Abstaining & Striking

Nothing like chocolate to wake and cheer one up. Well, maybe there are two other things. But one I am abstaining from for awhile, and the other seems to be abstaining from me.

Oh, and of course the gorgeous bubbles of champagne. That always does me wonders. No. Wait. That’s on the abstinence list as well.

WTF!?!

No wonder I am grumpy, bored, and have no reason to sleep.

So all of you were fairly useless on my questions yesterday. Except you, Rev, your insights always take me to new levels of understanding. AND actually there was one sweetheart of a person who took my plea seriously and let me know exactly what is going on.

So to sum up:

President Mbeki gets paid too little already for his position. Relative to other presidents & CEOs. A 57% increase is justified. Meanwhile, MPs actually only got an inflation related increase, which they are unhappy about but they’re leaving their placards & toyi-toyi’ing out of it.

It is silly to fight for every single public sector worker to receive the same increase. A public sector worker is anyone employed by the state. So that means: the guys at Customs (and there is a reason they are very much on my worried mind) to Home Affairs loafers to pressurised ICU nurses to under-resourced teachers to cops who accept R10 for 100km too many. All of these people are supposed to get 12% wage increases, IF the unions have their way.

Government budged ever so slightly yesterday, and taken their offer up to 6.5% AND done something about offering housing subsidies.

The strike is to start on Friday. Why is the media not predicting what this will mean for the public? How bad will it be? Will our entire nation be brought to a standstill, or will we carry on as usual, not noticing the plight of our state workers?

As one cynical man in my life (aren’t they all!) said, this strike will show just how little public sector employees actually do.

So I have attempted to consider my Friday and how this strike might affect me. So far:
*Teachers won’t be in class;
*Police won’t be doing daily work – like taking reports from your smash-and-grab or telling you not to drive down Bath Ave, Rosebank in the taxi lane;
*Are municipal workers involved? Like the refuse collectors?;
*Nurses will be on Go Slow, only doing the absolute minimum & absolutely vital tasks - Non-Med Aid members, best you try not to maim yourself from Thursday onwards then;
*Home Affairs – [insert what you’re already thinking here];
*Foreign Affairs – they are usually hard workers, I am certain they will continue …after all, it takes much dedication to attend all those cocktail parties, shmmoooze & small talk with credibility & pretension AND quaff that much top champagne;

But most NB, what will the Customs Officials at Oli Tambo being doing?? Will they be there with their beady eyes and rubber stamps? They had so better be, as I have one once-in-a-lifetime trip to head off on to on Friday afternoon, and I ain’t missing it cause Geraldine & COSATU couldn’t bury an overly ideal hatchet.

In other news – being the strange person I am, I was highly amused to watch the Sudanese ambassador to America have a live argument on CNN this morning. Only to stop his rant about there being nothing too wrong in Darfur and the West must stop being so melodramatic (sound familiar to another African leader?), and take his ringing cellphone out of his pocket to check it & decide to put it on silent.

I would’ve paid good money to watch him answer it on the global air!

Further news – one of the prostitutes on Oxford in Illovo owes me. I was trying to do a U-Turn the other night, only for her to flash me her uber-hotpants as I was rounding the island. Not too sure why this threw me, I have seen it before. But it did. And I mounted the curb & maimed the new car.

Biaatch.

Even further news. Tinky Winky is gay. We’ve known & couldn’t care less about it for years now. Promote homosexuality away. If I was a guy, watching the show still wouldn’t make me want to pomp some giant purple male fur ball with a fetish for custard. Neither would listening to Elton John albums.

Get. Over. It.