps" for those who refuse to reform. North Korea has been mentioned but remember U.S.S.R. China as well as Argentina in South America where people "disappeared".

But guess what ? I don't care as I for one believe this is 100% true. Can a good Muslim be a good Westerner ? This question was forwarded to a friend who worked in Saudi Arabia for 20 years. The following is his reply: Theologically - no. . . . Because his allegiance is to Allah, The moon god of Arabia . Religiously - no.. . . Because no other religion is accepted by His Allah except Islam . (Quran, 2:256)(Koran) Scripturally - no. . . Because his allegiance is to the five Pillars of Islam and the Quran. Geographically - no . Because his allegiance is to Mecca , to which he turns in prayer five times a day. Socially - no. . . Because his allegiance to Islam forbids him to make friends with Christians or Jews . Politically - no.. . . Because he must submit to the mullahs (spiritual leaders), who teach annihilation of Israel and destruction of America , (the great Satan) , U.K. and the rest of the free world. Domestically - no. .. . Because he is instructed to marry four Women and beat and scourge his wife when she disobeys him (Quran 4:34 ) Intellectually - no. . Because he cannot accept the UK since it ( UK ) is based on Biblical principles and he believes the Bible to be corrupt. Philosophically - no. . . . Because Islam, Muhammad, and the Quran does not allow freedom of religion and expression. Democracy and Islam cannot co-exist. Every Muslim government is either dictatorial or autocratic. Spiritually - no.. . . Because when we declare 'one nation under God,' The Christian's God is loving and kind, while Allah is NEVER referred to as Heavenly father, nor is he ever called love in the Quran's 99 excellent names. Therefore, after much study and deliberation.... Perhaps we should be very suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS in this country. - - - They obviously cannot be both 'good' Muslims and good Westerners. Call it what you wish it's still the truth. You had better believe it. The more who understand this, the better it will be for our countries and our futures.

When the kind-faced mocha Yoda named Nelson Mandela passed into the great beyond last week, the world joined hands like one big giant Coca-Cola commercial to canonize and lionize and deify and sanctify his memory. The torrent of treacly encomiums and mawkish panegyrics hurled at Mandela’s glowing feet surrounded his legacy with a force field of such pulsating holiness that anyone who’s remotely skeptical or inquisitive would be able to discern it was all a mountain of ****. This isn’t to say there was nothing to admire about the man. His stoic perseverance against all odds is the stuff of which heroic legends are made. But to keep such legends unsullied requires a vigilant and ruthless pruning of inconvenient facts that would undermine the carefully sculpted image of Human Goodness Incarnate that surrounds what was possibly the world’s most famous man. The 20/20 special peddled such obviously fraudulent lies as the allegation that Mandela’s African National Congress was “committed to nonviolent resistance.” Not a peep was made about the fact that Mandela was sentenced to prison not for “treason”—which is the only charge the show mentioned—but that he pled guilty to an indictment accusing him of complicity in “the preparation, manufacture and use of explosives—for the purpose of committing acts of violence.” Nothing was said about the radical guerrilla army he founded called “Spear of the Nation” that was linked to hundreds of acts of violence and sabotage. Nothing was said about his claim that “violence in this country was inevitable.” Nor was it mentioned that he was offered freedom from prison in February 1985 if he agreed to foreswear violence but that he refused. And they certainly didn’t dare to show a clip of an ANC “necklacing” that’s one of the most brutal snippets of mob violence I’ve ever witnessed. Nothing was said about the Church Street Bombing or any of the other bombings and violent acts committed in the ANC’s name that in other contexts would have Mandela dubbed a violent terrorist. Instead, 20/20 referred to him with the much cheerier sobriquet of “freedom fighter.” We hear glowing reminiscences that Mandela was a voice of “democracy” but not a word about the fact that he was a lifelong committed Marxist. Even though he shrugged off accusations of being a communist, the South African Communist Party claimed on Friday that “At his arrest in August 1962, Nelson Mandela was not only a member of the then underground South African Communist Party, but was also a member of our Party’s Central Committee.” Nothing was mentioned about allegations that he handwrote a tract called “HOW TO BE A GOOD COMMUNIST” that claimed “THE CAUSE OF COMMUNISM IS THE GREATEST AND MOST ARDUOUS CAUSE IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND.” http://takimag.com/article/mandela_what_the_obits_omit_jim_goad

