LOOSE TALK

Hands off our money

LIKE teenagers’ parents who are now discovering social media such as Facebook (”it’s so last year, mom,“cue rolling eyes), the National Treasury has discovered the dangers of social media. It warned this week against Facebook accounts that pretend to be those of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

“These fake accounts are the latest attempt to con the public ... of their hard-earned money. The ministry condemns the use of the minister’s name and photographs, and reiterates that such scams can only succeed to the extent that members of the public have an unquenchable thirst for easy wealth,“it warned.

With the start of tax season this week, many members of the public might feel that ”unquenchable thirst“rather applies to the Treasury and its collector, SARS.

Less talk, more action

ANOTHER unquenchable thirst is the bill for the still-not-tolled roads in Gauteng. In response to a DA question, it emerged in parliament this week that Sanral’s advertising spend shot up 200% since the announcement of the e-tolling system. Eskom also spends millions on campaigns asking us to switch off. SARS campaigns to tell us to pay up. If these institutions spent less on big campaigns, they might not need so much in the way of tolls, savings or taxes. They would have more, and need to ask us for less.

Easier said than done

THE president made the astounding admission this week that it will not be easy to implement the National Development Plan. The thing that worried Loose Talk most in the president’s statement was the remark that ”implementation is more difficult than writing the plan“. Seeing as it took over three years from when Trevor Manuel was made head of the planning commission until the super plan’s final form was finally published, Loose Talk would not recommend that the unemployed of this country get their hopes up that the 11 million jobs promised in the plan will be realised any time soon.