Welcome to My Blog
Articles and advice on all things legalSnippet 2020 – 12
Economy Price gouging: price gouging is wrong, right? Price gouging is driven by greed and, especially in emergencies, is simply morally wrong. Politicians love such laws as they appear to be defending people suffering from a setback and makes for happy voters –...
Snippet 2020 – 11
Economy The endless economic breast-beating and death updates are really becoming quite tiresome: what, economically speaking, happens after our isolation? Interestingly, it appears that economies rebound after wars but don’t after depressions. It remains to be seen...
Snippet 2020 – 10
Economy When stocks are volatile, conventional wisdom dictates that you should invest in bricks and mortar, right? Perhaps not, somewhat overexcited predictions are that the US housing market might crash to 29-year lows. The VIX is shorthand for a measure of the...
The coronavirus: a force majeure?
A farmer contracts to supply logs to a purchaser after having made the necessary arrangements to automate his tree harvesting activities: he orders the machines. Owing to the closure of borders and factories, following on the corona virus pandemic, these are not...
Snippet 2020 – 09
Economy Nedbank has revised our GDP for this year down to 0.3% and says that we run a high risk of recession. The South African BER business confidence index has sunk to its lowest level in 20 years: 8 out of 10 respondents are unhappy about current business...
Snippet 2020 – 08
Practice A short article, written by Judge Cameron, deals with our prisons system: he says that instead of the retributive approach under the previous regime, this country embraced a restorative approach to offenders and their punishment. This demanded prison...
Snippet 2020 – 07
Practice Broke? RAF attorneys were reportedly asked to hand back their un-finalised files by Thursday last week in what appears to be a cost-cutting exercise by the RAF. Insourcing is a theoretical exercise as the expertise to handle this simply does not exist within...
Snippet 2020 – 06
Practice The rigidity of Roman law of contract was ameliorated by the introduction of normative principles allowing the adaptation of law to the changing needs of the times - often expressed as good faith. Law changes slowly but one must expect our law to be...
Snippet 2020 – 05
Economics The BER announced that it expects our GDP growth to arise to 1.2% next year, double that expected for this year. The fact is that the triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment will not be addressed with economic growth at this rate. The...
Snippet 2020 – 04
Economics If we take the state of our economy today, with 18-million people getting social grants, it means reprioritisation of the budgets will not pull us out of that problem. What we need is new capital, capable of creating new jobs and boosting manufacturing.”...
Snippet 2020 – 03
Economy Only one commentator picked up on the absurdity of the Development Bank of SA loan to SAA: the stated primary purpose of the bank is to promote economic development and growth and to improve the quality of lives of people and promote regional integration...
Snippet 2020 – 02
Economy The Mercury described SAA as having gone into a death spiral. Understandably, who wants to book on a plane that might never fly. This will definitely get worse. It appears that the downgrade of our credit rating to junk status is virtually a certainty. The...
Snippet 2020 – 01
Economics Same old - plus ça change(for the Lani) ; the self inflicted decline of our economy and, indeed, our state, continues: - our SOE’s are in dire straits and a turnaround is certainly not in sight ; - power outages/loadshedding has become endemic to the point...
Practice Review – Deedsview / Deedsweb
In December conveyancers were abruptly informed that the standard Deedsview access (available at deeds offices only) to documentation would be terminated and replaced with an equivalent available on the net generally. In principle this sounded great! It turned out not...
Snippet 2019 – 36
Economy Past wild claims regarding the cost of corruption in our economy estimated losses in excess of 30% of GDP. The latest on this front is a note from Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr which holds that we lose about 5% of our revenue yearly as a result of fraud: be careful....
Snippet 2019 – 35
Economy Tito Mboweni says that SAA is a vanity that we cannot afford: I cannot help but hope that the mother of all strikes moves management to choose between the horns of the dilemma of either declaring insolvency or fire staff. The fact is that SAA is seriously...
Snippet 2019 – 34
Economics Flatlining. On Friday I was again privileged to attend an economic presentation by Nedbank’s Nicky Weimar. She says that our GDP growth, occillates between growth and recession, resulting in an average growth of 1% or less. This stagnation is not in line...
Snippet 2019 – 33
Economy Our MTBPS has come and gone; somewhat depressing as it outlines an economy on autopilot. The malaise affecting our economy has not been addressed. The gentle pruning of cost alone will not stimulate our economy and a tax shortfall surely awaits us; hence the...