Best viewed full screen http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=10b_1386199300 . No it's NOT a link to a NZ news sight

Have a look here:- http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Travel-g255055-c3001/Australia:Sydney.To.Brisbane.Coastal.Route.Drive.html Remember though that Aussie cops are red hot on speeding even if only a small amount over. They also have loads of speed cameras.

When you get the cambelt changed don't forget to change the water pump at the same time. Sometimes a failure of the original water pump after a new cambelt is fitted could well lead to disastrous consequences. Water pump bearing failure can lead to breaking the new cambelt which in turn often results in extensive engine damage (valves hitting pistons etc). Can end up to be very very expensive in relation to what you paid for the car in the first place.

How about an award/bonus payment for the first Mod who deletes these award type threads that seem to appear at this time of the year?????

Comedian Randy Liedtke had the brilliant idea of baking an iPhone-shaped cookie and pulling up next to police while driving around Los Angeles. "I'm honestly gonna drive around wih my iPhone Cookie today and see what happens!" he tweeted on Thursday. It didn't take long for an officer to take the bait, but things didn't quite go as planned. "Just saw a police car going the other way. Gonna turn around and see if I can catch up and drive by it. #iphonecookie," his update on twitter read. "OH MAN IM GETTING PULLED OVER STAY TUNED!" After being pulled over and sharing a photo of the police car in his rear-view mirror, Liedtke told of the officer's initial surprise when he started to eat his 'phone'. "Took a bite out of the cookie. He was so confused and angry. Told me to hold tight, he is back in his car now." But when the policeman returned things turned sour for the comedian. "Says I have a warrant for unpaid parking tickets? Making me go with him. Letting me text gf but Im tweeting this," he said. There was twitter silence from Liedtke as he presumably sweated it out in the slammer, eventually emerging 10 hours later a defeated man. "Wasn't worth it. I'm an idiot... No more iPhone Cookies." http://news.msn.co.nz/worldnews/8770706/comedians-iphone-cookie-prank-backfires .

NAIROBI (Reuters) - A Kenyan football fan unable to cope with Manchester United's loss to northern rival Newcastle United committed suicide over the weekend, a senior Kenyan police official said on Monday. John Macharia, 28, plunged to his death from a multi-storey apartment block in Nairobi after David Moyes' men suffered a second home defeat in four days, denting the champions' chance of retaining their Premier League title. "Macharia jumped from seventh floor of an apartment at Pipeline Estate after realising that his team Manchester United lost 1-0 to Newcastle at Old Trafford and committed suicide," Nairobi's County Police Commander Benson Kibui told Reuters. http://nz.sports.yahoo.com/football/news/article/-/20242693/kenyan-fan-commits-suicide-after-man-utds-loss-to-newcastle/

Final Part:- Conclusion Putting aside my disagreements with the erudite and highly personable Michael Fargher, I cannot help but be struck by the galling injustice which often frames this debate. I am terribly sorry, but when a government that I have never voted for squanders hundreds of billions of Rands of taxpayers' money not on schools nor on hospitals nor even on bland civil service jobs but rather on submarines that we don't need and fighter jets that we can't fly; when this same administration pursues the genocidal policy of denying those infected with HIV access to anti-retrovirals whilst recommending that they alleviate their agonising deaths by eating beetroot and garlic; when this monstrous regime applauds Robert Mugabe's desecration of Zimbabwe and then has the audacity - the mind blowing hypocrisy - to blame a highly economically productive, peaceful and largely self-sufficient racial minority for rising economic inequality I find myself possessed by the overwhelming and irrepressible urge to tell that regime and all who defend it to get stuffed. Richard Wilkinson is currently reading for a Masters of Law degree at the University of Cambridge.

