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IOL News
a day ago
- Business
- IOL News
Are we inviting the World Bank's interference or seeking genuine support?
Later this year the World Bank Group will launch the second pilot edition of its B-READY report, a new benchmark for assessing global business climates. Image: Wikipedia Has the World Bank's flagship business index already been hijacked — from a South African perspective — even before the country's debut in the pilot phase? Money, as Ayn Rand wrote, is the barometer of a society's virtue. In her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, Rand observed: 'When you see that trading is done not by consent but by compulsion, when you see that to produce, you need permission from men who produce nothing, when money flows to those dealing in favors rather than goods — when corruption is rewarded and honesty becomes self-sacrifice — you may know your society is doomed.' Nearly seven decades later, her words remain chillingly relevant. Later this year (September–October 2025), the World Bank Group (WBG) will launch the second pilot edition of its Business Ready (B-READY) report, a new benchmark for assessing global business climates. South Africa is set to join the third pilot in 2026, alongside 184 economies, before the project's full rollout in 2027. B-READY, an evolution of the discontinued Doing Business survey, evaluates regulatory frameworks and public services affecting firms. For South Africa, the index focuses on 10 key areas — business entry, utilities, labour, financial services, taxation, dispute resolution, and more — spanning four departments: Employment and Labour; Finance; Small Business Development; and Trade, Industry, and Competition. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ The WBG has already critiqued South Africa's 'hard regulations', including BEE policies, local content rules, and collective bargaining, arguing they stifle implementation and breed corruption. A February 2025 WBG report, Driving Inclusive Growth in South Africa, also highlighted weak market competition as a critical flaw. Notably, the report's contributors included prominent South African economists and private-sector representatives — Tania Ajam, Haroon Bhorat, Mcebisi Jonas, and others. While the World Bank is a respected institution, its reports often reflect local biases rather than impartial Washington analysis. South African policymakers are well aware of this — and of attempts to influence policy through institutions and 'experts' of perceived gravitas. B-READY's methodology relies on firm-level surveys and confidential expert input, raising questions about transparency. In a country with low internet penetration and a gatekeeping culture, how representative will these surveys be? The selection process — scouring LinkedIn, conferences, and embassy directories — hardly guarantees objectivity. The Doing Business report's demise in 2020 followed data manipulation scandals involving China, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Is South Africa immune to such interference? With competing economic agendas, disjointed governance, and external pressures (including from Trump-aligned figures), the risk of distortion is real. Domestically, the DA is challenging labour laws in court, while AfriForum lobbies foreign governments against B-BBEE. Meanwhile, institutions such as the CIPC, Competition Commission, and SARS — though theoretically capable of enabling business — remain inefficient and disjointed. Consider recent examples: CIPC's mass deregistration of 'non-compliant' companies, under the guise of FATF compliance, ignores South Africa's unemployment crisis. Private-sector exploitation of undocumented workers (Uber, SPAR franchises) flouts labour and tax laws. Tshwane's revenue crackdown exposes rampant illegal utility connections by businesses. Will the World Bank's surveys capture these realities? Or will its findings — like past reports — be skewed by advocacy masquerading as research? A 2005 evaluation of WBG research (led by Nobel laureate Angus Deaton) found that the Bank elevated favourable studies and ignored inconvenient ones, blurring the line between analysis and agenda. South Africa doesn't need external interference — it needs will. Regulatory bodies must function cohesively. Policies should enable, not strangle. And if B-READY is to be Rand's 'noble medium', it must resist becoming another tool of coercion. The question lingers: Is the World Bank's index a genuine reform tool—or a new frontier of influence against South Africa? * Makgwathane Mothapo is a marketing and communications practitioner. ** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, IOL, or Independent Media. Get the real story on the go: Follow the Sunday Independent on WhatsApp.
