Here follows your FREE set of handy tips on exploiting your dbeckett effectively:
The Chair
If your conference chairman must point the way to the loo, call for cellphone silence and explain the parking voucher rules, use your dbeckett for...
free referral to suitable candidates.
If you fear speakers droning, audiences snoozing, focus dissipating, issues vanishing, your function's purpose slipping away, use your dbeckett for...
astute and active chairmanship.
dbeckett@global.co.za
The Mouth
Not advised for: the Golf Day speech at the 19th hole. Saturday night. Praise songs. Witty put-downs of Africa for nose-out-of-joint persons to gloat in.
Well advised for: penetrating perspectives on SA's prospects; thoughtful antidotes to the gloom-'n-doomism soon to resurge in World Cup hangover-time.
The Pen
Writing right might work. It doesn't always work. Your right may not be my right. We ascertain first (no fee) whether my approach works for your need.
Editing right always works. Just don't waste your money getting me to check your grammar. You take me on for tough stuff, where you have high ambitions.
Peacemaking
When your company is ill at ease, everyone thinking everyone else is doing them down, fresh ears and fresh eyes can cut through surprising amounts of baggage.
When it comes to big disputes, lawsuit terrain, mediation can often -- in a tiny fraction of the time and cost you expect -- deliver more lasting satisfaction than you hoped for.
Your Call
Your dbeckett is a many-purpose tool -- seldom supplying the standard brand of corporate services, but then, seldom being called upon by the standard brand of company. Denis Beckett, odd-job man for hire.
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D2 Exchanges
It's the system that turns voters into ethnic herds
I have a friend who still reckons Afrikaners are a lesser race, sent to try the patience of we lordly Anglo-Saxons. In old days he made me livid. I had to oppose his bigotry, lest he spread it. Now I laugh him off as a deadhead; he could as well be punting elves and fairies. The Eng-Afrik racist baggage evaporated, unaided by decree, statute, or intellectual guidance. Which, I submit to Raymond Suttner, is what will happen to the Black-White baggage when D2 prevails.
This, Mike's reply to Laxative, Mike; align the gut with the head, is absolutely delightful. It is also vintage Mike. It is also magnificently wrong. Read Denis' long overdue reply here.
This smart-looking oke is Pedro Victor. I think his smart look has to be deceptive, when you see the hard time he gives me. He makes me explain again what D2 means, and re-explain why to get a truly stable next-phase society you can't do devolution and you can't do bit-by-bit. You have to make a far step, in one go. Then again, look close and you see that the stability of the outcome is copper-bottomed, so making the step will be easy when its import is better known. The place to see more is here. And Pedro, seriously, thankyou, you make me say things better, you're valuable (and as smart as you look).
What a gentleman is this! The debate he enthusiastically participates in is one of those that reduced me to rudeness about Malema debates as a genre. But does he get rude back? Nope, he's above that. He asks a legit question, only slightly tersely.
Phoebe is innocent! All she asked is "where's the debate?" But you'll admit that's a trigger question when the debate consists of long-distance amateur psychoanalysis of a few frail mortals whom our inadequate politics has grossly overpromoted. Check it out here.
Great & inspiring & all but, um, HOW?
Bernard Spong is one (of many) who doubts that D2 can get going, with big bad government ready to flick it away when it surfaces. But Bernard doubts it nicely, and in writing, and gives me a peg to reply. Brother Bernard, thank you! Actually, what you have here is the first wholly unbannable revolution; no possibility of a gun , a knife, a stone being raised. Plus the first that needs no displacing of incumbents ... but hey, Bernard's comment is here, and my reply with it.
Katy Louw buys into "inevitable". Hooray Katy! I'll send you a gold star in the post. I know the rest of you think it's insanely arrogant to talk of "inevitable".Yeah, I concede it's an off word. But ... if any one person can seriously tell me any conceivable direction that political development can take, other than fuller and richer democracy, I'll buy a humble pie. I'll cancel "inevitable". I'll send Katy two bottles of Solms Hiervandaan Shiraz blend. But you can't, hey? Me and Katy know that much. The Katy exchange is here.
