Golfers Paradise

'been there......

Blowin' in the wind

Beffiting it is to end the year on a sober note, of the world I find myself fortunate to live in, asides from all the negativity surrounding us, and who best to write so effectively except Bob...no no not the Marley but the Dylan in his 1963 release of 'Blowing in the wind', a select few refer to his music as prophetic and he owes that to lyrics like the below that continue to stand the test of time, the song has been given a fresh lease of life by the inimitable Katie Melua ( 9 million bicycles) who features very highly on my best artists at the moment, enjoy or should I say commiserate? and do get the track if you can or contact me if you cant....

Blowing in the wind:

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Copyright © 1962; renewed 1990 Special Rider Music

'Writers Block'

A writers block of sorts

'N a failed white Christmas....Christmas all the same...

Blame it on global warming or something

You've been so kind

You've been sweet

As in cherry on the cake

Salt on my steak

Air I breathe

Pillow on my bed

You've made my life bliss

'Bless you.

I'm no Christmas person

Pomp and ceremony's not my thing

But that wont stop me from saying

Merry Christmas!

Gifts From the Heart

According to legend, a young man while roaming the desert came across a spring of delicious crystal-clear water. The water was so sweet he filled his leather canteen so he could bring some back to a tribal elder who had been his teacher. After a four-day journey he presented the water to the old man who took a deep drink, smiled warmly and thanked his student lavishly for the sweet water. The young man returned to his village with a happy heart.Later, the teacher let another student taste the water. He spat it out, saying it was awful. It apparently had become stale because of the old leather container. The student challenged his teacher: "Master, the water was foul. Why did you pretend to like it?"The teacher replied, "You only tasted the water. I tasted the gift. The water was simply the container for an act of loving-kindness and nothing could be sweeter. Heartfelt gifts deserve the return gift of gratitude."

I think we understand this lesson best when we receive innocent gifts of love from young children. Whether it's a ceramic tray or a macaroni bracelet, the natural and proper response is appreciation and expressed thankfulness because we love the idea within the gift.

Gratitude doesn't always come naturally. Unfortunately, most children and many adults value only the thing given rather than the feeling embodied in it. We should remind ourselves and teach our children about the beauty and purity of feelings and expressions of gratitude. After all, gifts from the heart are really gifts of the heart.

Michael Josephson
www.charactercounts.org

The Grind

Worshipping God

'Let us pray to whatever God we worship, remembering as my dad taught me throughout my childhood, that Christ was not a Christian, Mohammed was not a Mohammedan, Buddha was not a Buddhist and Krishna was not a Hindu'

Gotham Chopra's foreword in Deepak Chopra's THE DEEPER WOUND.

University rankings

Check your Alma mater

Africa: http://www.socialcapitalgateway.org/eng-rankingafrica.htm

World (pdf): http://ri.epfl.ch/webdav/site/ri/shared/Rankings.pdf

South Africa occupies the top ten African universities but our best university is number 398 on the world rankings! I have been looking for University of Malawi's rank, its supposedly 64th in Africa but considering the world rankings below on Africas top universities, I would have to guess the world ranking is not so pleasing at present, in time I guess then...


The InternetLab Ranking of 30 Top African Universities
(Rank
University
Country
World Rank)

1
University of Cape Town
South Africa
398

2
Universiteit Stellenbosch
South Africa
566

3
Universiteit van Pretoria - University of Pretoria
South Africa
718

15
University of Dar Es Salam
Tanzania
2,819

16
University of Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
3,072

17
Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane
Morocco
3,174

20
University of Zululand
South Africa
3,724

The Terror Barrier

The first ten years of my stay here on Planet Earth were spent in Owen Sound, Ontario. I can vividly remember the hot summer day I was taken by an older member of my family to Harrison Park where there was a fine swimming pool. The older kids were going up the ladder and jumping or diving off the high diving board. They were having a great time. Wanting to be accepted by the older kids, I too went up the ladder, reluctantly, but I climbed it.I will never forget the terror that gripped my mind and body when I looked down. Their coaxing did absolutely no good. There was no way I was going off that board. I climbed back down the ladder. That was the first time in my life that I can recall coming up against the Terror Barrier. I not only lost out on the excitement and thrill that would have been gained by jumping. I lost a little self-respect also.

If you think hard enough, you will recall the first time you came face to face with the Terror Barrier. You either stepped through it to freedom or back into bondage, imprisoned by your own fears.I continued to step back from anything I truly feared until I was twenty-six years of age. Then with the encouragement of a caring person, I said "no more" and I have been free ever since.

The Terror Barrier comes up in front of us every time we attempt to make a major move in life, into an area we have never traveled before.I have sold businesses in Canada, the U.S.A. and England for years and I could not even guess at the number of times I have sat with men and women who come right up to that barrier wanting to go ahead but not being able to. These were people who could have succeeded and wanted to, but didn't.Is that Terror Barrier holding you or your business back? Do what I did and crash through. The compensation is incredible.

Bob Proctor

UK Insurance bosses jailed for fraud

A former insurance chief has been jailed for seven years after being convicted of defrauding investors. Michael Bright, 63, was in charge of Independent Insurance when it collapsed in 2001 in one of the industry's most high-profile insolvencies. Finance director Dennis Lomas received a four-year sentence. Deputy manager Philip Condon was given three years. A jury had heard how the trio masked the firm's financial problems by withholding details of claims.

Probe
About 1,000 jobs were lost in the collapse of the company - which had previously been regarded as a financial success story.

The three men were charged in December 2005 after a probe by the Serious Fraud Office and City of London police into the firm's closure. The SFO said that the insurer's accounts for 2000 showed a £22m profit when they should have indicated a loss of at least £180m.

London's Southwark Crown Court heard that the trio knew that the market value of the company would drop "dramatically" if full details of the firm's losses were known.
Bright, of Smarden, Kent was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to defraud.
Lomas, 56, of Haywards Heath, West Sussex, was found guilty of the same offences.
Meanwhile Condon, 48, from Sevenoaks, Kent, was convicted of one conspiracy to defraud charge and cleared of another. Bright and Lomas were also found guilty of "making incomplete disclosure" of its reinsurance agreements between 1998 and 2001.

Damning audit
The court heard the trio hid the company's ailing health from fellow directors, professional advisers and investors in a bid to protect their reputations, jobs and salaries.
Undisclosed liabilities were "buried", figures manipulated and "bad" reinsurance contracts concealed. Jurors were told they even "suppressed" a damning internal audit which highlighted major concerns a year before the company went under.

The three men insisted they only ever did their job openly, honestly and to the best of their abilities.

Some of the firm's 500,000 private and corporate policyholders have been given a total of £357m from the Financial Services Authority's compensation scheme since the collapse.

-BBC NEWS

Newtons Third Law of Motion

Just a passing thought this, silly one yes but a passing thought all the same, I do not remember the substance of the discussion with a secondary school 'puppy love' who went on to say to me 'to every action there was a reaction', and in the heat of that discussion that at the time, I remember fairly well did seem like my life depended on it.... Au contrare, with the benefit of hindsight, autumn leaves.... a quick retort won the moment, thanks to an old mate Isaac Newton, Yes the fellow who 'witnessed' an apple fall in the year 1666 and thought up the theory of 'universal gravitation' and who said in his third law of motion 'to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction', he was talking of forces and motion of course but who's to say how you apply science laws and theories in real life and during that 'life and death' situation Mr Isaac Newton saved my life and the other party's ommission of the critical 'equal and opposite reaction' part of the law.....talk of science coming to the rescue of a domestic crisis....just a passing thought all the same on how errors and omissions even in business presentations, propositions, contracts can be quite costly.

By the way there is available on most markets now insurance cover called Directors and Officers Liability and in the case of those calling themselves 'proffessionals' the cover is proffessional liability insurance cover, both these covers are in cognizance of two main aspects the first that as human beings we are prone to err with costs consequently arising therefrom no matter how well trained we are, plus off-course the public is more liability conscious these days and will 'bay for blood' if a 'professional' costs them some of or the whole value of an investment or business enterprise. Now there's Newtons third law of motion again, rearing its head.

