The fall guy's on the up

November 07, 2008 Edition 1


Fall guy

Skelm has a new hero, and was delighted by what one newspaper described as his "elevation" this week. He is Nhlanhla Nene, who was last seen on our screens as he was plunging out of sight on an SABC programme. As you all know by now, his chair had broken and the video clip has since been viewed several hundred thousand times online.

But like the phoenix, the former finance standing (get it?) committee chairman (get it?) has risen (get it?) to the seat (get it?) of deputy minister of finance.

Nene is reportedly an astute financial type, but might need a few lessons in PR: the whole broken chair incident would have died a much earlier death if he had not grumbled and spluttered about it.

In honour of Nene's new post, Skelm is this week resurrecting his massively popular and deeply intellectual photo caption competition. The picture shows Nene being sworn in. What could he be saying?

All entries to skelm@inl.co.za and the winner, as adjudged by Skelm and whoever happens to be in his office at the time, gets a free six-month subscription to that fine publication, the Cape Argus.

Falling star

Just after midnight on Monday and on the eve of the US presidential elections, the Republican nominee took the stage at the University of Miami basketball arena to greet thousands of Cuban American supporters. When he got to the part in his speech about the Ohio man who challenged Barack Obama on his tax plan, he tried a bit of Spanish. "Joe the Plumber - or, as they say in Little Havana, Pepe el Plumero," he said haltingly. "That's the last time I try that," he added.

Probably a good thing. Even if "Joe" somehow translates into "Pepe", McCain's pronunciation of plomero, Spanish for plumber, came out more like plumero, Spanish for feather duster.

Who knows what role that played in driving Cuban American voters to back Obama in overwhelming numbers.

Colourfall

Talking about the US elections, Skelm has travelled to the land of the brave and the free and found it to be, well, a little less liberal than he had anticipated. This perception was confirmed by the repeat election of George W Bush. So it was with delight that he noted the mould-breaking election of Barack Obama.

If the Americans can see past colour, can't we all?

Falling numbers

Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk needs to have a chat with whoever it is that supplies the data that he uses in his speeches.


On Monday he told a tourism conference in Johannesburg that South Africa had had a 7.8% increase in foreign tourists in the first seven months of the year. We all cheered loudly.

The next day, however, Statistics SA released statistics showing that the year-on-year comparison actually showed a 4.5% drop.

Who should we believe?

Fall off the (tea) wagon

Skelm has also spent some time in the UK and repeatedly found himself on the wrong side of the rule book which seems to expand all the time. This week came reports that the British government is asking businesses to appoint tea monitors to make sure staff don't overfill the kettle at work.

The recommendation from the Envirowise (a quasi-NGO - quango - which gets £10 million a year from taxpayers to advise businesses on being green) is that workers should use teapots when making rounds of hot drinks, and is calling for a return of old-fashioned tea urns.

Envirowise, the crackdown will cut greenhouse gas emissions and help beleaguered businesses save money. Critics pointed out that in the current testing economic times, small firms had bigger problems to worry about than tea bags.

Where the chips fall

We all know that Justice can be something of a lottery, but one of the typists responsible for transcribing the court record of the major Cape High Court perlemoen smuggling case currently under way has taken matters a little too far.

Yesterday, defence advocate for four of the 19 accused, Koos Louw, jumped to his feet just before Judge Nathan Erasmus closed proceedings and asked whether he could "assist the typist" by explaining the correct acronym being used by the lawyers for the racketeering legislation at the heart of the charges. "It's Poca (Prevention of Organised Crime Act), not Poker!" he pointed out. Judge Erasmus immediately asked: "Is there a difference? Aren't you hedging your bets?"

Falling short

It seems advocate Louw is something of an amateur applied mathematician in his spare time.

In his judgment dismissing the first of five applications being brought by the defence teams before the case actually gets under way, Judge Erasmus said Louw had calculated the number of possibilities created by the repeated use of "and/or" - which he described as "the bastard conjunction" - in the 44-page charge sheet. The judge then solemnly intoned the result of Louw's mammoth calculation: 6 859 768 917 960 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000! Yes, that's 34 noughts on the end of 12 other digits.

And they think they'll get the trial finished in just three years?