Warwick Bruce Chapman

Hola tweeps – if I am missing one or if the handle has changed, let me (@warwickchapman) know:

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Dear Editor

I’m tired of the abundance of professional whingers I have to deal with on a daily basis. Too often do I hear throw away comments about how “the municipality does nothing” for our rates and taxes. Such statements demonstrate a level of ignorance which should have no place in the South Africa of today. In eThekwini we patently have water, electricity, excellent roads, reliable refuse removal (recycling), beaches, pools, uShaka, ICC, and yes parks and gardens – even though many spaces aren’t maintained as well as they should be.

Further, a huge proportion of our budget is spent spent rolling out infrastructure, services and housing to parts of the City where there were none before. How many of these professional moaners have actually driven to Waterloo or through the new KwaMashu town centre or visited Bridge City and seen that despite the many issues facing this council, money is actually spent relatively well.

I continue to be stunned by the number of people quite happy to say things like “we get nothing” for our taxes or “the government does nothing”. Do yourself a favour, go to Zimbabwe or Mozambique or Angola and spend some time there. Perhaps then you’ll stop taking for granted the services our governments provide.

And don’t get me wrong, Cape Town refers, we could and should be doing more and better but we’re hardly doing nothing.

CLLR WB CHAPMAN
Glenwood

I wrote the following for a friend who was asking about my Google Mail-based integrated mail, calendaring and contacts setup and thought it would be useful to share it in case it is of use to others.

–

The following describes how Gmail can be used as the single repository of mail despite us potentially having multiple mail accounts. The various benefits of this approach include: no backups needed, fast searching, no need for sorting or tagging into folders, single place to look for anything, integrated mail, calendaring and contacts accessible from multiple devices, and…

NOTE: Depending on your requirements either a free Gmail or free Google Hosted account (7G mailbox size) or a paid Google Pro Hosted Account (25G mailbox size for $50 per annum) is required to make this all work.

1. Put all your mails in one* place
Firstly, ensure that all mails from your current email addresses are collected in one place – your Google mailbox. This can be achieved either by configuring a forward on your existing accounts to immediately send any mail received by them to your Gmail account, or by using the POP facility in Gmail to pull the mails from those accounts into the Gmail account.

With the exception of my eThekwini Ward 33 email address, the rest of my mail, by far the bulk, goes into my Google Pro account – about 20G of it since 2000 archived and searchable in there – and the only stuff that’s been deleted are the forwarded funnies with large attachments. Everything else is all there.

For the super paranoid, there are tools out there that you can use to backup your Gmail account as well.

2. Use identities to send “as” your other accounts
Secondly, setup identities in Google Mail and use them to send mail from that account “as” your other email address(es). For example from my Google Pro account at thusa.net, I send mail and receive mail as:
xxx @ da.org.za
xyz @ da.org.za
xxx @ thusa.co.za
xxx @ chapman.org.za

Additionally, in the event that someone who should be mailing me on my eThekwini Ward 33 address gets me on any of the above, I ensure I can also send as ward33 @ ethekwini.org so that when I reply to such a mail any subsequent replies are routed to the correct mailbox for council-related issues.

3. Use the shared calendaring and contacts facility

Of massive benefit to me is the shared calendaring and contacts provided by Google. I maintain a council calendar (ward33) and a private calendar (thusa.net). They are both viewable from one another so the appointments inter-mingle, just in different colours. This is replicated on my BlackBerry and other devices and on the Google Mail web interface.

So if I add a contact on my BB while out of the office, it is immediately placed in my Google Contacts, and the same for calendar items, and vice-versa. So seamlessly, two things happen: (1) the contact or calendar appointment is added everywhere, and in the process (2) creates a backup so that should I lose any device I never lose any information. This applies to emails, contacts, calendar items, tasks and more.

4. Ditch fat desktop email programs
For most of the 2000′s I was a devoted Microsoft Outlook user. Even after I switched my primary OS from Microsoft Windows to Ubuntu Linux, I still stuck with Outlook.

Eventually I made the switch from the very FAT Outlook client to the lightweight cloud-based Google Mail interface. It was quite an adjustment and forced a new and very productive way of thinking about email – and but I could *never* go back:
- searching is a schizzle, no more filing and folders;
- no more Outlook crashes and corrupt mailboxes;
- no more long waits while Outlook searches through the mailbox;
- no more slowdowns of the PC while outlook searches!

These reasons may well apply to every other local mail client (Thunderbird, Eudora, Groupwise, Outlook Express, …), though they will almost always be more efficient and stable than Outlook.