The Mental Giant that lives in you

The "Open, Sesame!" of Life

There is a Napoleonic feeling of power that insures success in the knowledge that this invincible "Life Principle" is behind your every act. Knowing that you have working with you a force which never yet has failed in anything it has undertaken, you can go ahead in the confident knowledge that it will not fail in your case, either. The ingenuity which overcame every obstacle in making you what you are, is not likely to fall short when you have immediate need for it. It is the reserve strength of the athlete, the "second wind" of the runner, the power that, in moments of great stress or excitement, you unconsciously call upon to do the deeds which you ever after look upon as superhuman.

But they are in no wise superhuman. They are merely beyond the capacity of your conscious self. Ally your conscious self with that sleeping giant within you, rouse him daily to the task, and those "superhuman" deeds will become your ordinary, everyday accomplishments.

It matters not whether you are Banker or Lawyer, Business Person or Clerk. Whether you are the custodian of millions, or have to struggle for your daily bread. This "Life Principle" makes no distinction between rich and poor, high and low. The greater your need, the more readily it will respond to your call. Wherever there is an unusual task, wherever there is poverty or hardship or sickness or despair, there is this Servant of your Mind, ready and willing to help, asking only that you call upon him. And not only is it ready and willing, but it is always able to help. Its ingenuity and resource are without limit. It is Mind. It is Thought. It is the Telepathy that carries messages without the spoken or written word. It is the Sixth Sense that warns you of unseen dangers. No matter how stupendous and complicated, nor how simple your problem may be - the solution of it is somewhere in Mind, in Thought. And since this solution does exist, this Mental Giant can find it for you. It can Know, and it can Do, every right thing. Whatever it is necessary for you to know, whatever it is necessary for you to do, you can know and you can do if you will but seek the help of this Genie-of-your-Mind and work with it in the right way.

It matters not whether you are Banker or Lawyer, Business Person or Clerk. Whether you are the custodian of millions, or have to struggle for your daily bread. This "Life Principle" makes no distinction between rich and poor, high and low. The greater your need, the more readily it will respond to your call. Wherever there is an unusual task, wherever there is poverty or hardship or sickness or despair, there is this Servant of your Mind, ready and willing to help, asking only that you call upon him.

And not only is it ready and willing, but it is always able to help. Its ingenuity and resource are without limit. It is Mind. It is Thought. It is the Telepathy that carries messages without the spoken or written word. It is the Sixth Sense that warns you of unseen dangers. No matter how stupendous and complicated, nor how simple your problem may be - the solution of it is somewhere in Mind, in Thought. And since this solution does exist, this Mental Giant can find it for you. It can Know, and it can Do, every right thing. Whatever it is necessary for you to know, whatever it is necessary for you to do, you can know and you can do if you will but seek the help of this Genie-of-your-Mind and work with it in the right way.

Robert Collier- From The Book of Life

From: Bob Proctor http://www.ccprogram.com/insights

Charles Dickens

"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."

Charles Dickens
1812-1870, Novelist

Tolstoy

"Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them."

Leo Tolstoy 1828-1910, Novelist and Philosopher

Patriotism: Preaching Water and Drinking Wine?

By Rejoice Ngwenya Besides being a Freelance Writer in Zimbabwe, Rejoice runs his own policy dialogue ‘think tank’ called Coalition for Market & Liberal Solutions: COMALISO More articles by this writter...

http://www.africanexecutive.com/modules/magazine/articles_editor.php?editor=90

A mist of self-deception has for long engulfed self-proclaimed life presidents in Africa, that anybody that does not echo the chords of their discorded, tyrannical hymn sheets is 'unpatriotic'. Perhaps they may be right, that if one, according to my Collins Dictionary, does not 'vigorously protect one's country and way of life', they fall under the category of what Robert Mugabe repeatedly calls ‘sell-outs.’ But then patriotism is not synonymous with blind faith, or dogmatic allegiance to one man's selfish wishes.

One cannot package patriotism and shelf it, only to retrieve it at the whim and desire of a dictator. It is neither meant to be a consideration for subservience and servitude nor a preserve of an incumbent president. When citizens are dazed and anaesthetized with calculated repression, they cannot be said to be patriotic. When Zimbabweans are said to be resilient and resistant to the transgressions of their forceful rulers, they do not pass the test of patriotism.
Patriotism is not situational, a self-proclaimed clarion of nation state bravado, waved and engraved on national coats of arms. We cannot claim that since Cubans have 'resisted' American 'sanctions' for forty-five years, they are patriotic. It is Fidel Castro who has soothed his ego for that long and gropes around in the political wilderness for collective national stupidity that he terms patriotism. Can we label Ugandans and Libyans, who have laboured under the yoke of skewed pan-African fundamentalism as patriotic? It is Yoweri Museveni and Muamar Gaddafi who have framed the definition of the word and displayed it on their fireplaces. We could not claim that Kenyans, under the poisonous political excesses of Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi were patriotic, or that Malawians of the Kamuzu Banda era, the Zambians of the life and times of Kenneth Kaunda; the Mozambicans of Samora Machel and of course the Zimbabweans of Robert Gabriel Mugabe - were and are patriotic!

Patriotism is a spiritual condition of belonging, an acceptance that one's culture, national boundary, identity is unique. It is not an expression of superiority, but a humble acceptance of belonging. Patriotism without high self-esteem is superficial. When your ego has been bruised and brutalised, you lose self-respect. When your liberty has been vandalised, your privacy ransacked by those who are elected to protect your liberty, your patriotism is punctured. We Zimbabweans are patriotic not because we have 'resisted' Tony Blair, or snubbed George Bush. We have absorbed the curses and insults of xenophobic South Africans, Tswanas and British in pursuance of our dreams that have been bludgeoned by those who were elected to govern us. When a citizen ceases to command respect within his or her boundaries, and takes the option of enforced exile, they cannot be accused of being unpatriotic. Patriotism is not an exchangeable commodity that loses or accumulates value as one crosses the border. It is not about one man and his anointed cronies parceling it out at political rallies in exchange for delirious ululation.

Patriotism is a birthright, inalienable and life long. Presidents of Africa who masquarade on the grand regional, continental and global political stage as defenders of patriotism, but back home their citizens have no bread, milk, sugar, petrol, water, medical drugs, electricity, civic and political rights cannot claim a morsel of knowledge of what patriotism is about.

For Zimbabweans, patriotism is not according to the rulebook of ZANUpf and Robert Mugabe, no, it is what we feel. In Zimbabwe, the word has been desecrated, adulterated, poisoned, infringed, shredded and diluted with obscene and obnoxious, if not primitive and archaic political patronage. Let African dictators keep their version of patriotism in the annals of their forgettable, yet impeachable history. To us, it's simply - superficial, when they say it.

'Lost in Translation'

I could write a zillion aspects on the African marketing set-up and its hiccups, but firstly I must say I am a firm believer that we are all born marketers and our success in selling ourselves to other parties is what defines our leadership success or mediocrity and even success and popularity closer to our homes, I'll let you think back if you may, what did you say or do to your loved one for them to become your partner? I am sure for your success, some 'shmuck' with poor marketing skills, 'undersold' themselves and you ended up the victor with the 'spoils'....... think now of a child wailing and rolling on the ground trying to make a parent buy them a particular toy, give them some food or let them watch their favourite cartoon, that again is an attempt to influence an action, a sale as it were, marketing at its most basic level which just goes to say we are born marketers, we prefer to get our own way and that's where it all comes in, the convincing, creation of conviction in the potential consumer in what you are offering to take the action that means a sale and after that the support and retention of the customers for as long as they can still 'buy'.

Last week I wrote a exam paper on marketing services (rather than tangible products) after years of hands on experience it was a feast, I enjoyed it immensely, and I am truly lucky and blessed that three corporate entities funded and entrusted me with experimenting with marketing insurance in a field that hitherto was not active in the territories I danced in, it was a beautiful challenge and with the companies sponsoring my experiment everything was great, I laugh at what I presented as my very first marketing strategy (ha ha ha! and again) very raw! raw indeed! anyways they say a child has to crawl before it walks and isn't it the old philosopher Aristotle who was convinced and did to others that a fly had four legs! and then went on to say the snort from your nose when you have a cold is brain matter! and everybody believed him, anyways the life long learner that I am now is truly adept, I think, at strategies as it were but theres always a lot more to learn.

