FLIGHTS

Cruise news: Book your cruises at MSC Sinfonia & MSC Melody. Or if you prefer cruising for free, then try and get a job on a cruise ship! It's very hard work, but you do get to see the world.

The Purple shall rule! "I’m glad you enjoyed the Warmwaterberg Spa! This is one of my favourite places of all time. The vast still of the Karoo with those crisp mornings are absolutely amazing! I love it. Each year myself and 2 of my friends, we’ve been friends for over 30 years, get together and go away for a long weekend. Each year we try somewhere new and because on budget we look for relatively cheap places. We stayed in the Caravans, and although small, was more than enough for us large ladies. I hope you met the man in the blue coat, Claude, he is an inspiration to most people he meets. Keep your reviews coming....... Thanks, Tina "

The Bottom Line: South Korea has one of the best developed telecommunications structures in the world, with KT Corporation playing a leading role in the fixed and broadband components - there must be bucket-loads that we can learn from them. Telkom bringing in KT Corporation's world-class skills to assist it will not only help develop South Africa's infrastructure, but also result in a large skills transfer to South Africa.

So, it was surprising to see some condemning the sale. Their fear is that this might result in job losses. I share their aim of creating full employment, but we need to be careful of protecting existing jobs at the expense of the long-term competitive edge of the country. The thing is that the protection of those Telkom jobs would come at the cost of higher telecommunications charges, which impacts all South Africans (including the poor, for whom telephone calls probably form a higher percentage of their monthly spend than the rich). We wrote yesterday about the high costs of ports, airports, electricity and road travel in South Africa. Ultimately, business are less likely to operate in a high cost environment - we shouldn't wonder why there aren't many job opportunities in South Africa, if our policy is to make it expensive to run a business here.

Preventing Telkom from leveraging off the world-class skills of foreigners might save a few jobs in the short term (even that I'm not sure of), but in the long term it leaves South Africa with an inferior and more expensive telecommunications system, to the detriment of individuals and businesses.

To attack the problem of unemployment in South Arica we need to have a sharp focus on educating & upskilling the population (we're failing at this) and creating opportunities for them to gain employment (the more business-friendly the environment the more opportunities there'll be).