India Today
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- India Today
Why cinemagoers may be unforgiving of Rajkummar Rao's ‘Bhool Chuk Maaf'
Ranjan (Rajkummar Rao) and Titli (Wamiqa Gabbi) want to get married. Time won't allow them to. Funnily, it's running time which the makers struggle to move along in this comedy about Ranjan's tryst with time to reach his final plot is the least of problems for Bhool Chuk Maaf. In fact it's the only ingenious bit in the film. It's the characterisation of the lead hero, Ranjan, which makes this a hard pill to swallow. If one is to root for this guy's predicament, one's unable to because on paper there's not much appealing about him. His ambition is simple: get a government job so as to marry his sweetheart; the means to go about it are questionable and ultimately off-putting. It makes Titli's penchant for him all the more puzzling. Love does have mysterious ways, but surely idiocy isn't first 45 minutes the film trudges along with umpteen songs acting as disruptors to show the couple's attempt to find a sarkari naukri within a stipulated time. Once that hurdle is crossed, Ranjan eagerly awaiting his wedding day finds himself stuck in a swamp pit of time wherein the penultimate day before the wedding keeps repeating itself. Until Ranjan figures out the root of his problem, audiences have to endure the equally desperate attempts to induce Chuk Maaf is the kind of film where the decibel levels are always high—it's the misguided belief that the louder the delivery, the likelier the joke's ability to land. Rao does most of the heavy-lifting, but there's now something overly familiar and predictable about this small-town lover boy and gullible fool act. There's irritability at not being understood or believed; the one scene where he lets loose in a physical act, there's the quickfire delivery. Despite playing these familiar tropes, writer-director Karan Sharma struggles to hold the narrative There are brief moments of relief, especially when Ranjan has to make sense and resolve the trouble around reliving a day again and again. But Sharma can stretch the premise only for so long and is unable to delve into the harrowing emotional fallout of being trapped in a messy loop. By the time the last act arrives and the moral conundrum rises, setting up a preachy monologue to absolve the protagonist of his many fallibilities, it's too Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand writes that the most depraved type of human being is a man without a purpose. Bhool Chuk Maaf has good intent but lacks a clear purpose. And even when it finds one, the moral posturing is loaded and anodyne. 'Sahi ko chunna bahut mushkil hota hai,' says Sanjay Mishra's fixer in a lecture that touches on humanity, Bhagat Singh and doing the right thing. It isn't enough for Bhool Chuk Maaf is incredibly loud and extremely to India Today Magazine
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Desperate Starmer is in retreat, and scorching everything in his wake
Like a retreating horde of marauders determined to bequeath a wasteland to the liberators, Labour is resorting to the vilest of scorched earth tactics. The more his popularity collapses, the less Sir Keir Starmer has to lose, and the more dangerous he becomes in his desperation to force through progressive shibboleths. His Government's frenetic intensity is terrifying. No British institution is too sacred to be torched, no treasure too precious to be pillaged, no well too deep to be poisoned, no boobytrap too immoral to be deployed. The Prime Minister has casually turned Britain back into a vassal-state of the EU, giving up control over our laws, borders and money for nothing meaningful in return. This was a historic surrender, a monstrous betrayal of the spirit of his manifesto, and yet he has already moved on. Having precipitated the liquidation of many family farms, schools, pubs and businesses, Labour is now targeting what is left of our fishing industry for termination. The Prime Minister announced a partial U-turn on winter fuel payments for pensioners, but this will be weaponised to justify more tax rises. Britain already resembles a scene from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, with over-taxed wealth creators downing tools, pulling investments and rushing to the exits. The public's fury when it connects Starmer's obscene ex gratia payments to the EU – since when does a country pay another to be allowed to trade with it and defend it? – with the next batch of tax increases will be something to behold. To add to this week's desolation, criminals will be let out after serving a third of their sentences, while the authorities ignore rampant shoplifting, grant asylum to numerous criminals and crack down on free speech. Our foreign policy is becoming equally nihilistic: first, we pay for the privilege of handing over Chagos, one of our last territories; and now, courtesy of David Lammy, we turn against Israel, insulting its ambassador, dropping our trade negotiations, ordering the Jewish state not to finish off the terrorists in Gaza and earning the plaudits of Hamas. It's disgusting, and for what? A few votes from the Israelophobic contingent? What is left of our dignity is being sacrificed for the most fleeting of political gain by Starmer's desperados. Just 14 per cent of voters approve of this Government, against 64 per cent disapproving; it is polling at 22 per cent, against 29 per cent for Reform, YouGov says. Starmer is haemorrhaging votes to the Lib Dems (third on 17 per cent, just five points behind), the Greens and the anti-Israel independents. He is pulling out all the stops, hence his sudden rhetoric about immigration turning us into 'a nation of strangers' and his about-turn on winter fuel. Labour is terrible at regicide, but activists have noticed how replacing the hated Justin Trudeau by Mark Carney helped save the Canadian Left. Starmer is rushing through policies he