Let me invite you to share with me the opportunities that lie with the African continent just with a few utterly basic wild shots, lets look at basic examples like plasters that we use on bites, grazes and cuts in sub Saharan Africa, why are we still predominantly using pink coloured plaster that is meant is for light skinned people? look around your pharmacy and try and get a dark colored plaster, I am sure it will be a challenge ......and if you have a flat nose like I do and wear prescription spectacles try and get a pair that fit on your nose as perfectly as they fit a sharper nosed person, you will not succeed, as I have not, when you consider this eye glasses scenario we do look a smite ridiculous with the bridge of the glasses hanging way above your nose....... but it fits perfectly in signifying where we stand in the global consumer market, products are rarely custom made for us as a market, we seem to be a by-market that simply accepts what it is given, surely at this day and age an entrepreneur that will look at the peculiarities of the African nation more seriously than I have will have a steady ready stable product market.

Then there's this Nobel Peace Prize laureate last week talking about intelligence and colour...........'naw'! its not worth a comment, not even a toss. Still though I'd encourage you to read this article, http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/30/172945/17 , the fact that african scientific records were ignored, mutilated by invaders and colonialists and most cases shamelessly plagiarised and claimed by imposters as their own don't mean Sub Saharans never developed themselves, lets shatter that notion once and for all, there was simply a common 'theft' of ideas, land, people (slavery), history (records, artefacts, gold) etceteras that conquerors, colianialists, settlers and warmongering invaders undertook that both rampantly and systematically robbed a continent of its pride.

Galileo

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use - Galileo Galilei.

OF 'SELF MADE' MEN

As each one of us delves through our mental archives, we find dotted there a scatter graph plot (with axes kindness versus measure of impact of the kindness) with many direct acts of random kindness mostly from strangers that right through to your present level of youth leave an impressionable mark and remind us of how humanity has come so far due to empathy, kindness and togetherness rather than absolute disengagement, utter exclusivity or lack of compassion for other beings. Human beings alike have so much capacity to assist people in need and indeed do so unless compelled by an external force or many a time internal force to act otherwise (A Newton's First law of motion adaptation attempt).

The best feeling one is ever to get is immediately after a selfless act, the 'high' that one experiences is immensely satisfying/gratifying, have you ever had someone effusively thank you for some kindness or help you provided them when they were in need? I mean you practically feel like you are walking on air when you know you have made a positive/constructive difference in someones life, you know have been a true agent of a greater being because the Creator rewards you inside yourself, its like scoring brownie points....... invariably when one looks at another person irregardless of age, disposition, race etceteras one sees ones own and we extend a helping hand without a thought, almost in reflex, thinking to yourself that this is someones beloved mother, father, brother, child......and for every soul we touch we create capacity to replicate many times over as in viral marketing the small kindnesses that they were given to others, spreading warmth, smiles across our communities and the world.

I too have been truly blessed by very many kind people, at fore in my business world is Ian who took me up as a novice in Insurance, mentored and trained me as I rose through the ranks to be second only to the ultimate within the establishment. On reflection this Sunday morning, I find all I have done thereafter is to apply what he taught and trained me and amazingly it has been a winning approach, thank you Sir. I guess its my turn now to do within my 'littleness' what I could for whomever I can without expecting anything in return.

Spread the kindness, the talent.... you never lose, its like planting a seed that stays alive and healthy forever.

Now tell me, does 'self' made ever exist?

OF TRADING ONLINE and HUMOUR

http://www.constantcomedy.com/
for humour at its best

http://www.gnutrade.com/
open an account, access the main stock exchanges ( DOW, NASDAQ, S & P, FTSE, etc) directly with no commissions involved, live market prices, online practical learning of trading and trade! just like that!

To my sis Tichitenji

JTKM- As we brush shoulders with the people closest in our lives, we easily take them and their achievements for granted.

This is to salute your academic achievement so far, until now it was just my little sister I was looking at but hey! all that cake topped up with the Acc biased first deg, CPA and Masters, Well done! I am proud beyond measure.

Zizikhala choncho!!! Vijengi vyoo! Way to go!!!

Funguo (Keys)

Funguo nitaupata wapi? (where will I find my keys)
mlango wangu umejifunga (my door's locked me outside)
Bila kuipata funguo (if I won't get the keys)
Mimi nitalala nje (I will sleep outside)

naomba niokotee
naomba nilale ndani (I want to sleep inside)
ilelelelele nitalala wapi mama
funguo (my keys)

nitatake kulala! (I want to sleep)
mimi ninitaka yangu ( I want mine (keys))

huwezi, huwezi, huwezi (You can't, you can't, you can't)

Twende tuitafute (Lets go look (for the keys))

Au siyo!


I went for a walk in the nippy North London weather of Islington this evening and the i-pod blaring in my poor aurals went onto the 48th track that had the Swahili lyrics above, I must tell you I experienced that rare 'Socrates' moment, the 'key's' are a crucial issue, what are the 'keys' in your life? what would happen if you lost your 'keys'? what would happen if you couldn't access the valuables of your life because you lost the only 'keys', what would you do to avoid 'sleeping outside'?... luckily this was not one of those difficult to solve situations, because the song suggested the way forward, it said 'twende tuitafute' (lets go look for the 'keys') so there it is! whatever your 'keys' are, take good care of them, dont lose them, but if you do lose them don't go all waffling around, just look for them, plain and simple, no drama, no dancing around, no waffling, just look for 'em.......and I guess you are saying its always safe to keep a spare copy, now that depends on what type of "key" it is you are musing on.......

Funguo!

MUGABE- All good things must come to an end

All good things must come to an end, I must admit that more times than less I have championed Comrade Mugabes constructive efforts, but....... that was then and this is now, the sufferation of the local people is heartbreaking, there say your 'pops' was from Nyasaland, if thats so then come home Sir and let it all go, its way overdue, you need some rest, yes you do.

I remember visiting Harare in the late 90's and these big meat eating Zim fellows asked with rude undertones 'hows the old man?' that was during the Banda days, yes Good old 'Ngwazi' of the 'Kwacha' good feeling, well a few years ago I happened to be in Harare again and it was my turn to ask 'hows the old man?', after a few mumbles here and there the discussion went cold, the big meat eating Zims were afraid to speak openly. How things change!

We need a strong Zim back, we salute you Comrade Bob, but its time to go, all things must come to an end. Another sad sight of great men overtaken by events, Like the Ngwazi's political demise, your time has come or is it has gone?

ONLINE DRAFT CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF MALAWI

http://www.constitution.org/cons/malawi.txt

LOBBY FOR FORMALISING SOCIAL SECURITY IN MALAWI

Of late I have had interest in the plight of the Malawian worker and pensions at a very personal level and my below thought train originates therefrom.

Being a citizen of a country in this century should be a source of comfort to the citizenry in all respects such as protection from hunger, access to land of your own, access to free transport and medical attention especially for the elderly and so on and so forth. Malawi up to this date does not have anything that closely resembles any shade of a welfare state, the leadership from independence on is still so deeply into political bickering and tackling the opposition, and the opposition does not help things either, as they try to trip the current well meaning leadership at each and every turn through legal means and otherwise, its a disgraceful mess! Shame on you!

What about the people that fought for independence? death included, Why did they fight? I suppose they fought for they imagined a better society for the masses, Why then is there up to date no legislation compulsorily protecting the employee and the citizen in Malawi? why is protection left in the main to private insurance companies? Has the responsibility for citizens by the government of Malawi been delegated to the private sector? why haven't any of the said lawmakers in parliament even broached the social security subject in a coherent manner? What are the advantages then of being born a Malawi citizen apart from taxation that dissapears into a bottomless pit? what does the 'poverty eradication' slogan mean without social security?.......in the country just next door (Tanzania), proper employee protecting legislation can be and is a wealth creating tool for the nation by empowering the working population while shielding it from financial harm, the sudden explosion of wealth and prosperity in Tanzania is not a miracle, it is a result of policy adopted at independence by the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and his top brass of brave people that dared to be different, embraced their own brand of socialism and other policies to inter alia force the Tanzanian employee to save 20% of his basic salary every month! and now after close to 40 odd years of these proceeds accumulating and the population getting used to forced saving the retiring generations funds are released into the economy creating employment and yes comfort!

