The deadline for RICAing[1] SIM cards is almost here. What a waste of time and resources! If you were a criminal mastermind would you meekly register the SIMs in your own name and with your own address that you intend using to further your nefarious ends? Of course not. You would use one of the false identities you either stole or obtained from any one of the hundreds of corrupt officials who infest the Department of Home Affairs. I’m making a note in my diary to ask the relevant minister in a year’s time exactly how many criminals have been caught through the use of a RICAed cellphone. My bet is that the answer (in the unlikely event that it is given) will be a large round zero.
[1] Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act (RICA). Shouldn’t this be RICPCRIA? Yes, but politicians are too thick to spell it. Errr, Rick prick what?
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An almost perfect description of warfare:
Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.
Leo Tolstoy War and Peace
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It is there some movement in South Africa that I can join to do away with the really, really silly public holiday system? Here’s what I think should happen: everyone should be given four ‘floating’ holidays which they can use whenever they like. These are to replace the current Easter and Christmas religious holidays, so Jews could take Passover or Hanukkah or whatever, Muslims could have their break over Eid, Hindus could be off for Divali, devotees of the Flying Spaghetti Monster could take noodle days and so on. All other holidays should be moved to the Friday or Monday closest to the date on which they occur, doing away totally with these ridiculous midweek holidays which just waste everyone’s time.
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And why can we not implement daylight saving time in South Africa? Or have two time zones, one for the East of the country and one for the West. Our time zone (UTC +2) is based on Pietermaritzburg, which is fine if you happen to live in Pietermaritzburg, but daft if you live (as I do) in Cape Town. In winter we have to get up and travel to work in the dark because the Sun only rises just before 0800. I suspect we don’t have it because our politicians are too dim to understand it.
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Grumpy Old Man by Mark Widdicombe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License
Grumpy Old Man 
You give our politicians far too much credit. Twice. 😛