NewsTime | David Gleason

Eyeball to eyeball, government blinked

David Gleason — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:00:00 GMT

The US housing market is America's bellwether index. Well, that's what I have long believed. So, when the statistics for July hit the electronic waves, the market staggered and fell. Housing sales in July fell more than 25% below the level for July last year. The Dow Jones industrial fell 134 points and the US two-year Treasury note fell to a ...

THE BLING-BLING GENERAL

David Gleason — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 22:00:00 GMT

General Siphiwe Nyanda (60), Minister of Communications, says the Public Protector has cleared him of complaints that contracts awarded to companies associated with him were irregular. Nyanda issued a statement after the Public Protector's reports were unveiled. That's when he said, through his spin doctor: �It is our hope that these findings ...

Well along the low road

David Gleason — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:00:00 GMT

This country is faced now with the realisation of the impact which has resulted from the steady decay of its vital government organs of state. This can be the only conclusion any thinking citizen can arrive at after a reasonable examination of the events of the last 16 years. To begin with South Africa is now more fixated on race than ever before. ...

WILL THE REAL ANC PLEASE STAND UP

David Gleason — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:00:00 GMT

The ANC of 2010 is definitely not the same party as that which came to power in 1994. It has demonstrated a chameleon-like ability to change itself and adapt to whatever happens to be the prevailing power base. During the early 1990s one Thabo Mbeki penned a strategic note in which he predicted that the tripartite alliance would one day end. He ...

Nor any drop to drink

David Gleason — Tue, 3 Aug 2010 22:00:00 GMT

Every time you flush the loo in Gauteng, the water plus contents go hurtling off to Mpumalanga where it is treated and then used to wash coal which is then fed into any one of Eskom's 11 power stations in that province. So what? Well, here's the interesting part � that water most probably arrived in Gauteng from the Katse Dam which is part of the ...

Has you got a licence?

David Gleason — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:51:00 GMT

I am bound to comment on a column which appeared in Business Day on Monday July 26, On the Money, written by Stuart Theobald. His theme is that banking licences aren't easy to obtain and he then details the efforts made by me and two others through a company called Ban Konsult to establish an investment bank in this country. The first error in ...

THE GREAT BP BORGORYGMI

David Gleason — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Did you know that a news blackout has been imposed on BP's Mexican Gulf salvage operation? I didn't but that's what Terrence Aym, writing in the Helium.com website claims. [Helium is an American ...

THE CHINA CONNECTION

David Gleason — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:59:00 GMT

Are most of us looking in the wrong place? The greatest economic and financial concentration has been on Europe, on Greece, on the so-called PIIGS, and on the European decision to attack national deficits by significant reductions in state spending. But, if there is genuine concern about the possibility that the world will slip into another recession ...

The mouse that roared

David Gleason — Tue, 6 Jul 2010 17:58:00 GMT

A sea change in 2007 in the positioning of trade unions in the public sector heralded the potential for dire consequences. The country is about to discover just how appalling and possibly disastrous this might be. Well-known and authoritative labour analyst Andrew Levy says government has yet to demonstrate that it has the political will and courage ...

Sitting on a home-grown solution

David Gleason — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:07:00 GMT

This government keeps on making decisions based on short-term criteria. The result is to cripple the country's long-term ability to maintain the economic growth rate it so desperately requires. If you want an example, you need look no further than the decision by that economics-savvy Cabinet assembled by former President Thabo Mbeki which decided ...