The World Bank in 1999 championed Social Security as a tool that is responsible for bringing and sustaining wealth in people in the developed world, through the suggested framework of a fundamental shift to development politics that puts social policy at the centre of development, this as mentioned above is a tool that would be fundamental to poverty reduction in Africa and Malawi in particular, sadly the concept is not yet reflected in the Malawian legal system in its entirety or within Malawi's social framework. It is not that the Malawi population is not thinking of it, they are, for instance if one 'thumbs' through the online Law Society of Malawi newsletter of May/June 2006 there is very good article on Pensions and related aspects by Pasipau Wadonda-Chirwa, a Law Lecturer at the University of Malawi, Chancellor College, Zomba a link for which I paste

FORMALISING SOCIAL SECURITY IN MALAWI

which every forward looking Malawian should read and lobby their politician for to become law before mid 2008, why bury such a good forward looking article? why do we play with our time when we are in positions of influence? why do we not rise above self? why are we settling for mediocrity? why can we not have more individual lives collectively that show achievement above expectations and create a genuine better future for all? what are we preparing our little ones for? a trudge into another level of utter mediocrity? People in authority; lets protect our people, give them affordable housing so that the nation has somewhere to sleep, force them to save through a legal tool (Act of Parliament), give the elderly free transport because they gave birth to a us and worked hard just to bring us up, give the nation a organised health system that involves qualitative free consultation and perhaps again free medication for the elderly and unemployed, we need to turn the corner, and for Gods sake stop holding people ransom on higher education, the current numbers going into university create an artificial and unnecessary college and university educated minority whilst our fellow citizens in Africa graduate thousands upon thousands every year! with all these things not done we will continue to wallow in poverty and sub-servience. Make us proud of our country of birth.

It seems years after the gentleman from Ndirande (Bless his soul) composed our national anthem,'njala, nthenda, nsanje' still reign supreme. We need a hero, someone who will close his/her eyes on the rest of the world and focus on these three seemingly dicey Malawi issues, or is it that parliament is not just doing its job?

Let me leave you with an excerpt from the Draft Malawi Constitution under the Human Rights section as food for thought:

19. Liberty
Every person has the right of personal liberty.

20. Human Dignity and Personal Freedom

(1) The dignity of all persons shall be inviolable. ........

21. Equality

(1) The law shall prohibit any discrimination and shall guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on grounds such as: race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, nationality, ethnic or social origin, disability, property, birth or other status.
(2) Legislation may be passed addressing inequalities in society and prohibiting discriminatory practices and the propagation of such practices and may render such practices criminally punishable by the courts

OF LIFE

In the last few days I find myself trying to imagine the life of a man who lived for over 80 years on this earth, tracing his life through his leaving his village in the northern part of Malawi after attending the Noma version of education then, walking by foot to South Africa carrying some rice in a piece of cloth at the end of a stick that he would occasionally dip into water to soften and feed on as his group travelled south towards South Africa in the early 1900's in search for a better life; being returned home by the horseback white South African soldiers despite his valiant attempt at speaking the queens language to access a welcome of sorts, his stubborn decision to continue by using a different travel route until he finally reached his destination and gained acceptance into that society.

What made him take this journey? what was he trying to escape from? what did his eyes truly see in terms of life?..... and what about the differences between home and his newfoundland? What was it like to walk all the way down to southern tip of Africa? how did the locals welcome them? what was the pain of missing his village and home like? what were his hopes for his future generations? oh! the anwered questions...

Decades passed, and the yearning for home dogged him incessantly, I suppose he thought: why did I travel so far? where are my people? how am I to share my success? how can I develop my motherland? and after convincing his family returned home in their 'wanthu ndiwu' motor vehicle, with children running behind it through every village he passed through, to find the country in the throes of trying to achieve self independence, was briefly thrown in jail for being a 'dissident', before being released, he invested his new wealth into real estate across the country, buying his first House in Blantyre from the then Chancellor of the Malawi University, some Ian Jones Esq., established a business to sustain his wealth, became the first Malawian Chamber of Business Chairman, always wore a suit, stood up to greet people, was a true gentleman, had grand children who as is usual in life brought him a fair amount of pain by lingering around the comforts of his wealth rather than make a life of their own, and even upon his demise at a truly ripe age, I am yet to see a truly greater man from such close proximity.

DPC Esq. I salute your life and cannot say enough or word effectively enough my respect for your life...........

Our deepest fear....

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves - who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Marianne Williamson

This quotation is mostly wrongly attributed to Nelson Mandela.

Malawi Pictures link- thanks Tony!

www.Trekearth.com/gallery/Africa/Malawi

MALAWI ONLINE YELLOW PAGES

Whilst I may not vouch for the accuracy or how up to date this online directory is, I found it to be rather helpful and informative, link hereunder:

http://www.yellowpagesmw.com/

Comment just in it is up to date!!!!!!! Brian 26/08/2007

STRIVING FOR AN UP-TO-DATE MALAWI INSURANCE INDUSTRY

All things must change to something new, to something strange. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow US poet (1807 - 1882).

The non-life insurance industry in Malawi has changed a great deal since the country's independence, as evidenced by senior staff indigenisation in the various companies, growth in premium terms, complexity in locally written covers, changeover in regulatory function from being overseen by the Ministry of Finance to the Reserve Bank of Malawi and much much more along the years jointly as an industry and severally in the singular inimitable maturing of insurance companies. We have also proudly seen the brave birth of indigenous Malawian firms like Citizen, Prime and Reunion Insurance companies, with some of them boasting the best staff training policies in the country. Malawi now has 8 licensed insurers and a locally domiciled Re-insurer asides from the vibrant insurance intermediary market.

Non-life (General) policy wordings adopted from the British companies that introduced insurance to the warm heart of Africa invariably continue almost unaltered since their initial introduction over 35 years ago save for 3 or so firms that have adopted to user friendly English within their offerings in the last decade. What used to be termed 'Tariff' wordings (Motor, Fire, Workers Compensation insurance covers) which were a common front approach in insurance policy wording and product pricing by members of the all strong Insurance Association of Malawi have generally fallen into disuse except for serving as a guide in the light of financially stable insurance units, healthy competition and consumer fairness. The original firms from the United Kingdom have long since shed off their Malawi operations in the main due to their low Kwacha return in relation to the strong British pound making little commercial sense, mergers, acquisitions and changes in strategy. This has seen the Royal Sun Alliance (UK), Commercial Union, Pearl Assurance inter alia leave the country, and with them most of the European personnel that ran them, leaving a crop of well trained and professionally qualified Malawians that now run the companies with the biggest market shares.

I opine that whilst there have been many positive developments on the local front, on a global scale comparison the local industry has somewhat lagged behind in issues such as regulation and product development due to Europe de-linking, in-aggressive local demand and the economic woes that characterised Malawi since the advent of multi-democracy (not that this is an entirely bad thing).

Markets such as Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya and North Africa have been at the fore of adapting innovations such as bank-assurance which is a term coined to denote the combination of banking and insurance business within the same organisation, Alternative Risk Transfer (ART)- a method of protecting your assets using the non-traditional insurance market and shedding the 'small print' era. In the absence of having these alternatives on our insurance shelves the local market has turned to importing these covers from external providers for a fee on behalf of the multi-nationals such as Banks and manufacturing industry that enjoy these covers elsewhere in the world and therefore demand for them in Malawi.

However, the country need not copy blindly the offerings and regulatory climate of the first world and other stronger economies, there must be some deliberate benchmarks introduced, these suggestions that I will nowput forward in my essay are not my own, are not exhaustive but are necessary and urgent and will put us on the correct footing, we have witnessed them ably function in for example markets Zimbabwe, Tanzania, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Most important is the need to re-structure insurance regulation to be more active and visible as per the Tanzania model, why 'fix it if it ain't broken' you may ask? because amongst a number of reasons this would ensure adequate 'solvency margin ratio' monitoring, the solvency margin ratio is one of the indices which the supervisory authority utilizes in order to judge the management soundness of a non-life insurance company. The solvency margin ratio means the ratio of "solvency margin of non-life insurance companies by means of their capital, reserves, etc." to "risks which will exceed their usual estimates" such as the risk of catastrophic loss or a sharp reduction in the value of their assets. Establishing a semi autonomous regulatory body by Act of Parliament would be a start, this body run by one of the insurance fraternity's 'own' would asides from monitoring the solvency margin ably transform the insurance industry into a sound and competitive agent for national savings mobilization and development investment channeling, promote the insurance sector as an effective catalyst for enhanced economic growth, strengthen and promote the industry health and orderly growth through establishment of operating performance standards and prescriptions, exempt the Industry from undue interference and develop an efficient, cost effective, comprehensive and customer driven insurance service.