Continued:- I have difficulty understanding how this success can be used to argue that inherent privilege remains with the white minority. For twenty years a democratically elected government has been in undisturbed possession of the nation's tax revenue, the entire civil service, countless state owned enterprises, the SABC, the police, the military and now large parts of the judiciary. How can anyone sensibly argue that ‘white South Africans' somehow retain magical and exclusive access to privilege? I'm sorry Mike: this argument might have worked in the 1990's but it doesn't work anymore. Secondly, even if race is a valid proxy for disadvantage, the unintended consequences of racialised transformation have been disastrous. Much of what Mike is proposing has been implemented to the fullest degree in the last 20 years: racialised affirmative action and BEE have all been tested to destruction. And the result? The construction of an insider/outsider system of patronage in which the same politically connected elite is licensed to be repeatedly enriched and empowered; the deterioration and in some cases the outright collapse of large parts of the state; the legitimisation of the race card used most egregiously in the corruption and politicisation of the Judicial Services Commission. Our mining industry is in vertiginous decline, our schools are now the very worst in the world - and Mike is calling for more? Just one more heave and this time it will work? Above all, this racialised transformation has led to a sharp increase in inequality - the very measure Mike is so keen to improve. This is the problem not only with Mike's article but with so much commentary, public policy and indeed many constitutional court judgments over the past 20 years: we presume not only that racially infused socialism is progressive but that it is the only legitimate ideology in town. The truth is that whatever progress has been made in the past 20 years has occurred not because of these policies but in spite of them. We do not need to reheat these rotten ideas any further. Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that it doesn't have to be this way. We could construct a system of transformation which is colour-blind and pro-poor. We could give heavily weighted school vouchers to children (of all races) who come from impecunious backgrounds so that they can attend the low-cost private school of their choice. We could favour small firms (of all races) when awarding state contracts. The trouble is that these ideas are dismissed out of hand with the ultimate irony being that their proponents are often labeled as racists. In the final analysis, what should matter is whether or not you are born into poverty. The colour of your skin should be as (ir)relevant as the month in which you have your birthday - after all, you choose neither. 2) The fallacy that in order to be successful transformation must be driven and dictated by the state and/or judiciary Mike's second big problem, in my view, is that his dream is idealistic to the point of being quixotic. He insists that we should strive not just for ‘equality of opportunities' but for ‘equality of outcomes.' The trouble is that it is not clear by what mechanisms he recommends that this be achieved. Does Mike propose that the state confiscate and redistribute all land and private property until equality of outcomes is achieved? Does he agree with Pierre de Vos that white people should be forced to pay a ‘race tax' as reparation for their supposedly odious legacy? Even if Mike does not propose economic suicide of this order, one can only assume that in his vision of transformation the state is accorded a central role. The trouble is that this approach has a woeful track record. State-driven service delivery has become bogged down in protests and corruption as an under capacitated bureaucracy (whose incapacity is ironically entrenched by non-merit based appointments) finds itself unable to cope. Once again, there are alternatives if we're prepared to give them a look-in. I am a libertarian. I am a libertarian because my interpretation of millennia of economic history is that people are best off when their core civil rights are protected and not displaced in favour of the collective good. I sincerely and genuinely believe that classical, radical liberalism is the most progressive, pro-poor approach to public policy. So, what does classical liberalism have to offer poor South Africans deeply scarred by the legacy of centuries of unequal and degrading treatment? The short answer is that pro-business liberalism generates economic growth which in turn generates jobs and tax revenue. This doesn't mean the state should sit back and do nothing. On the contrary - in order to create an economy which works for the majority we need to implement reforms which take power away from the state and organised cartels and transfer it to individuals. We need to reform African customary law so that rural people - especially rural women - own the land on which they live. We need to reform labour law to incentivise the hiring of workers. We need to make tender processes transparent and slanted in favour of small businesses. Finally, we need to make it easier for innovative, quality private schools to offer state-funded opportunities to poor children. But all of this involves confronting entrenched interests: the rural chiefs, the trade unions and the tenderpreneurs who have become too deeply embedded in the scaffolding of transformation to allow any hint of reform. 3) The fallacy that token feel-good schemes are substitutes for massive economic growth The simple fact is that if South Africa is to be a viable country it needs a far larger economy. Arguing about how we currently slice the cake is futile: $ 500 billion simply does not go far when shared amongst 50 million people. We need to double our annual GDP to $ 1 trillion, then again to $ 2 trillion and then $ 4 trillion. For this we will need 8% economic growth for the next 30 years. Economic history is clear: this sort of transformation can only be achieved through strongly protected property rights, a business climate that is friendly to investors and entrepreneurs and quality education probably delivered by privately run chains of low-cost schools. The trouble is that this conflicts with all manner of post-Apartheid holy cows which are regularly milked by ‘progressive' commentators - most notably that our increasingly fraying property rights system should be further unstitched. An example of an inadequate ‘token feel-good scheme' which Mike supports is the policy of making university graduates perform a year of community service. Mike correctly acknowledges the price of this policy: a year of community service will divert precious skills away from productive economic activity once again costing the country jobs and tax revenue. But then he just ignores this cost. The truth is that fads and gimmicks - no matter how sincerely expressed - simply cannot serve as a substitute for jobs and increased tax revenue. Moreover, these stop-gap solutions detract from the core issue: ANC governance has inflicted upon South Africa an economic and humanitarian catastrophe of truly monumental proportions. Sliding life expectancy and literacy rates have meant that we have tumbled down the UN Human Development Index from 62nd in the world in 1990 to 121st in 2012. Despite being one of the most naturally rich countries in the world we now find ourselves sandwiched between Kiribati and Vanuatu, trailing well behind the beleaguered peoples of Syria, Palestine and Albania. 4) The fallacy that wholesale racialised land reform is anything other than a blueprint for national famine Nowhere is the triumph of ‘transformation ideology' over pragmatism more complete - and nowhere are the consequences for human welfare more horrifying - than in the area of land reform. At precisely the moment when South Africa should be boosting its agricultural capacity by creating massive, job-rich agribusinesses we are doing the exact opposite. Pervasive land claims make using land as collateral for loans impossible, choking off the capital needed for investment. Government policy now glorifies the miserable existence that is small-scale subsistence farming. The narrative explained above is replicated with metronomic and depressing predictability. Instead of empowering the masses, tens of thousands of newly retrenched black farmworkers (many of whom benefitted from modest farm-sponsored housing, health and educational services) face destitution and starvation. Urban food prices will continue to rise as we entrench our position as a net importer of food. Ironically, the white farmers forced off their land will largely be OK. They'll take whatever compensation they get and move off to farm somewhere else in the world or into some other industry. Meanwhile, our once productive countryside will be left fertile but fallow. But hey - at least it will have been successfully ‘transformed!' It's at times like this when I wonder whether the model Mike is punting should be renamed, as I think Pottinger once phrased it, from ‘transformation' to ‘deformation' - because that's exactly what it is.

