Rupert Jones Banks and building societies in the United Kingdom are pouring money into ever-more sophisticated services, but are they focusing on tomorrow at the expense of today’s mundane issues, such as customer complaints and lunchtime queues? There have been a spate of personal computer (PC) and Internet banking initiatives. This week, Royal Bank of […]

Lizeka Mda: CITY LIMITS The traffic on Jan Smuts Avenue is crawling at a snail’s pace on Friday morning. Oxford Road is no better. So what else is new? To the traffic chaos on its doorstep, the Park Hyatt hotel at the corner of Oxford and Biermann Avenue in Rosebank presents an inscrutable face of […]

Tracy Murinik On show in Cape Town “Everything is art,” I am informed as I sit down for the interview. Well, that should leave impotent and irrelevant those irksome and defensive little retorts of “but is it art?” that often riddle commentary around work that cannot be mounted flush against a wall. “Even when you […]

Ferial Haffajee The government will tax private radio and television stations, as well as signal distributors, to fund local-content production. A draft White Paper on broadcasting says a fund will be established to subsidise local producers. It is understood that private owners may have to pay up to 1% of their profits, which translates into […]

If you find yourself attracted to shares in the building and construction sector, you had better make sure you have a stomach for volatility. Building and construction stocks are among the most variable on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. An analyst at Nedcor Investment Bank explains that performance in the sector is really a function of […]

Larry Elliott It is just before dawn in Kinshasa on October 30 1974. In a boxing ring in the middle of a football stadium lies George Foreman, knocked out by Muhammad Ali in one of the biggest sporting upsets of the century. As lightning crackles overhead, 60 000 Zaireans cheer Ali, world champion again after […]

Fiona Macleod Douw Kruger has this theory that buck can’t tell the difference between blue and green, because they have a blue receptor in their eyes. To the human eye, however, his bright blue camouflage uniform is an alarm signal. This means he can stalk really close to his quarry when he’s out hunting, but […]

FRIDAY: 4.00PM PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela will only consider intervening in the violence-torn taxi industry if Transport Minister Mac Maharaj requests his assistance, presidential aide Parks Mankahlana said on Friday. Even then, Mankahlana said, National Taxi Drivers’ Organisation’s demands that Mandela declare a state of emergency in the industry are impractical, as the industry does not […]

Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon Like “rainbow nation” we are now stuck with “African renaissance”, both of them admittedly catchy phrases, but that’s about as far as they go. The former is, thank heavens, starting to evaporate now that everyone’s realised that access to the promised pot of gold has turned out to be on a […]

Melvyn Minnaar Potable pleasures Drinking and flying is not on. Even if you’re not piloting the long-haul Boeing, alcohol indulgence is bad for your body. The hours spent physically static and confined to a seat in a pressurised cabin, exposed to the ensuing dehydration, is not the recommended condition for a cocktail party, never mind […]