Next would be the need to protect local policyholders and employees from the potentially abrupt and sudden decisions of foreign investors in locally registered insurance companies, a case in point would be the sale of the Malawi branch of the CGU which left ex-employees rather disillusioned and unsure of their future, and witnessed the first employee 'strike' of an insurance company in Malawi. This protection would be afforded by the introduction of a minimum shareholding quota of say 20% to 33.33% by Malawi citizens. This would in effect restrict registration of companies to those having at least the above quoted controlling interest, whether in shares, paid up capital or voting rights by citizens of Malawi and at least one third of members of the board of the company in question being citizens of Malawi, where for the purposes of definition the "citizens of Malawi" would include a body corporate registered in Malawi in which a citizen of Malawi or the government holds the majority of shares.

The Insurance Association of Malawi has a code of ethics that its members drew up that is currently voluntary and only enforceable on its own members by its own membership, it is a constructive, forward looking and timely document that would best serve its purpose if it were legally enforceable as a tool embedded within the Insurance Act as a deterent against rogue practitioners.

The Insurance Act of Malawi was enacted in 1957 and has the minimum capital requirement of US Dollars 38,000 for a company to register locally, this needs to be increased to an amount commensurate with the risks being underwritten on the market and the times, all of Malawi's neighbouring countries have minimum capital requirements that are on average ten fold our current prescribed capital requirement. This would ensure confidence in the market and protection of consumers.

Final in my suggestions would be to curb unnecessary capital flight of premiums currently being 'exported' to other countries through re-insurance premiums. Reinsurance is insurance for insurance companies. It is a way of transferring or “ceding” some of the financial risk insurance companies assume in insuring cars, homes and businesses to another insurance company, termed the Re insurer. Reinsurance is a highly complex global business. There is currently no prescriptive control by the government on amounts of risk and commensurate premiums exported outside of Malawi by resident insurance companies, this needs to be looked at carefully noting that a market as small as ours definitely needs protection but to avoid unqualified excesses permission must be sought as is required by persons travelling abroad to externalise funds, it must be that the local capacity being the sum total of all licensed insurance companies is satisfied before premiums are externalised, this would curb capital flight, 'spread' the risk on the local market which the basis of insurance business and would give the small growing companies impetus subject to their capacity, a chance to dip their fingers into the pie which hitherto has been beyond their reach in some cases.

It must be noted that all the above suggestions need to work in tandem to be effective and need to be enforced by a legal tool, which can only be the re-enactment of the now outdated 1957 Act. A team of insurance experts and others need to look at the future of the country's insurance market independently and suggest the constructive way forward to complement the successes the stewards of the insurance market have so far brought about with the support of the insuring public. It is time for change, albeit constructive forward looking change, change the insurance industry has called for and lobbied for unsuccesfully hitherto, serious attention must be paid to our outdated Insurance Act.

Any disrespect or harm to the Malawi insurance market and its members by this essay is unintended and regretted; it is the future of the market and the continued protection of the economy that matters most.

REDEFINING RISK MANAGEMENT IN INSURANCE- FRANK KNIGHT

As we study insurance today and get our professional qualifications, we omit to look at risk in its historical context and we take for granted the terms 'risk management' and uncertainty, these two terms prior to the 1920's were interchangeable but of course we still pass the module's exam. I came across this American character's dissertation which he wrote in the 1920's, he obviously started it off in the economic context relating risk and uncertainty with profit and was influenced by other studies of risk at the time ("Readings on Risk and Risk-Bearing." unpublished by Professor C. O. Hardy, of the University of Chicago) but he took it a step further, he looked at Risk for the first time as being quantifiable and Uncertainty being the opposite, little did he know that he was laying down the groundwork for Risk management as a science as we know it today. His life itself was also in itself interesting- here's a guy who never completed his high school but was accepted by a University and went on to graduate (BS, MA & doctorate). I append below a 'cut and paste' version on Frank Knight complete with links, and by the way he shares his first name with both my 'old' man and 'little' man!

Frank Hyneman Knight (November 7, 1885 - April 15, 1972) was an important economist of the twentieth century. He was born in McLean County, Illinois in a devoutly Christian family of farmers. He never completed high school but was admitted in 1905 to the American University in Tennessee. He graduated in 1911 from Milligan College. At the University of Tennessee he obtained a B.S. and an M.A. (the latter in German) in 1913. He then moved to Cornell University for doctoral studies. His initial main subject was philosophy, but he soon switched to economics. He studied with Alvin Johnson and Allyn Young, who both supervised the work on his dissertation, that was completed in 1916 under the title Cost, Value and Profit. Knight would subsequently revise it for publication under its more familiar name Risk, Uncertainty and Profit(1921).

The "Grand Old Man" of Chicago, Frank H. Knight was one of the century's most eclectic economists and perhaps the deepest thinker and scholar American economics has produced. Jointly with Jacob Viner, Knight presided over the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago from the 1920s to the late 1940s, and played a central role in setting the character of that department that was perhaps only comparable to Schumpeter's tenure over Harvard or Robbins's at the L.S.E.

His famous dissertation Risk, Uncertainty and Profit(1921) remains one of the most interesting reads in economics even today. In it, Knight made his famous distinction between "risk" (randomness with knowable probabilities) and "uncertainty" (randomness with unknowable probabilities), set forth the role of the entrepreneur in a distinctive theory of profit and gave one of the earliest presentations of the the now-famous law of variable proportions in the theory of production.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 1761-1821

As with most historical characters, to understand their contributions to the world at large one needs to scan the breadth their whole life account and not be satisfied with the confines of biased commentary by the odd teacher or indeed high school history text, the advent of the Internet has done wonders to the accessibility of information on a lot of aspects, issues and characters, a search on the name Napoleon gave me close to 2.5 million hits and that's how much you have to sift through for starters before you decide on your own where in a historical context you place Napoleon Bonaparte, but then again that only creates the unenviable position of separating the legend from the man himself. The man was born in the Corsican islands in the Mediterranean Sea and ended by meteoric rise to be the Emperor of France through obvious ruthless efficiency; so my take is reduced to a few quotes from him that I find rather farsighted:

On China:

"Let China sleep, For when she awakes, let the nations tremble." shes awake now isnt she?

Napoleon's own opinion of his career is best stated in the following quotation:

"I closed the gulf of anarchy and brought order out of chaos. I rewarded merit regardless of birth or wealth, wherever I found it. I abolished feudalism and restored equality to all regardless of religion and before the law. I fought the decrepit monarchies of the Old Regime because the alternative was the destruction of all this. I purified the Revolution." Well, I'leave that to you, but my minds made up, like Hitler mass produced the VW Beetle so that all 'his' people could afford it Napoleon also had his positives and definitely was a lesser evil in direct comparison by virtue of time period lived in and the perception of most reasonable and ordinary people.... and to trivialities he didnt have that horrible moustache!

Family, More Than Genes, Helps Drive Divorce

Well for those that were born out of wedlock, whose parents separated or divorced, or those who have a family full of 'serial' divorcing, scientists have proven that it is not due to genes....so no more excuses work on your relationship... read on

Family, More Than Genes, Helps Drive Divorce
By Carolyn Colwell
HealthDay Reporter
1 hour, 51 minutes ago

FRIDAY, July 20 (Health Day News) -- The propensity toward divorce does not lie mainly in the genes, new research suggests.

An Australian study of twins and their grown children finds that family history plays a key role, however. Adults whose own parents had split had nearly twice the risk of going through a divorce themselves, the researchers found.

But there is no "gene" for divorce, so to speak, said lead researcher Brian M. D'Onofrio, an Indiana University psychologist. "Genetic factors that influence both generations do not [significantly] account for that increased risk," he said.

The findings are published in the August issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.


Prior studies have found that a higher percentage of divorced people come from families split by divorce. That raised the question of whether genes, "could account for the increased risk of marital instability in offspring of divorce," D'Onofrio explained. His team is the first "to test out that possibility and, in large part, rule out the role of genetic factors," he said.


