Mystery of vanishing Brent crude oil savings
Reader unconvinced by Mpisanes broke story…
WITH reference to your editorial “No more cheap fuel”, in which it was stated that the price of petrol is expected to go up from next year and the days of relatively low petrol prices seem to be coming to an end ( Daily News, December 14), I beg to differ.
We have always been paying abnormally high prices for fuel.
In spite of the global price of Brent crude oil dropping to its lowest in many years, motorists are not seeing any benefits at the petrol pump.
For the past decade or so, the world has seen dramatic fall in the price of Brent crude – from a high of $120 (R1 650) a barrel to almost $50 a barrel.
The rand has only appreciated slightly against the US dollar.
When Brent crude was selling at $120 a barrel and the rand was trading around the R13 to the dollar mark, South African motorists were paying about R12 a litre for petrol.
Although the price of crude oil has dropped by almost 70 percent, motorists are still paying the same price for petrol.
High fuel prices have an adverse effect on the country’s population, especially the poor, with rising food prices and travelling costs.
Where the massive savings from the low Brent crude prices are going is anyone’s guess.
Are they being used to bail out Eskom?
Or SAA, e-tolls and for paying millions of rand in bonuses to inefficient and corrupt state officials?
Your guess is as good as mine. JAYRAJ BACHU
Politics
There is a very accurate adage: it says “you can’t put a wise head on young shoulders”. Hence the rantings by the youth league. They are completely out of depth with their obnoxious reasoning.
If a top ANC strategist and intellectual says ‘beneficiaries of State Capture and corruption will not go down without a fight’, does it mean that they will ensure that Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma must be president and Sihle Zikalala a premier and Hlaudi Motsoeneng continues with tsunami in SABC. It is time for me and you to stand up in 2017. Swelihle Dloko.
Can anyone tell me what the AU achieved, as I believe Burundi and Congo are not following the constitution? Mary.
Municipal matters
Water restrictions and power shedding. What are the reasons for all this? Is it a coincidence that power is interrupted on average (normally) only for 2 hours? The water restriction is normally from 8pm to 4 in the morning. You can’t blame this on cable theft and burst water pipes. What are the actual reason/s for all these interruptions/ restrictions ?
Traffic gripes
Hello, minister of transport. So much for zero tolerance. Heavies on the N3 east-bound doing their thing on the ‘Pietermaritzburg straights’. Excessive speeds. Glen.
Daily headlines make it obvious that the traffic authorities have failed to prevent increasing road carnage when lowering and enforcing safe speed limits would cut deaths on our roads by up to 75%. The failure to act amounts to criminal negligence on the part of those responsible for safety on our roads who should clearly be charged with 45 of the estimated 60 daily deaths on our roads as well as 75% of daily injuries, mostly linked to the speed of vehicles involved. Richard Benson, Road Safety Action Campaign, Cape Town.
Odds and ends
Went to see the show at the Playhouse on Saturday night. Wow, was I blown away, after having seen the movie over fifty years ago. Brilliant, that’s the only way I could describe it, to all participants.
Mpisanes broke. Only an idiot will believe their story. Even Sars say there’s little or no money coming into their banking accounts. They are smart. All one has to do when the odds are stacked against you as a businessman is to rechannel the funds to another account, another bank, or in this case, another country. Sars needs to check if the banks in Switzerland or the Channel Islands are harbouring their billions. You can fool some people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. Wake up, Sars, dig deeper. Ex-banker who knows a trick or two in salting away cash.
If your phone is using inexplicably large amounts of data or airtime, try switching off Google Play Services. I did this and it made a huge difference. What’s more, everything, including Google search, continued to work fine, in spite of a warning to the contrary.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all reading this. We made it through this year and by faith, perseverance and prayer, let us embrace the year ahead. Mano. If Spur restaurants want to play kwaito music, then they should change the Indian chief on their logo to that of an African chief.
Can someone please tell me why the taxpayers have paid the suspended judge R16 million? Nice work if you can get it! AMP.
Advice to anybody thinking of visiting the beachfront for a walk, a drink or a meal: don’t go there. It is disgusting. Disgusted.
Call me Scrooge if you like, but I do not give any Christmas boxes when municipal staff come bellowing at my gate. They get paid by my rates. When I was working, up till the day I retired, never did I asked my employer for a Christmas box. Dave Overall, Woodlands.
The firms that supply and install prepaid water meters are selling water that does not belong to them. You can only buy your voucher from them; they pay the normal amount to metro, but add on extra that you are paying, for they don’t do it out the goodness of their heart.
Know then that year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning, but a going on with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. Life is a journey, enjoy your blessings. Saalams and Duas. Yusuf Patel.