* If necessary maintain two (or more) Gmail accounts
In my case, as a ward councillor, I have reason to maintain two Gmail accounts, so that when I am replaced in my ward/council role (there are no guarantees in politics), the incoming councillor can take over my eThekwini Ward 33 mailbox and keep the history of the ward, its contact and its issues.

I used this configuration with my previous seat in eThekwini Ward 18 and it has made it very easy for me to hand over and assist the incoming councillor with issues during his first 6 months in office.

This is too technical for me!
Yes, some users will need help setting something like this up and ensuring existing accounts are consolidated into one, and then configuring the rest of the services and adding them to your other devices. But, actually it is all rather simple to do in the end and very simple to keep going.

Try it!

Ciao
Warwick

In December 2009 through a Parliamentary question outlined below, Dianne Kohler Barnard MP established that the moratorium has been lifted on 10 December 2009.

36/1/4/1/200900224
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
FOR WRITTEN REPLY

QUESTION NO 2177
DATE OF PUBLICATION IN INTERNALQUESTION PAPER: 6 NOVEMBER 2009
(INTERNAL QUESTION PAPER NO 27- 2009)
Date reply submitted : 15 December 2009
Ms D Kohler-Barnard (DA) to ask the Minister of Police:
Whether the moratorium on recruiting new reservists will be lifted; if not, why not; ifso, when?

NW2883E

REPLY:

On Thursday 10 December 2009 the Minister of Police released a press statement informing people that the Moratorium on recruitment of reservists had been lifted.The lifting of this Moratorium will allow people who wish to volunteer their services on to assist the South African Police Service in the fight against crime to do so as long as they meet certain criteria laid down by the department.

Reply to question 2177 approved by Minister.

Then, in July 2010 I came upon a letter which explained to a Station Commander that while the moratorium had been lifted, it had actually not been lifted in practice. It is now over two years since the moratorium was lifted and still we are not recruiting reservists SAPS members to fight crime.

2010-07-28

The Station Commander
South African Police Services
Pinetown

Moratorium on Recruitment of Reservists : Question from Parliament by Ms D Kohler Barnard on 2009-11-06

1. Your minute 3/1/5/1/151 dated 2010-07-26 refers.

2. In the email requesting information on the subject matter received from the Pinetown Crime Prevention Commander it was not indicated that the matter was raised at a CPF meeting by Mr XXX and it was assumed that the CP Commander was making enquiries in order to expedite the recruitment of reservists, hence the brevity of the reply.

3. At a meeting held in Pretoria on 23 February this year between the Secretary to the Minister, M/s Jenny Irish-Qhobosheane and Brigadier Kennedy, the moratorium was discussed and it was made clear that despite the answer given in parliament and the subsequent Media Statement by the Minister, a decision had been taken by Division Visible Policing and Division Personnel Services that, pending the approval of the revised National Instruction and the completion of the necessary Naitonal Audit, recruiting and even reinstatement of ex members would of necessity remain on hold.

4. Subsequent to that meeting Brigadier Kennedy met with Brig J LeRoux, National Reservist Coordinator in the office of the National Commissioner had decided to impose a waiting period to allow for the conclusion of the Audit and publication of the revised National Instruction, before the lifting of the Moratorium would be confirmed by a letter from Divisional Commander, Personnel Services, whose office is the only instance who has the authority to make such a decision.

5. In view of the first-hand knowledge of these discussions, this office is of the opinion that the Minister is fully aware of the plans of National Head Office and the fear expressed by Station Commander XXX, in paragraph 7 of the above minute while understood and appreciated, is nevertheless not of consequence.

SIGNED
f/PROVINCIAL COMMISSIONER: KWAZULU-NATAL (Maj General)
B A NTANJANA S.O.E

I will be pressing our Shadow Minister of Police to pursue this issue with the new National Police Commissioner and ensure we start supplementing our regular force with reservists again as soon as is possible!

A quick and simple email as the real one below sent tonight can be the difference between the lights being fixed in a week or a month. Do your bit and report lights when out.

If you think the council is taking too long to fix the lights you reported, please feel free to escalate through me.

Email to: custocare@elec.durban.gov.za

“Dear CustoCare

Please attend to faulty street lights in Glenwood on pole numbers:
- 34, 32, 30, 28, 26, 24, 22 and 20 on Nicolson Rd
- 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 36 Esther Roberts Rd

Regards
Warwick”