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SPORTS TEAMS A DISGRACE TO BAY Reckon that the Kings and Chippa are a disgrace to Port Elizabeth. That the municipality is still funding these two losers should not be tolerated by ratepayers. KEVIN B WILL UNIONS FIND WORKERS JOBS? With all the strikes going on my question to the unions: should Volkswagen and Mercedes decide to pull out of SA, will they find jobs for the workers? I don’t think so.

LEON PARCEL FOR CHARITIES MISSING Sad about the post office having an auction [of unclaimed parcels]. Union of Jewish Women is waiting for a parcel of gently worn bras from the UK for our outreach. Was posted on August 8, never to be heard of again. A pity, as organisations would have been so happy. ELAINE RACUSSEN NOTHING DONE We heard Mongameli Bobani on the Mayor’s Minutes a few weeks ago, speaking to the staff member at the Uitenhage SPCA which has been waiting in vain for its funding. We all heard him say that he would sort out the funding “even today”! Well guess what? Nothing has been forthcoming. What a disgrace. JANET PENSION FUND LOSS Just thinking. The Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) has written off its R4.3bn investment in Steinhoff’s empowerment shareholder, the Lancaster Group. If the board of trustees could have waited just a few moments longer it could have added my overdraft, a small amount of R7,000, to that and they wouldn’t have been any the wiser.

VALERIE, PORT ELIZABETH Amazing how a person or persons have the power to write off billions from one’s pension fund. If it was their money I am sure they would not have allowed it. What must the pensioners of the GEPF now do?

Just sit back and forget about it? If you ask for a better pension to be paid out from the fund there is never money to allow for it. State coffers are plundered by everyone and nothing is done about it. L MCLEOD SOME PUPILS HOOLIGANS Glenda Hicks (“Hitting children breeds hate”, December 4), do you not wonder why our schools are violent, primary schools as well as high schools? It’s because teachers are not allowed to cane the hooligans, who are enrolled as pupils, who then run amok causing teachers and decent pupils an unbelievable amount of stress and, at times, fear. TEACHER WHY TAXIS BEHAVE AS THEY LIKE The main reason taxis can do as they want is that most of them are owned by politicians, municipal officials, traffic officials and policemen. AVC, UITENHAGE ZUMA TO BLAME People of SA, I just want to say our country is in a real mess. The person to be blamed for this is Jacob Zuma and his thieving comrades. Municipalities, hospitals and traffic departments are all failing horribly.

Zuma, you have no morals and it’s because of you that the ANC is so incapable of delivery. The biggest mistake you made was to say the ANC will rule till Jesus comes. I hope you can live to see how wrong you were. GARY, PORT ELIZABETH ANDILE LUNGISA In 2011 then [National Youth Development Agency] chairman Andile Lungisa spent R100m on a party. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised then that he wants to up the R4m budgeted by the DA-led council to R45m for summer events. Perhaps he simply likes a good jol? What a waste of taxpayers’ money! But then it’s what we expected!

GREG How can anyone justify spending R45m on festive season events, whatever those may be.

MKW If you have another photo of Andile Lungisa in the next week I am considering no longer buying the paper. In any event if you actually measure space given to real news versus adverts, leisure and classifieds it is barely 40%.

The Herald can no longer claim to be more than a very poor regional newspaper, if one can still call it that.

MALCOLM DODDS Now we are totally convinced that The Herald regards Andile Lungisa as its hero! Yet again, pictured on the front page (December 5)! Sickening!

DISGUSTED I wonder when the review of Andile Lungisa’s sentence will be completed. Just asking. IAN TURN BACK CLOCK THIS CHRISTMAS What a beautiful setting Christmas will be without electricity, just as it was when Jesus was born 2,000 years ago. Use candles and make a little fire. Get the real Christmas feeling. TONY ESKOM WILL STILL GET BONUSES The load-shedding is bad enough, but I presume the Eskom board and top management will get their huge bonuses to really rub our noses into their incompetence. A DIM VIEW HUGE SALARY While we worry about load-shedding, the price of petrol and the price of chicken, ponder this: Eskom CEO Phakamani Hadebe’s salary is [purported to be] R404,201.58, annual R8,521,128.

H FRAHM, KRAGGA KAMMA, PORT ELIZABETH LEGALISE CRIMES At last, a solution for the problem of the crimes of robbery, theft and fraud: the government should simply legalise or decriminalise them as in the case of dagga and prostitution. Oh, and don’t forget to expunge the words robbery, theft and fraud from our national vocabulary, and replace them with the perfectly legal appellation, expropriation without compensation.

J J OSSHER NEARLY KILLED BY MILITARY BUS On Tuesday I was nearly killed when a military single-decker bus jumped the traffic lights at the Standfontein Road-La Roche Drive intersection. Had I not been listening to my car radio and as a result a bit slow in pulling away, I would most certainly have been hit.

When is the traffic department going to start taking action against this now common practice? It is so obsessed with fining motorists for travelling at 71km/h downhill, which is not going to cause any harm.

KAY KAY, SUMMERSTRAND, PORT ELIZABETH TRIM FOLIAGE ON WILLOW ROAD Please trim the trees/shrubs that are encroaching on Willow Road and scratching cars that drive there daily. IAN GAVIN SUGAR USED TO BE BIG EXPORT Horrified to read SA is importing sugar from Brazil (“Bitter R266m blow for sugar importer”, December 5). Before the ANC [came into power], Durban was a major exporter of sugar for foreign exchange. BOB

THINK ABOUT REST OF US

It’s amazing that there is such a brouhaha by some teachers after their holiday has been shortened. Two 10-day breaks and two three-week breaks add up to nine weeks holiday a year. Show me any other profession that offers this perk. The majority of the work force out there has three weeks per annum vacation.

Sure the teachers sometimes work longer hours than they might like, but you chose the profession. I have a son as a teacher and another as a doctor, and they take the rough with the smooth as they both chose their professions.

So please, spare a thought for the mortals who too work long hours with a minimum break each year.

THE WHOLE NINE WEEKS START WITH SAPS ITSELF Bheki Cele should have started with a cleansing process within SAPS. Rot is still manifested within. Crime will never be reduced unless criminals are eliminated.

READER FUTURE SLUMS? Are residential complexes and cluster houses the future “slums ” of the country? What happened in the UK? A MYBURGH, RICHMOND HILL, PORT ELIZABETH