Monthly Archives: September 2009

The Taxi and the Tea Party

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The Taxi

It’s fair to say the South African taxi industry isn’t besotted with the Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) system. It’s understandable too. No matter what assurances are provided around newly jobless taxi drivers being placed within BRT, the reality is that a more efficient service with larger vehicles will need fewer drivers.

It’s also blindingly obvious that a more efficient, safer and better controlled public transport system is overwhelmingly to the advantage of pretty much every other citizen in our wonderful country.

A small group (often termed a Special Interest Group) lobbies (politically or through protests or violence) for a change (or the maintenance of the status quo) to their advantage at the expense of the wider population. Taxi owners and drivers have their livelihood at stake. Of course they care disproportionately compared to the rest of us!

The Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party is commonly interpreted as an inspirational story of the colonists of the New World growing tired of economic exploitation and the famous “No taxation without representation”.

Of course this is not the true story. Continue reading →

Dealing with user cancellation of slow macro

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This post is a little different from usual.  It concerns VBA macros for MS Excel. Writing macros is quite easy, but writing efficient macros that run in an acceptable time requires a few tweaks.

Commonly known tweaks include turning off screen updating (see the code below for an example of how this works) and then updating the statusbar to show the user progress (also in the code below).

However, what often frustrates me is the inelegant ways in which a user can exit a macro which could take hours to run. I struggled a little to find the approach demonstrated below so I thought it might be useful for others. Continue reading →

Wise quotes, random misapplication

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Wise quotes

I stumbled across an interesting hypothesis today. It’s a few hundred years old so I expect many of you will already know it. It’s attributed to a German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhaur* who is described by the authors and editors of Wikipedia as beinng “known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity”.

All truth passes through three phases
1. It is ridiculed
2. It is violently opposed
3. It is accepted as being obvious

Now there are several unmissable examples that follow this route quite neatly:

Things I used to do without and can no longer

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It’s slightly disconcerting how in a relatively short few years, I’ve become so hopelessly dependent on objects, services and technologies (and one food) that I can’t imagine doing without them.

This is not a long list, but I’ve thought fairly hard about it and while it is probably hyperbole to say I couldn’t do without them, it would be traumatic to say the least!

  1. Air-conditioning in my car. 30 Degree plus weather and a full suit really don’t mix. But I survived 5 years of suit-wearing and heat-bearing so surely I could the same again? No, I prefer my shirt not sticking to my back!

    My car before the age of A/C

    My car before the age of A/C

  2. 4 mbps ADSL and a wireless router at home. I still view uncapped access as a luxury, but the basic idea of being able to open my work laptop or my mbp and just browse, quickly, is addictive. My mac mini pulls down software updates and iTunes TV shows quietly in the background. Nokia Messaging pushes email to me E71 over 3G  on the road but switches to WiFi when I’m home. Whether it is keeping track of news, IM and Skype for friends overseas, keeping software always up-to-date, resolving arguments instantly or updating my blog, pervasive, fast internet is an integral part of my life.
  3. Mobile phone. Ok, I know this is probably common to many, but it’s still very true. My need is probably exacerbated by my bad habit of phoning to see whether a restaurant has a table for me as I’m driving there rather than planning in advance! While we’re at it, I better add push email, mobile web browsing and installable apps too. The endless waits for luggage at ORT airport are made more bearable but having distractions available.

    Sushi at Shogun in Beirut

    Sushi at Shogun in Beirut

  4. Spellcheckers. And more than spellcheckers, automatic typo correction. I used to think I could spell quite well. Maybe I still can on some relative measure, but I rely on a machine to scrawl red under my typos and spelling mistakes almost constantly. OS X’s increasing use of pervasive spelling correction through various apps is a boon.
  5. Sushi! It’s insane to think that for the first 21 years of my life I never tasted sushi. The first time I had sushi I was surprised that it tasted so much like ginger. Then the actual sushi arrived. Continue reading →

More medical trouble

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After my last post around common misunderstandings of how medical schemes operate,  I saw a Fin24 article on South African medical schemes that are below the required minimum solvency.

What Fin24 readers had to say

Nolulamo Matutu from Fin24 writes:

Acting CEO of the CMA Patrick Matshidze told MPs 18 schemes have fallen below the prescribed solvency ratio of 25%.

Clearly, these 18 schemes cannot pay all the claims we all would like in an ideal world.

However, more interesting to me than the article itself (fairly balanced and factual) were some of the comments written below. Clearly the misconceptions are still strong!

Fed Up had some strong views:

I’d like to see them look at medical aids the other way and see how many of them are making huge profits, some make billions are rands profit which in my opinion is really just ripping people off, medical aids should be non-profit as the less they pay out the more people suffer. Also medical aid is such a bad word, it should be called what it is medical insurance.

I wonder who be the one to break the news that medical aids are non-profit? Continue reading →

Medical scheme mysteries – your benefit is my loss

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Day 154/365

Creative Commons License photo credit: pheaber

The separation of medical schemes and administrators is poorly understood. This confusion leads to any number of misguided arguments about the miserliness of the industry. There are plenty of other, better reasons to complain, but that’s a different post!

Medical schemes

Medical schemes are non-profit entities established to provide medical cover pooling and administration to members.

If you want to get legal about it, they are independent legal entities regulated by The Medical Schemes Act no.131 of 1998.

The schemes needs to show solvency by having a surplus (assets greater than liabilities) of more than 25% of gross written premium. (“Gross” is really unneeded since it means before allowing for reinsurance which is effectively non-existent in the industry any more.) The solvency margin provides security to members that their claims can be paid even if more claims need to be paid than planned for in the pricing of the medical scheme contributions.

Medical schemes administrators

Medical scheme administrators are typically for-profit companies provided a service to medical schemes and charging a fee for this service in the hope of making a profit.

The administrators negotiate fees with the medical scheme. Since pretty much the start of this millennium, administrators have not made profit out of not paying claims.

So who is ripping me off then?

When a medical scheme declines to pay your claim, it is not the big profit-seeking administrator that benefits. Remember, they just get a fee per member for administration. The people who benefit are the other members of the scheme. There is more money in the fund available to pay their claims, to protect the surplus and to reduce contribution increases next year.

When someone’s cosmetic surgery is approved by the scheme, the other members pay the price. Continue reading →

Poor misunderstood taxes

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Taxes are bad, right? Death and taxes, mentioned in the same breath so tax must be bad. We have to pay it, never want to pay it, imagine what we could afford if we didn’t have to pay it. Taxes are so bad that we spend millions on paying less tax.

But of course that’s all wrong. Taxes are not bad.

Got your attention?  Good. Note that I didn’t say taxes are good. It’s a little more complicated than that.

Even in the most free, capitalist society taxes are necessary. It’s not that paying tax has some sort of magical benefit, but rather than government expenditure (financed through compulsory taxes) is sometimes the optimal solution for the country.

I like having a police force and judicial system and clean, running water and roads and trains and light-houses and compulsory vaccinations and a thousand more things. These are typical examples of goods and services that can better be provided through the scale of a national government and financed through compulsory taxes rather than relying on free markets to provide the appropriate amount of services.

I benefit from every vaccination provided, since it reduces my risk of infection. Most people (and I’m sure I’m included here too) wouldn’t pay for the vaccination of others just because they received a benefit. Rather let somebody else pay for the vaccination since they will also benefit. Do we really want corporations to run our judicial system? Access to good legal representation is already a function of money, I’m quite glad the judge I get trying my case isn’t a function of how much I can afford! Continue reading →