The research did not completely eliminate all genetic factors, however. According to D'Onofrio, about 66 percent of the increased risk for divorce appears to stem from the simple fact of a person's parents having been divorced. The remaining 34 percent of the risk seemed to be tied to genetic factors, as well as other factors affecting parents and children.


Also, since the study was conducted in Australia, the results cannot be generalized to the United States, D'Onofrio said. To do that, researchers will need to replicate the results in an American sample -- something his group is already working on.


The study is unique, the researcher said, because it is based on data from more than 2,300 twins, their spouses and their adult offspring. In other words, many of the younger people in the study are actually cousins who are also "genetically half-siblings," because their aunt or uncle shares their parents' genes.


So, to help separate out the effects of genetics from family environment, the Australian team compared the marital success of cousins who grew up in stable families (no divorce) against cousins who came from families split by divorce.


The study still had flaws, one expert said.


One factor that D'Onofrio and his colleagues did not look at in their study was what's known as "assortative mating" -- the tendency of people to marry people like themselves, noted British expert Dr. Stephen Stansfeld, a professor of psychiatry at Barts and The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry.


According to Stansfeld, this means that people who experienced a parents' divorce as children may be romantically drawn to people with similar experiences -- potentially raising their own odds for an unsuccessful marriage.


In that sense, the study doesn't address what happens when "people from a background of unstable relationships" marry each other, Stansfeld explained.


D'Onofrio acknowledged that his team's results are limited by not taking this factor into account.


"The tendency for individuals to marry similar people may place some children at greater risk for marital separations, because the offspring are exposed to two parents with increased levels of psychopathology and other characteristics," that could have negative effects on their children, the study said.


It's also not known whether assortative mating is genetically driven and how that might affect children's genetic propensity for stable or unstable marriages, D'Onofrio explained.


Divorce can and does often undermine people's happiness, added Richard Lucas, an associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University. "Once people get divorced, people seemed to be permanently changed" and are generally less happy, he said.


"We've known for quite awhile that people with divorced parents are more likely to divorce. This study really does a nice job of looking at why that might be," Lucas said. Anything that increases understanding of all the factors involved in divorce "should help people figure out what they should be focusing their efforts on in terms of ending divorce," he added.

More information

For more on divorce's psychological impact, head to the U.S. National Institutes of Mental Health.

TAXING WINDOWS !?

Various governments have along the years increasingly found ways of 'charging' their citizens as it were a 'little' amount of money they call tax, to ensure that their state avoids going into liquidation or to put it more constructively to fund benevolent activities of the state for its citizens as a commune. My research on tax origins in its current format are quite interesting! It started off in Africa, as usual Egypt is the culprit, and amongst many items they coveniently taxed cooking oil! http://www.taxworld.org/History/TaxHistory.htm

The one I found profoundly interesting however was a tax on windows in the UK, no not the Microsoft windows, yes the glass imbedded in house and building structures was taxed by King William III in 1696 as a means of solving a financial crisis created by wars in Ireland and on the continent. Tax was paid on any house with more than six windows, as usual the population tried to 'cheat' its way out of it and that was by amongst other ways, bricking up your one or two windows. The tax was replaced after over 160 years (proves how difficult it is and how long it takes to remove a tax once introduced through the August house) later in 1851 with house duty.

I bet Zimbabwe could learn a lesson or two from the window tax.

MYSTERIOUS BRITAIN !!?

The Cerne Abbas Giant, Dorset
The Cerne Abbas Giant or the 'Rude Man' is the largest hillfigure in Britain, he (the figure's gender is beyond doubt) is one of two representations of the human form, the other being the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex. The giant, carved in solid lines from the chalk bedrock measures in at 180 feet high, and carries a huge knobbled club, which measures 120 feet in length.

The first written record of the giant appears in 1751 in a letter by Dorset historian John Hutchins, he suggested that the figure was cut in the mid 1600's. Another slightly later reference to the figure can be found in the Gentleman's magazine of 1764, where the figure is described and depicted with a navel, that has long since disappeared. The lack of earlier references is frustrating but does not mean that the figure dates to the 17th century, and its style and proximity to an Iron Age earthwork suggests a much earlier origin.

There are numerous theories as to when and why the giant was created, one of the more popular is that he is the Greek-Roman god Hercules, who is often represented with a club and an animal fur. It has been suggested that the figure was once depicted carrying and animal fur in his left hand. It is possible that worship of Hercules arrived in the early part of the Roman invasion, which was then became amalgamated with a god of a local Celtic tribe. The theory given the most weight by historians is that it was created during the reign of the Emperor Commodus between 180 - 193 AD, he believed himself to be a reincarnation of Hercules and allowed the cult to revive.

Other stories suggest that the monks at the nearby monastery cut the giant as a joke on an Abbott called Thomas Corton, who was expelled from the area for malpractice. This is unlikely but its close proximity to a ecclesiastical house is strange, how could such an obviously pagan symbol have survived for so long? especially through puritanical times and the reformation. It may be that the religious buildings were built close to the giant as a form of amalgamation of the pagan site. This was common practice, and many churches are built on, or near to, sites that were once Pagan religious centres.

Folklore
According to one tradition, recorded from a farm labourer in the Gentleman's Magazine, the figure is the representation of a Danish giant who had led an invasion of England from the coast. He had fallen asleep on the side of the hill, and the local villagers had taken advantage of his slumber and cut off his head. They had then drawn around his prone body in the manner of a gigantic police chalk line, to show where he met his doom. However, the chalk figure sometimes rose from the dead on dark nights, to quench his thirst in the local stream, a habit also common to certain standing stones.

The giant's obvious sexuality and virility was put to use in fertility folk magic. Local women who wanted to conceive would spend a night alone on the hillside - most productively within the confines of his giant phallus, and young couples would make love on the giant to ensure conception.

Sleeping on the giant was also thought to be a good way to ensure a future wedding for unmarried women. Just above the giant's head is a small Iron Age earthwork which encloses a roughly square piece of land, this is known as the 'Frying Pan' or the 'Trendle' and it was within this enclosure that the Mayday Maypole was erected during the festival celebrations. Like many traditional village Maypole ceremonies this practice died out in the 19th century.


Map ref: ST 666 017
Directions: Half a mile North of Cerne Abbas, Dorset, the best viewpoint is beside the A352
Source:
http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/majorsites/cerne_abbass.html

Africans Are Tired of Remaining Small

While comparing what foreign investors and their locals their local counterparts can achieve, Tanzania President Jakaya Kikwete argued; “Mkia wa mbuzi hufagia anapokaa, na mkia wa ng’ombe hufukuza nzi” (A goat’s tail sweeps only where it is seated while a cow’s tail chases flies). The budget speeches by East Africa’s finance ministers failed to focus on growing the tail of local enterprises.

The news that Kenya government will scrap 205 licences and simplify another set of 371 is good for business opportunity creation but stopped short of growing the goat’s tail. Take for instance the braking effect the government put on local enterprises by introducing a 20 per cent excise duty on imported motor vehicle spare parts. Poor road network costs Kenyan businesses people not only in terms of spare parts but also in terms of health and time. One would have expected the minister to argue that since it takes the government a long time to fix roads (a 6 kilometre stretch Mbagathi highway almost taking three years!) spare parts will be tax exempt to cushion Kenyans against costs that accrues to them.

A farmer, who transports cabbages from Eldoret to Nairobi, will spend close to 3 hours at the crater dominated Timboroa section of the Eldoret-Nairobi road, and by the time he reaches Nakuru, he will need to replace shock-absorbers and springs. From Nakuru, he should be ready for a diversion that will take him through gullies to Gilgil for another two hours. Such a farmer will never dream of supplying the same to Dar es Salaam, Kampala leave alone Mombasa. His cabbage business will remain small, and may never reach a “multinational cabbage supply” status. Thanks to his government short term focus by his government!

Consumers, on the other hand, will be forced to pay for shock absorbers and other repair incidentals due to bad roads driving up prices. In a matter of time, consumers will shun Eldoret cabbages due to prices all because of government’s inability to fix roads. Recall, the government’s roads department was reported to have been unable to absorb 6.3 billion shillings earmarked for road upgrades in the financial year 2006 to 2007.

