SA needs to stamp better authority on SOEs

IT’S NOT often I post a letter in this electronic age, but it does still happen from time to time. Last week I went into my local post office clutching an envelope and asked the man behind the counter for a stamp. “Sorry, we don’t have stamps,” he said. I was astonished. A post office without stamps.

Ridiculous. Stamps are what post offices sell. Butchers sell meat, bottle stores sell liquor and post offices sell stamps. If the post office doesn’t have stamps, what are they selling? Potatoes? Lingerie? Tractors?

I read last weekend that the government had voted to spend billions of rands to bail out “failing state-owned enterprises” (SOEs) like Sanral, the railways and SAA. And the Post Office.

Can anybody be surprised to hear the Post Office has to be rescued? Maybe if they had stamps to sell maybe they wouldn’t need rescuing.

But what I find really annoying is that all these regular “bail-outs” use taxpayers’ hard-earned money. That means you and me.

So, instead of my VAT helping to run schools and hospitals and fix potholes, I’m paying the Post Office not to sell stamps. It doesn’t seem like such a bargain to me. I suppose I should be used to this strange Alice-in-Wonderland country we live in. I already pay a huge price for not using municipal water.

We are being warned that we will have to register any solar power installation or be prosecuted for illegal use of sunshine. I’d be very interested to see how the authorities will control this.

They can cut off your electricity or your water supply if you fail to lay your bill and even disconnect your telephone, but how will they cut off your sunshine? Several houses not far from where I live have wind-powered electric generators and that’s a sensible thing, I think.

Fish Hoek gets a generous supply of wind for most of the year. It would be a waste not to use it.

I wouldn’t be surprised however, if the greedy city council is eyeing these little roof-top windmills and trying to conjure up ways of charging homeowners for the wind they’re using.

In the meantime, I am sending emails to my philatelist friends in other countries telling them we have no stamps here and if they have any old South African stamps they should hang onto them. They are likely to gain some rarity value in future.

Last Laugh

Two opposing politicians were having tea together at the parliamentary canteen and the one said: “With elections coming up soon I never miss an opportunity to promote my party. Whenever I am in a restaurant I give the waiter a big tip and say, ‘Remember to vote for the ANC’.”

“Oh, I do the same,” said his DA opponent. “Whenever I’m in a restaurant I pay my bill and don’t add any tip, but I say, ‘Remember to vote for the ANC.’”