genuinely believes in, such as reversing Brexit; he wants to be remembered as a progressive hero, not as Labour's last, or even penultimate, PM. He is also seeking to redeem himself with erstwhile members of the Labour coalition, from the urban precariat to public sector workers, from Rejoiners to the Northern working class. Starmer's pensioners climbdown signals to younger voters that Labour isn't the 'nasty party' and doesn't believe in 'austerity'. Many on the Right hated Rachel Reeves' assault on pensioner benefits (unusually, I supported a version of her policy), but her U-turn is a victory for the Left: the pressure will mount to reverse 'cuts' (read: slower growth) to Personal Independence Payments, and to reduce the deficit exclusively by putting up tax. Not content with the surge in inflation to 3.5 per cent, Angela Rayner has pushed a plan to expand inheritance tax, cap pension pots, hit more people with the 45 per cent tax rate and conspire to pauperise the middle class and cut off their last routes to self-reliance. Reeves is stuck: Labour's client groups are demanding pay rises and handouts, but the economy is past the peak of the Laffer curve. Yet Rayner is winning; her platform will surely be eventually entirely implemented, paradoxically fuelling the fiscal doom-loop. Starmer is more interested in courting students, touring musicians and those who fly to Tuscany many times a year. Past EU betrayals were dressed up as triumphs of compromise and skilled negotiation. The UK would walk out in pretend fury at the eleventh hour, and claim to have won key opt-outs or major concessions (in truth, the direction of travel was always bad, it was just the speed that varied). Each time we gave up a veto, Europhiles concocted a narrative that democratic accountability would be maintained, pointing to the European Parliament or council of ministers. Edward Heath, John Major, Tony Blair, David Cameron: all played that game, but not Starmer. There was no theatre, no attempt at hiding the fact that he is selling Britain down the river, no apology for signing up to shockingly undemocratic 'dynamic alignment', forcing us to apply whatever laws the EU decides in a range of areas, including in food standards. We are handing extensive control over energy markets and net zero to Brussels, and Starmer has agreed to a poison pill in the shape of trade sanctions if we ever pull out. The next step will be a 'youth experience' mobility scheme (30 year olds are hardly children) to allow at least 100,000 migrants to enter the UK. Many will work in social care, exposing as bogus the Government's pledge to end our reliance on cheap overseas labour. Starmer, a fanatical Remainer, is openly rubbing Brexiteers' noses in it. It is in Labour's DNA to find enemies and persecute them. Private school enrolment is down 13,000 already, four times more than predicted by Labour, but that was always the real reason to slap Vat on parents. Groups that are 'Right-coded' in the far-Left playbook, including farmers, retired constables posting on X, country dwellers, suburban car drivers and middle aged savers are fair game. There have been tactical retreats, such as on trans extremism. But with their backs against the wall, Starmer's army of Leftist radicals are going for broke. Poor Britain: there soon won't be much left to save. 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Sydney Morning Herald
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
She's the reason my parents fell in love – and Trump's idol. That's the part which breaks my heart
I was unhappy to learn recently that the woman who played a central role in my parents' relationship, and by extension my creation, is an inspiration to both Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Since the woman in question is Ayn Rand, author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and chief apostle of 'ethical selfishness', perhaps I should not have been surprised. She is someone viewed as anything from the godmother of libertarianism to an enabler of sociopaths. In my family home, she was very much the former. When my parents met, my mother was an objectivist, as Rand's most ardent followers call themselves. She was drawn to the philosophy by its moral code, its emphasis on reason over emotion and its rejection of guilt. My father soon signed on; he has often said that Rand's prime contention that people deserve to be happy changed his life. Objectivism became a shared passion that eventually led to the marriage that led to, well, me. I've always thought I had one of the better childhoods, and at least some of this was down to Rand. Objectivists, or at least the ones I knew, don't do indoctrination, but are big on honesty, reliability, encouraging curiosity and letting children make their own choices. It made for a golden combination of security and freedom. Which is not to say things were entirely conventional. Out and proud atheists were rare in 1970s Queensland, as were 'Taxation is theft' bumper stickers. The hands-off approach meant I didn't read Rand until my late teens, by which time my mother had parted ways with Rand's philosophy. I liked many of her ideas: that integrity is important, that people like and need to feel productive, and that those who crave power should be feared and distrusted. I never thought of myself as an objectivist, though; her vision of a society based on undiluted capitalism and rampant individualism seems foolish at best and repulsive at worst. Something I didn't understand then was quite how differently others saw Rand. It was, of all things, the cheesy/sleazy 1987 romance Dirty Dancing that opened my eyes, in the scene where Max Cantor's odious, preppy character justifies himself by brandishing The Fountainhead and saying: 'Some people count. Some people don't.' It left me sputtering with outrage and wondering how anyone could form such a perverted version of the book's message. Now, it is no mystery at all. