Who am I? This is not an existential question.

I’m Ivo Vegter. I write and argue for fun and profit. I’m Dutch by birth, but grew up in South Africa, where I now live and work as a columnist and magazine journalist.

I have published some of my work on this blog, and posted about a quarter of a million words worth of observations, arguments, notable quotes and quirky quips about economics, politics, technology, and assorted nuttery of green or any other hue.

For now, this blog mostly contains occasional alerts when my paying work is published, along with the occasional unpublished or ad hoc commentary.

A note on who I work for: I’m not employed by anyone other than myself. I earn my living from writing for publications. I have no idea who advertises in them or why. I don’t ask, they don’t tell. Suits me fine. I have done corporate writing gigs, albeit infrequently. I hate them, but the rent insists on being paid. When I’ve done those, they were under strict rules: I won’t write about someone I wrote for, or even their industry sector, for at least six months. Longer if it paid more than a typical month’s income. I’m not a member of any political organisations, advocacy groups, or think tanks. I’m independent. The day I become oil-company funded, I’ll throw a party and retire.

You may wonder about that avatar. It’s what I’d look like if I wore a trench coat and carried a lantern and morning star. It’s also the unofficial Vegter family emblem. It represents a Danish night watchman, which appears to be the medieval origin of the surname “Vegter”.

The photograph above deserves acknowledgement. The goggles are my own creation, but the credit for making the idea work belongs to the best photographer one could ever hope to work with, Sally Shorkend.

I can be contacted (and contracted) at ivovegter [at] gmail [dot] com. Debates will be entertained, but flames will go to /dev/null.