|
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
Nothing to wear on the clean streets of... |
Nothing to wear on the clean streets of 'boring' Sydney
THE Out to Lunch column is three years old this week and I have celebrated by flying out for a couple of weeks in Sydney via Singapore. Naturally, everybody assumes that there is some dark motive and that I have gone to check out the job market. It's almost impossible to visit certain parts of the world these days without arousing suspicion of imminent emigration. The truth is that I decided to visit Sydney because I couldn't think of anything better to do this month. Unfortunately, when I booked my ticket nobody told me that I was arriving during the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Not that it's a problem, but I haven't got a thing to wear. It was watching Beckett's Trek that persuaded me to visit Oz. There was Denis trying to put us off emigration by telling us how stale and sterile Australia was with its superb harbour, great restaurants and clean streets. That sold me. Anywhere with clean streets has got to be a holiday from Gauteng. Mind you, I will have spent a couple of days in Singapore just prior to arriving in Australia. There's a country with the right priorities. Drug dealers are strung up and you get fined S$1000 for a first litter offence and then S$2000 for the next plus you have to do community service cleaning up the neighbourhood. Chewing gum is banned which, apart from keeping the place tidy, means that you don't have an entire generation with that bovine expression that gum chewers have. Maybe Tokyo Sexwale should take a leaf out of Singapore's book, although I would go one further; I would hang the litterers as well. We can also learn a lesson from Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who has decided to turn back the politically correct tide introduced by the Labour Party during their term of office. Last week he ordered that the words "chairperson" and the even more ludicrous "chair" be replaced by the more acceptable "chairman" in all parliamentary papers. Predictably, female members of the opposition Labour party appeared on television to complain that this was typical of the Liberal Party's disregard for women and heralded the breakdown of Australian society as we know it.
The recent debate in this newspaper over whether property is a good investment or not reveals how emotional people become when conventional wisdom is challenged. When the article first appeared it was quite natural that there would be those who disagreed, particularly estate agents who somehow manage to remain bullish on property whatever the financial climate. If interest rates fall it's good for property. If they rise it's also good for property because it's a hedge against inflation. If the rand weakens then more foreign buyers are likely to flood in because of the cheapness of the currency and if the rand strengthens more foreign buyers are likely to flood in because of the strength of the economy. It would be hard to find a more optimistic breed of people. The reason this debate is so contentious is that most people believe that houses are an investment.
THEY believe it because they are told it is true when they are thinking of buying a house and few of them are bright enough to work out what the transfer fees will be, let alone what the investment potential might be. A house is for living in and if you attach any more importance to it you are likely to be sorely disappointed. Property prices in the Cape are rising, and if you had been lucky enough to buy a year or two ago you would doubtless show a profit now, although you could have still done better with some smart share picking. If you had bought a property in Johannesburg two years ago , you would probably get only 85% of the purchase price now. So Cape Town has house price inflation and Johannesburg has deflation. If you are buying a second property for cash as an "investment", you could almost certainly do something better with your money. If you are buying a principal dwelling on a bond you might end up paying R800 000 over a period of 20 years just to eventually own an asset worth R500 000. Perhaps some people think that's an investment.
|