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By Angus Shaw | April 23, 2015 |

There are plenty of items you might miss with just a look at the home page or an individual tab. Here’s an easy guide on how take a quick look at anything you choose. Search button: Type in keywords to find references you might be looking for. Archives by months: For simplicity, click on any…

Danger: Politics, harmful to health

By Angus Shaw | April 17, 2015 |

Bored with the British election coverage? Who is going to swing where? According to The Guardian, the average Briton worries about the personalities and the policies for about two weeks a year; they cough and splutter, get short of breath, the blood pressure goes up over promises that won’t be kept… It will probably be…

New safety rules for hiking on ‘the mountain that swallows people’

By Angus Shaw | April 17, 2015 |

Beautiful Mount Nyangani turns  hostile in moments. It “swallows people” in the local legend – many have disappeared without trace over the years but there’s no way of knowing exactly how many. The latest publicised disappearance was of  31-year-old businessman Zayd Dada who became separated from his family and friends  as the weather quickly deteriorated…

Thirty Shades of Grey, Seven and a Half Weeks, no Wolf of Wall Street

By Angus Shaw | April 6, 2015 |

  The censors have just cut Fifty Shades of Grey, just as they cut Another Nine and a Half Weeks, hence the new local titles,”Thirty Shades of Grey” and “Another Seven and Half Weeks.” “There are scenes in the film that are just too indecent to be shown to the public,” Isaac Chiranganyika, the board’s…

Why we never win the lottery

By Angus Shaw | April 3, 2015 |

  More chance of seeing  Elvis in the local supermarket, more chance of getting shot dead in a random drive-by. More chance of stumbling across an unpublished Ernest Hemingway manuscript, an undiscovered Picasso…            

Well, well, Mr Kissinger…

By Angus Shaw | April 1, 2015 |

Well, well, Mr Kissinger. The outlook might have looked different in 1974. Dire economic  hardships persist in the developing world. Poor, inadequate harvests are again forecast in Zimbabwe this year. Many families will go to bed hungry. Most will trudge on through hard times with heavy footsteps. (New Zimbabwean flip-flops graphic courtesy ehudnamboyo)

The shocking truth about the Euro

By Angus Shaw | April 1, 2015 |

Shock, horror. The euro has now fallen well below the U.S. dollar. A chocolate euro now costs more than the real coin is worth. As Zimbabwe abandoned the local dollar and went over to the multi-currency system in 2009, the euro became legal tender. But shops don’t want it, they don’t see it often, the…

Bringing out our dead

By Angus Shaw | April 1, 2015 |

Unless a demented co-pilot plunges his Airbus into the French alps with the loss of all on board, or Jihadists decapitate or burn alive their captives, we seldom reflect on news reports of horrific death. For most people, if they see a body at all, it is of a dog run over by a car…

Consequences of loss

By Angus Shaw | April 1, 2015 |

I became acquainted with loss at an early age. Both my parents died when I was a child, my mother before my father. My father had once forgotten to collect me from the infants’ boarding school where I had been sent at the age of five. Six decades later – three decades after  independence –…

Money laundering Zimbabwe-style

By Angus Shaw | March 30, 2015 |
Money laundering Zimbabwe-style

 Harare – The washing machine cycle takes about 45 minutes _ and George Washington comes out much cleaner than before in Zimbabwe-style laundering of dirty money.   One US$ bill has been circulating hereabouts since 1999 when Lawrence H. Summers’ signature was put on it during his three-year tenure as Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.…