This week focuses the attention to our Gravy Train driver. The man in question is one Lionel Mtshali, the Premier for Kwa-Zulu Natal. The supreme tax-payer money waster. 
Front-page news this week of the local Sunday Times reveal that this "a"-hole has been flying from home to his offices instead of driving in his luxury car.  At twelve g's per flight for Two-Hundred and Eighty Kilometers and sometimes as short as Eighty K's he definitely acquired the taste for Lear Jets.

The story is such:  He lives in Durban, his office is in Ulundi, 280 kilometers away. Four times a week he flies with the province's Lear Jet to work and back. If the jet is not available for some reason, he charters a plane at 15 grand plus. This man takes things a step further though by sometimes flying a mere 80 kilometers to Maritzburg. Now, the jet was acquired by the Province for use by MEC's and the king (Zulu king) traveling to meetings all over South Africa. They (the province) also have a smaller Baron plane which is now being used by everyone except the Premier. Only jets for this man! Taking things even further, he threatened to fire all his staff who refuse to relocate to Ulundi in order for them to be closer to work! He also refuse to hand the jet over to the appropriate provincial department in order to have full control of this aircraft. 

Thank goodness for a good opposition party who raised some very valid questions regarding the above matter in parliament. 

Moving on to our Health Services. 
Nurses are now collecting money on street corners in their spare time in Middelburg (Eastern Cape) in order to provide food for their patients. From over a Hundred beds to less than Fifty, this hospital owes One Hundred and Fifty-Five Thousand Rand to their creditors. With an annual budget of Three-Billion Rand for health services, the Eastern Cape Health Department is surely screwing things up big time! Especially considering they're out of bucks two months into the new financial year. Then you look at Isimela Hospital (same region) which received a Six Million Rand facelift but have no doctors. With a Hundred & Fifty beds, facilities for doctors, dentists and pediatricians, there is no-one there to help sick people. Instead patients are now being referred to Port St John, Forty Kilometers away. 

Some personal viewpoints on the American elections: Seems Bush just can't shake reporters on his drunken driving issue. For heaven's sake people, it happened Twenty years ago! What's the big issue here? And the poor Clinton's are the flavour of the month with very distasteful doctored pictures swamping the internet. Each to his own I suppose. Locally the elections has been called "The biggest show on earth". With the American press on the case, what else can it be? With repetitious questions that only justify the same answer time and time again, what are they (the Press)  really trying to accomplish? Catch out a politician? It has always amazed me how the Americans can carry on and on, on the same stupid (yesterday's news) subject for hours and hours on end. If Clinton had to reveal that he sits down on the bog to have a pee, I'm sure the news stations will have all sorts of so-called experts discussing the mental state and / or the correctness of this action for hours on end. 

Well, that's that for this week. I call it as I see it  like it or not!