municipal workers do we need em?

Looking, at the news this morning the headline reads : municipal strike continues as talks falter, following on from if they don't pay us we will keep striking and swamu condemns strike violence.
So a i did a quick search through the M and G article file, it turns out their last strike for 15% increase was in july of 2009 they got 11% , now i have not had one cent pay increase in 3 years, dispirit having changed jobs and doing significanty more work with more responsibility. Clearly the economy is in the dwange as my dad would say.
so here is my list,
municipal workers marched or striked in
April 2010
July 2009
10 Oct 2008
19 September 2007
July 2006
and 12 July 2005......
you get the picture. what im thinking is do we need them? these guys make it an annual ritual of striking before negociating with anyone. they are not exacly hugly skilled labourers. and there is still a 30% + unemployment rate in this country. give the jobs to those who want them. this lot clearly doesn't want to work. thats almost 6 months of not working in 5 years, the last municipal strike cost us 15 000 000 a day and they striked for over a 2 weeks what that 2.1 billion rand!
enough already! pick up the trash.

Road Rage

Two executives , a cyclist and some random passer by all on a street...... sounds like the start of a bad joke right? Wrong ! This is the scene I witnessed this morning while driving to work. Right in front of my car this agro guy stops his car get out and goes after the guy in the car in front of him with murderous intent, torn cloths and a strangle hold neck grip later, with a bemused looking cyclist who is about 5.9 and weights about 55kg desperatly trying to get them to stop. These 6.2 kind of okes it was horrendous. All this over what?, maybe a tiny ding on his bumper.

It however got me thinking , what causes this kind of aggressive display? and what possess other wise well off appearing, exectutive types; they where driving and Audi and a Mercedes-Benz, one assumes that they have insurance. Is it a gernal feeling of unease which has been purmeating the country of late , or the kids at home or just over sleeping or impending Friday morning board meetings? The fact it, that although its been a while since I've seen a good old road rage incidence.
This kind of event is all too common in South Africa. People have been up in each others faces a whole lot recently. There are the overly aggressive air head AVB supported who are all of to wage a war. There are the over aggressive air head ancyl supporters off to stage a revolution. Almost every day we hear about some political faction or the other threatening to destabilise the country, its their trump card.

Which leads me to believe, ' is something rotten in the state of South Africa' . Melcome Gladwell would have us believe, that it is purely a pride things we are not unlike America made up of nations of quite aggressive tendency's, The Afrikaans who are famously aggressive bunch. The Zulu's represented by the Zuma faction, who praise Shaka a tyrant who for fun ran his worriers over thorn veld and executed anyone that flinched by throwing them off a cliff while he watched!
We've got the English/ Scottish / Irish descendants remember there is a reason the English never really got control of either of those nations. So all in all a melting pot for disaster when stressed. most of these people will sooner get aggressive than any bunch of people in the known world.

But is there another reason ?