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One thing that irritates me frequently is the wretched vocabulary demonstrated on the box by otherwise intelligent people.

Idiots dream up words in order for them to appear intelligent whilst simply confirming the opposite. I’ve lost count of the passages of tortured prose I’ve had to read that ends up completely bereft of any meaning.

We’ve had upsizing, downsizing, outsourcing, stakeholders, the coal face and other dismal examples. If these idiots were left alone in their cubicles or were otherwise gainfully employed it would be fine but the rest of humanity grasps these stupidities without any thought of their meaning and context.

The only example I will use today is the word ‘icon’ and its derivatives. Four letters that have been bandied about to describe everything from despots to floor cleaners.

“Gordon Brown is an iconic politician”. For crying out loud! An icon is a representation of a religious figure or a graphic representation of something. What they are trying to say unsuccessfully is that they think the man embodies all that is great and good in politicians. In other words, an exemplar.

‘Diva’ is the other word. Most of these reedy voiced kids who cannot hold a note to save their ostentatious lives wouldn’t know what a diva was if they tripped over one on their way to take a snort.

Just wait, the next buzzword will be ’seminal’.

Talking of Politicians

We have been subjected to a seemingly endless line of pathetic politicians wringing their hands or coming out fighting over this expenses scandal in the UK.

Firstly, I subscribe to the Billy Connolly school of thought about politicians - every person with even the slightest intention of becoming one should be euthanased immediately before they can do real harm. Let’s face it, we all work the system if we can get away with it. A well designed system won’t allow us to do that but in the case of the UK MPs, they designed the system, a little fact that hasn’t been mentioned. 

This tedious bunch of no-hopers coming on the telly and mea culpa-ing all over the place shows the sort of twerps that the UK passes for a government. “I have done no wrong!’ and “I broke no rules!”.

Of course you haven’t dear - YOU MADE THE RULES!

“I was going to pay it back” Gimme a break.

“It is an embarrassment”, ” It was an oversight”, “It was a mistake” -  ’Cos you got caught pal. And of course, as soon as you noticed the ‘financial irregularity’, you were going to pay the whole lot back, volunteer in Darfur for a year and take whatever medicine was meted out to you by the local party hacks.

Right.

“I needed that three thousand quid home theatre system for my constituents”. “My moat on my massive English estate smelled a little so I had it cleaned in case my constituents might think lesser of me”.

The difference between us and them is that they got their jobs by promising good governance, financial responsibility, a level head and generally, blokes, ‘You’re lucky to get someone like me’.

Politicians, I have alway felt are by definition, pathological liars and consummate opportunists and this scandal has demonstrated this in spades.

Thought for the Day

Why, when you’re travelling behind a woman driver on a twisty road, does she lean into the corner like a motorcyclist? I’ve never seen a man do it. Are women closet bikers?

 . . .why there is a widespread dislike of banks? Pause to draw breath . . . 

I’m with Nedbank - heavy hitter bank if you’re not in South Africa. I was with Natal Building Society, which go gobbled up by Peoples Bank, which got gobbled up in a further bout of corporate incest by Nedbank. I have had such crappy service by a variety of banks over the years that I go into them in a confrontational attitude. Last year I got told not to slam the doors as I was scaring the tellers. Everyone in Nedbank knows me in our area - the Mr. Meldrew of Malvern.

I usually withdraw a chunk of cash and a couple of years ago noticed I was paying $12 for every withdrawal. I see the bank woman who tells me I need a ‘Transactor’ account with a fixed counter withdrawal fee of $2. Brilliant! I change with gusto and happily withdraw for two years.

Yesterday I see from the account that the wretched ‘counter withdrawal fee’ is $13 again. Nedbank - Oh but you changed the account on 12th December and BTW, we don’t do the Transactor any more. We have replaced it with the ‘Transactor Plus’. Too bloody right - the ‘Plus’ is not in the client’s favour that’s for cerain.

Banks don’t say tell you that they have increased their normally usurious rates to outrageous levels. They tell you that they have a new ‘fee structure’. $13 to withdraw my own money - money that they are already making interest on.

When the local little branch was NBS, there were three ladies who ran the place. Now it’s at least 8 flunkies and the service is worse. I was in the queue one lunchtime - with the usual single teller at that time - when six clients joined it within 30 seconds or so. To my great enjoyment, they all started to complain very loudly about the lack of service. Much scuttling about behind the glass and a second teller arrived, seemingly out of the floor tiles. And then the computer went down.