Introducing excise tax to mineral water business will also make it difficult for local businesses to effectively compete with established giants. This is a sector that one would have expected the government to encourage for purposes of engaging in value addition with a specific focus on addressing clean water needs for rural communities. In the long haul, the mineral water sector would have had a huge multiplier effect given the fact that it has been a source of weaning local entrepreneurs to beverage business.

Despite the budgetary odds, it is still important for East African states to stop limiting local enterprises to “mbuzi” status and provide a road map to “ng’ombe” status. This can be addressed through reforming licensing, regulatory and tax for revenue framework. For East Africans to be competitive at a global level, they cannot afford to remain informal and micro-enterprisers because of fear of government regulators and their policies. Such enterprises ought to be encouraged to link up with established businesses for purposes of strengthening their business muscle, and get exposed to international standards of operation.

To grow business opportunities, the government policy makers ought to also focus on what leads to inefficient expenditure of public funds. A review of procurement procedure ought to be put in place to make it easier for those charged with the responsibility of delivering public goods to do so in a timely fashion. East African business people, on the other hand, should not limit their vision to village markets. We have 100 million strong-market waiting out there. Let us grow the tail!

This article first appeared in Business Daily, a publication of Nation Media House


By James Shikwati
Director, Inter Region Economic Network


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FLOCK- ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE BROWSER TO INTERNET EXPLORER AFTER FIREFOX

This Tuesday social web browser Flock will release Version 0.9, as they inch towards the full 1.0. Version 0.9 is currently available to early adopters as a 'Release Candidate'. I had an in-depth chat with Flock's CEO Shawn Hardin last week and I have been testing the 0.9 version too. The actual version I have been running is 0.899.1, but the improvements over v0.7 are no less evident. Flock's latest upgrade is geared towards increased "discoverability" for users and further delineates it from conventional browsers. Shawn explained the reasons behind these changes...

Flock History and Version 0.7
Flock launched their social media browser amid a flurry of hype back in 2005. The innovation for the Flock browser was originally billed as a marriage of social media and Web 2.0 functionality. It initially met with mixed reviews, as Flock fell victim to over-stimulated user expectations and “too much” attention. Version 0.7, released June of 2006, was essentially not a great enough departure from Firefox - and even with its innovative features, many users considered Flock as just a Firefox clone.

The browser's “less than perfect” entry into the market has not daunted the over 1.5 million users who have downloaded it so far. Version 0.9 is really an overhaul of the UI - focused on “discoverability”, or essentially relieving the pain involved in integrating a new browser into a user’'s routine. As Steve O'’Hear said in a great article about Flock on ZDNet, Flock is not simply a passive browser experience, but a “write”-capable platform designed to enhance the social media experience. The list of v0.9 additions and upgrades is too vast to list completely, but Flock has added or upgraded features for: people aspects, the general features, media bar, favorites, feeds, accounts, the Web clipboard, blog editor, search and uploader aspects - all on a broad scale.

Discovering Flock
Flock is a very elegant and well organized browser. I am as good a “test rat” as there is, having been so anchored to IE over the years, so working with a new browser for some days proved illuminating. The first thing I noticed about Flock was the media bar, so prominently displayed at the top. This bar has superb flexibility and is the heart of the video and image interface. Searching and acting on the various services is a fairly "right in your face" function, as are most of the other inherent functions. Shawn and I talked about the need for reducing the amount of clicks needed to work with applications; this aspect was one of their main goals. From what I can tell, virtually every Flock task can be completed in one or two clicks - and typing is limited.

As an example: adding my WordPress blog was a two-click action. Posting straight from the Flock UI is also simple and the resultant postings looked as if they had been created in WP. Indeed every feature I tested proved to be a derivative of Wordpress. Flock has done an excellent job of making the "discovery" experience enjoyable and easy. What is less evident initially is the amount of time and pain saved in performing what Flock treats as simple click functions; where Fx or IE require more clicks. The bottom line is that an old IE user like me learned more advanced features and functions over 3 or 4 days, than I probably know about IE in years of use.

Best of Flock
There is not a lot to dislike about Flock. My favorite features tend to be smaller elements, but the most incomparable feature of this browser is its RSS display. Adding feeds is performed in the same "one click" fashion as other elements and the feed sidebar is excellent - but the RSS Reader really sets Flock apart in that full excerpts single column, headlines and double column formats can be customized.

The media bar and the added functions within it are excellent as well. Scrolling playlists are not new - but simple, searchable, drag and drop versions do not abound and the Flock version is flexible. The current searchable services are Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket and Truveo; and results can also be filtered. The 'view as a mini' function, combined with drag and drop and the mouse-over preview shown in the next screenshot, make this simple and fun to use.


Little Things Mean A Lot

I tend to like "the details" or smaller elements of these startups, because developers who pay attention to the little things tend to excel at making the more obvious features too. I liked Flock the moment I noticed that I could change my search engine. You will note that the options bar on the My World page displays several search engines and that I have chosen hakia as the default. Favorites are segregated into local and online categories, and they are also viewable in tree form as the graphic below points out. From mouse-over descriptions of virtually every button, to the picture up there in the corner of my son from my Flickr account, Flock has covered off all the little details.

Conclusion
Despite the attention to detail in v0.9, there is currently a limited number of external services supported. Outside of this one negative aspect (and the fact that the tabs remind me too much of Firefox), Flock could be the most impressive browser of them all. In our discussion, Shawn overloaded me with information about upcoming features and improvements. Honestly, this version has far too many features to touch upon, but the partner-friendly business model and version 0.9's integrated search - which shortcuts searches internally to provide faster and more relevant results - are just two of a dozen or more great aspects to this version.

Flock is targeted at social networking users, but if more external services are forthcoming and development continues to differentiate Flock from the others, it will be a compelling product for its target users.

COPIED FROM READ/WRITEWEB

OBAMA'S NEWSWEEK INTERVIEW ON HIS IMPROBABLE CANDIDACY

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Richard Wolffe and Daren Briscoe
Newsweek

July 8, 2007 - NEWSWEEK interviewed Sen. Barack Obama on June 27 in Washington. Here are excerpts from that exchange:

NEWSWEEK: Cornel West said some pretty rough things about you.

Barack Obama: Have you talked to him lately?

I have.

OK.

And you won him over. How did you react when you read what he said? And how did you win him over?

Why don't I start it this way? I have not been in national politics very long. I've been in politics for a long time, but for many people I was an unknown commodity. So as certain stories circulated about me, or what my priorities were, or where I came from, not surprisingly people were willing to give credence to some of those assumptions. So with Cornel it was just a matter of calling him up, introducing myself and having a conversation.
In some ways that's a metaphor for what this campaign is about. Me introducing myself, having a conversation, and trying to cut through the noise that is created by political opponents or media that's looking for a good story or my own fumbles and gaffes, trying to make sure by the end of this process people have a good sense of what my history is, what my values are, where I want to take the country.
He's a pretty frank guy. He said, “You're not going to agree with everything I say, and I'm not going to agree with everything you say.”

Maybe you also said that to him?

I said that to him.

He had this whole Shakespearean line about “To thine own self be true.”

Yeah.

What do you say to that?

He's absolutely right. This is a very improbable candidacy, I think it's fair to say. And for me to win, it is important that those qualities that got me into politics in the first place—those values that led me to become a community organizer or a civil rights attorney, that passion for justice and fairness—that those attributes come through. And if I start sounding like everybody else, if I'm just another Washington politician then there's no reason for people to choose me as opposed to people who have been in Washington longer and play that particular game better than I can. So maintaining my voice through this process is critical and it can be a difficult task. There are a lot of forces at work designed to homogenize candidates and there's a premium placed on risk avoidance and not making mistakes. And what I'm trying to do is to say what I think and not be governed by a fear of making mistakes. That means I will make some mistakes.

Let me ask about one. Maybe you don't think it was one. You got into a tangle with your pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. of Chicago, over your announcement and him giving the invocation prayer—in public, at least.

Tangle may be overstating it. But that's OK. It was a blip.

Looking back, do you think you maybe overreacted to some of the press about him being radical?

No. I think that was a pretty simple story. We were doing our announcement and a story came out in which he was sort of singled out as being more radical than he was. Given that we knew we had given 500 press credentials that day, I didn't want him placed in the position where he had to defend himself or the church without any kind of backup or knowing what he was going to get into. I would have done the same thing for my sister or a co-worker. So I guess it's conceivable I might have been overprotective and probably didn't anticipate that he might feel hurt by it. So we had a discussion about it and everything is fine at this point.

So I shouldn't read anything into the fact that he didn't show up when you spoke at the United Church of Christ meeting last month in Hartford?

No, no. He had a wedding. He was actually upset that he couldn't come. That was entirely a scheduling conflict.

I talked to your friend Kirk Dillard about your time together in the Illinois General Assembly and he related a story to me that goes back to the time when you were working on the racial profiling legislation. He says that he walked in on a confrontation between you and another senator in the bathroom, by your seat there on the back row, where he said you were being challenged forcefully on your toughness and questioning whether you really understood what it was to be a young black man on the streets of Chicago getting pulled over by the police. What's your recollection of that encounter, and what was your response?

You know, I don't remember that particular confrontation. I'm not disputing anything of what Kirk remembers. I just don't know exactly what he's referring to.
I think that there's always a tension between getting things done and how people experience issues in very visceral, emotional ways. And that's certainly true any time race is involved. What I'm constantly striving to do—whether it was on the racial profiling legislation, whether it was on the death penalty issues that I worked on in the state legislature, whether it was on some of the criminal justice bills that came up—was to see how could I be true to the core values of fairness and equality and move the ball forward. My experience tells me that we have a better chance of making progress on these issues when we can ground them in a broader appeal to America's aspirations and values than when we simply are shouting racism and trying to guilt people into acting.
Now that doesn't mean there aren't times for some righteous anger. But I strongly believe that Americans want to do the right thing. And if you can show them that racial profiling is neither a smart way to fight crime, nor is it consistent with our values as Americans, then we can get a bill passed. If you can argue to defenders of the death penalty that at minimum we should be able to agree that nobody innocent should be on death row, and by videotaping interrogations and confessions you are not only protecting the innocent person in custody but you are also protecting the police, then you have got a better chance of passing legislation.
So not everybody is going to take that same approach. But I like to say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We got those two bills passed.

To the death penalty legislation, one of the people you sat on the judiciary committee with was Ed Petka. From everything I understand about Ed Petka, including his nickname, “Electric Ed” …

Electric Ed. That's what they called him.

It sounds like he was a person who needed no small amount of convincing in terms of reforming the death penalty law. I know there were other people who were key to getting this done, but you played a crucial role in winning people round. Is there anything you can tell me about how your interactions with him, how you brought him round?

I don't remember the specific conversations I had with Senator Petka, or some of these other senators. What I think is always important to me is trying to see the world through the eyes of people you don't agree with. My starting point on the death penalty legislation was, if I'm a sincere believer that the death penalty is a deterrent, if I'm a sincere believer that people who have engaged in heinous crimes deserve the ultimate retribution, if I sincerely believe that generally police arrest people who are guilty, how do I look at the world? If I can imagine myself in their shoes, if I can see the world through their eyes, I can answer their objections in ways that are consistent with their values. So I can say to an Ed Petka that even supporters of the death penalty should have a deep interest in making sure that the innocent are not on death row. It undermines the credibility of the criminal justice system as a whole. You've been a prosecutor, it's much harder for you to be able to bring successful convictions if juries start thinking that evidence is concocted or coerced. So this is good for law and order and that's why we need to make progress on this one.

When you ran against Bobby Rush for the House of Representatives in 2000, you seemed to face in that race for the first time this question that had been with you throughout—this question of belonging, and could you really understand people in a certain place and area whose experience you hadn't shared growing up. But here it was being used politically against you. Did you learn something from that race about how to deal with that issue politically?

I have to say that aspect of the race probably has been thoroughly overhyped. I think people are trying to fit that into a narrative that isn't entirely there. Were there moments during the campaign where the suggestion was that the Harvard-educated, Hyde Park law professor wasn't keeping it real? Yes. Did that have any significant influence on the outcome of that race? No.
The issue in that race was, as I wrote about in my book, the fact that I didn't do a poll until after I had announced and discovered I had 11 percent name recognition and he had something like 95. And people just didn't know who I was, and as people got to know me we ended up moving from single-digit support to I think we ended up with 31 percent. Without any TV advertising, it wasn't bad. The problem with that race was not in execution; it was in conception. There was no way I was going to beat an incumbent congressman with the limited name recognition that I had.
So there weren't moments in that campaign where I anguished, “Oh goodness, is my black authenticity being questioned?” Most of those problems or issues were resolved when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. The fact that they have resurfaced in this presidential campaign says more about the country than it says about me. I think America is still caught in a little bit of a time warp: the narrative of black politics is still shaped by the '60s and black power. That is not, I think, how most black voters are thinking. I don't think that's how most white voters are thinking. I think that people are thinking about how to find a job, how to fill up the gas tank, how to send their kids to college. And I find that when I talk about those issues, both blacks and whites respond well.

You described your mistake as one of conception. Rush describes that race as your ambition coming up against his legacy.

Now that I think is fair, in the sense that he had been there a long time. He had a long track record. I may have believed I could do a better job in highlighting some issues, but I think that it was a young man's mistake. Just because you think you're smart, you think you can shake things up, then everybody else is automatically going to see that.

He also says he thinks to this day, he thinks you were put up to it by your advisers and people around you. You just decided on your own?

I don't necessarily mean paid advisers. I mean people around you.

I couldn't afford advisers.This is something that I think is important for people. Bobby may just be saying that because now that he's come out in support of me, he may want to relieve me of the burden of having run against him. But I haven't had a bunch of people plotting and planning on my behalf. I didn't know a soul when I moved to Chicago. As an organizer, I was pretty much out there on my own. I ran Project Vote without much supervision. I just haven't had a series of political operators who can give me advice. I've been going by my instincts of what I think is right.

Let's talk about the Father's Day speech you gave in 2005. Bill Cosby had said some similar things and taken a lot of heat. Did any of that cross your mind as you put this thing together?

Michelle says this is the kind of thing you talk about around the kitchen table.

But did you think it would have that kind of impact? Were you wary about people who had trodden that path before?

No. I don't know if we have a transcript of that speech, but I've talked about issues of responsibility in the past. I am always very careful in talking about the individual responsibilities of African-Americans, of fathers, of parents, to combine that with a discussion of our societal responsibilities, our collective responsibilities to adequately fund schools, to provide job opportunities in neighborhoods. So I talk about these things not out of shock value. And I also am not at all interested in what some conservative commentators are interested in, which is to use the issue of personal responsibility as an excuse for governmental inaction. As I write in my book, it is very much a both-and [approach] as opposed to an either-or approach. When you talk about it in those terms, then the African-American community is responsive. What they don't want is to hear the “pick yourselves up by your bootstraps” speech, and that's why we're going to cut funding for programs that are desperately needed.
I think it's important for Democrats to not miss the truth and I include myself in this, so I'm not attacking Democrats here, I'm talking about us, those of us who are progressives and care about these issues, it's important for us not to forget about the issue of individual responsibility because we're so caught up in the legitimate battles to make sure that our government priorities are on track.

One last thing. This is unprompted by a question, but it's prompted by the cut or the angle you guys are taking. I may be off base here. But the impulse I think may be to write a story that says Barack Obama represents a quote-unquote postracial politics.

That term I reject because it implies that somehow my campaign represents an easy shortcut to racial reconciliation. It's similar to the notion that if we're all color blind then somehow problems are solved.
I just want to be very clear on this so that there's no confusion. And on this I think Cornel [West] and I would agree. Solving our racial problems in this country will require concrete steps, significant investment. We're going to have a lot of work to do to overcome the long legacy of Jim Crow and slavery. It can't be purchased on the cheap.
I am fundamentally optimistic about our capacity to do that. And I do assert that there's a core decency in the American people and in white Americans that makes me hopeful about our ability to deal with these issues. But these issues aren't just solved by electing a black president.
I think there's a temptation to posit me in contrast to Jesse [Jackson] or [Al] Sharpton, and the thing I am constantly trying to explain is that I'm a direct outgrowth of the civil rights movement, that the values of the civil rights movement remain near and dear to my heart. To the extent that I speak a different language or take a different tone in addressing these issues is a consequence of me having benefited from those bloody struggles that folks previously had to go through. And so to suggest somehow that I'm pushing aside the past in favor of this Benetton future is wrong.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc. | Subscribe to Newsweek