In an unusually dull State of the Nation address, Jacob Zuma did mention that he wanted to spend some very large amount of money on a broadband implementation plan. Given the government’s record in telecommunications, this struck me as a stupid idea. Don’t ministers need cars or something? Read Throwing good money after bad on ITWeb.

All the ire at banks and multinational companies by dangerous communists and anti-globalisation hippies is misdirected. They should reserve their venom for the rustic rich-world farmer living the life of Henry David Thoreau. They are the new robber barons.

I’ve long threatened to write a column about why we shouldn’t worry about income inequality, but should worry about the actual prosperity (or otherwise) of the poor. In doing so, I coined a new term, which I hope will catch on: Ginidiocy.

Eskom’s fears about rising electricity demand in 2011 bring home a simple lesson: agitating for “services for all” usually means not getting the services in question. My latest Daily Maverick column explores this irony.

You may also have missed a few holiday-season columns. The new year started with a piece on How to hire a hitman in SA. Before that, I was talking about taxis, traffic and road safety, in The oppression of taxis, and Arrive alive and neurotic. Earlier in December, I wrote two columns about WikiLeaks which proved to be sufficiently controversial to spark the interest of a few radio stations: One day we’ll all hate WikiLeaks and Protection of Information Bill and why WikiLeaks is so dangerous.

Hope you’re settling into the new year well. It promises to be a good one.

In Joburg, it’s that time of year again. The cyclists invaded, took over the city, banned everyone else from the road, and had their private lycra-fetish party. Here’s what I think of that.

While the government talks tough about joining the currency war that has broken out as a result of the collapsing dollar (see my column at The Daily Maverick: Currency: the race to the bottom), I was thinking about the many other grand but ultimately futile ideas government comes up with to plaster over the cracks of past failures. Then I thought how nice it would be for everyone, including the ANC’s own constituency, if the government tried to do far less, but do it well.

In other news, some guy on the interwebs said I called for genocide, and proceeded to point out how barbaric that would be. I quite agree. Well, I would, if there was even a shred of truth in the words he put in my mouth: The algebra has a devil for a sidekick. Cute headline, though.

Mobile money has never really taken off in South Africa, despite several attempts at it. There are reasons aplenty for this, so the quesiton now is whether the latest entrant to the market, Vodacom M-Pesa, be the breakthrough? I’m hopeful, but sceptical. Will M-Pesa also fail?

Government is forging ahead with a series of raids on defenceless consumers, with a green tax on everything that moves. Needless to say, I’m opposed, on a whole host of grounds: Green tax: another raid is coming

This was a hectic week in which I moved to a rather larger (if much older) house, while entertaining a tenacious bug that kept me coughing and wheezing. I did manage two columns, however, both in a way dealing with mobs.

The first, published at The Daily Maverick earlier this week, expresses my utter lack of sympathy with striking public sector workers. To paraphrase Mark Twain, it’s been the unspeakable in pursuit of the indefensible. Do strikers deserve anything? It got some attention in the mainstream media, resulting in a brief but entertaining interview on E-News yesterday morning.

Another piece of news that made me think of the mob is the ruling that grants South Africa jurisdiction over the domestic activities of foreign-based online casinos. In short, they’re now officially illegal. Punters, banks and carriers of advertising alike will be in the line of fire. The motive? Protecting government tax revenue, of course. The gambling industry used to be shaken down by mob bosses. Now, government bosses do it. They even call it protection. Protecting mob turf was published yesterday on ITWeb.

A number of people at #tech4africa, the excellent conference organised by Gareth Knight (@oneafrikan), asked whether I’d make the copy of my introduction to the panel on Unlocking Mobile Payments available. You can find the text after the fold. Attribution will be appreciated, but feel free to use it however you wish.

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I’ve been travelling, so my blog was not updated last week. It was an entertaining week, however. While I was chairing the highly informative ITWeb MobileBiz conference in Midrand, I was ambushed on Twitter by a fellow who took issue with my column on The Daily Maverick.

I thought the column in question was rather sweet and optimistic: Go ahead, have a baby.

This fellow begged to differ, so I wrote a response this week. It is long, and complete with plentiful citations to satisfy the critic. In a way, it is the serious, academic version of the same column: A glass half-full.

ICASA, the South African telecommunications regulator, has cancelled a proposed auction of radio frequency spectrum, in bands which would have been useful for wireless broadband services. Its reasons? It can’t decide what technology to dictate, among others. What a mess. Here’s my take, published at ITWeb yesterday: Just sell it already!