That’s the other thing that clients really enjoy about South African banks - the ability to form really close relationships with the bank staff.

Firstly you get scanned with a device that will render you impotent by 40 and then have to go through an airlock. You can’t open the inner door until the outer door is shut and if you already have your hand on the inner door handle, the red light will not change to green - really confusing for older clients.

Further, the airlock will not open the inner door if there is more than one person in it. How it knows this I have no idea. maybe it’s the rate of respiration or perhaps the volume of alimentary emissions.

Once having gained access to the inner sanctum and waited for twenty minutes while sundry local tradesmen have disgorged piles of coin, cheques and notes you are able to confront the teller. In South African banks, he/she is protected by a sheet of laminated glass that would stop an RPG. There is no communication system to make allowance for this impenetrable barrier so each client has to shout their personal details in full view of the assembled multitude.

The tellers, on their side of this hermetic barrier do not shout but mumble - on purpose I think. So there is this bout of yelling, a silent response, followed by a yelled ‘Pardon?’

Not acceptable I am afraid.

Now, to save their tellers from breaking into anything resembling a sweat and for the ennumerate amongst them, the banks introduced note counters. So, instead of mentally counting along with the teller, you watch this box of tricks whirr away.

Notwithstanding the fact that the thing may be wildly inaccurate, you cannot see the numbers anyway. In the bank the other day, this thing went off and the teller turns to me with the supercilious look a schoolyard bully has when he’s downed the class swat.

The machine is at the back of the office so the numbers are way below the one degree subtended by my eye necessary for distinct vision, secondly, the screen is an LCD screen with practically zero contrast and finally, the reflection of the fluorescent lights is on it.

‘Do you think I have telescopic vision?’ I yell through 4 inches of glass.

All the troubles of the world descend on the teller and with a prodigious mental rolling of the eyes, the machine is unplugged and brought to the front whereupon I have to assume ‘100′ means that there are 100 notes.

I promise that the next time I go in and this farce is repeated, I am going to say ‘Sorry, but there were only 98 notes there - I can count just as fast as the machine’ and make the teller count the bloody things by hand and exercise a bit of his limited brain power.

A good example of a complete lack of any sort of cerebral activity in Cape Town also known as a ‘What on earth were they thinking?’ picture.

Although this thing was flown in by helipcopter (with good reason) only to find the brackets to hold it were wrong, SLOOF, against all reason decided to use a truck to get it back to the workshops. Who’s going to pay for this mess?

The 2010 organizing committee had better be a bit more jacked up or we’re going to get an interesting few weeks next year.

Although this blog consists principally of complaints, there is the odd occasion where praise is due.

We have been to Mkuze in Zululand, one of our favourite campgrounds, several times and have had a pleasant time. It is really an extension of the Lake St. Lucia. The last camping session is likely to be the last there.

Firstly, they have fenced the camp so we don’t get the odd rhino wandering through (hasn’t stopped the monkeys from ransacking tents though).

Secondly, the toilet rolls in the ablution are usually absent. The camp manager accused all and sundry of stealing them. He didn’t have an answer when I told hime that the inners were all there and whoever was resposible for replacing them couldn’t be bothered. Needless to say, the condition of the showers was in a similar pitiful state despite the fact that the woman responsible stood outside the ablutions for a solid 6 hours.

Thirdly, on the last occasion, the main lights in the campsite were due to go off at midnight but managed to extinguish themselves at 8pm. And, there are NO lights then. Complaining resulted in the fact that the generator diesel had not been replenished. The next evening, they were off at 8pm again.

We have been at the receiving end of this slovenly behaviour at several camps over the years.

However, we took some friends from Kiwiland to Ithala in the far north of Natal. We had been there several times over the years and always had a pleasant stay. It’s not a large reserve and there’s not a large amount of visible game.

The chalets there are really tastefully arranged so that they are almost invisible. The camp has a restaurant with a magnificent view over the Pongola vally from the deck, a fast foods outlet, a pub, provision shop,  curio shop and information centre.

The Attaboy is directed at the chalet, which was spotless, There was more than enough pottery and utensils, also spotless. The chalet was free from any dirt. The Ezemvelo Wildlife need to get rid of the silly brick braais though and go back to the steel ones. 

To make the evenings more interesting, a long procession of bush babies arrive to eat avocados, pineapple and bananas.

So, compliments to the staff of Ithala Game Reserve.