Wasn't he a member of this lot for a very long time ? There may be a chance to fix things, but the ANC regime has no interest in doing so. They prefer to follow Mugabe's lead and screw the country into the ****ter to appease their followers with freebies in order to hang on to power. Quote: http://www.politicsweb.co.za/mailstr...id=3757&mid=35 67&l=3&a= Richard Wilkinson 21 October 2013 Richard Wilkinson replies to Michael Fargher's advocacy of equality of outcomes My good friend Michael Fargher has written an article on South African inequality, its causes and the steps that should be taken to alleviate it ("White-washed equality" Politicsweb October 5 2013). I disagree very strongly with almost everything he says. This is quite something because five years ago I could easily have written exactly the same article. Yet experience has caused me to question past assumptions to the point where today I take a view that is practically diametrically opposed to Mike's. First, let's start with the points where I think Mike and I are in agreement. I agree that South Africa is deeply unequal and that economic inequality is a serious threat to the country's future - a threat that could become lethal when coupled with a prolonged period of economic stagnation. Secondly, let me be clear that I support ‘transformation:' a hard-to-define concept which at its most basic consists of trying to make South Africa's future better than its past; a future which is wealthier, more peaceful, more socially coherent and - yes - less unequal. The mistaken belief that redistribution necessarily reduces inequality I think that the core of our disagreement concerns the belief that any and all models of transformation and redistribution will ineluctably lead to reduced inequality. Post-Apartheid South Africa has seen one of the largest peaceful redistributions of wealth in history. A procession of well-intended schemes has been set up: industry-wide affirmative action charters, state-led industrial plans, racialised university admissions processes, quotas on sports teams and, most notably, Black Economic Empowerment (which was hastily renamed Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment following the emergence of egregious cases of corrupt enrichment). Redistribution has been matched by ballooning government handouts: nearly one-third of the population now receives some form of taxpayer-funded welfare. I'm not sure what more could possibly be done. You would think that after all this the country would be more equal. And yet it isn't. According to an OECD study conducted by Leibbrandt et al, South Africa's Gini co-efficient increased from 0.66 in 1993 to 0.70 in 2008. The real kicker lies in the breath-taking increase in inequality within ‘black' South Africa since the early 1990's, a phenomenon which led the authors to urge ‘policy initiatives which address the increase in intra-racial inequality, rather than those focused solely on redistribution between inter-racial population groups.' I can't remember precisely but I think it was Brian Pottinger who summed up this trend in his terrifying but outstanding book ‘The Mbeki Legacy' by pithily rearranging Churchill's famous phrase: ‘never before in the history of human endeavour has so much been redistributed from so many to so few.' Why then has transformation failed so spectacularly? I will argue that it is due largely to the unintended consequences which flow from a model which is practically hardwired to give rise to pernicious outcomes. These deficiencies consist of four beguiling post-Apartheid premises that are so widely held that they may as well be referred to as the ‘Gospel of the New South Africa' in that those who apostatise them are susceptible to charges of heresy. As I explain below, each of these premises is deeply flawed. 1) The fallacy that in order to be successful transformation needs to be racialised Firstly, the argument that race serves even as a remotely accurate measure of disadvantage is well and truly dead. South Africa is now a country where black shack dwellers living in execrable poverty tick the same racial box on the census form as Patrice Motsepe and Kenny Kunene. Mike also seems to assume that white South Africa is uniformly well off. Yes, some of the families of Sandhurst and Constantia might have connections which make jobs easier to come by. But not every white person lives in Sandhurst or Constantia. They don't all fly business class. Contrary to popular liberation folklore, whatever wealth the bulk of the white minority does have is largely due to parents waking up early, working really hard to create businesses or earn a living, handing over up to half of their incomes in tax (all in the aim of bettering the broader country) and using whatever's left over to effectively pay twice so that their children can avoid the world's worst public education system. If after all this the white middle class is left with some money I hardly resent them having some fun with it. Ironically, one unintended consequence of racialised transformation has been that retrenched and otherwise discarded white workers have been spurred on to build up an enormous amount of business: former policemen have established highly profitable private security firms, former state teachers, nurses and doctors now devote their energies to private schools and private hospitals, the rise of DSTV now means we don't have to endure the SABC.

Just because you are offended doesn't mean that you are right and so therefore he must be wrong. I am sick to death with the way over the top coverage of that man's death. Mind you I get annoyed very quickly with the media vomit inducing sycophancy when any "famous" or "celebrity" kicks the bucket. Thousands of good, decent and normal people die every day but they are ignored.

After the attack on Pearl Harbour Britain declared war on Japan quicker than the U.S. did.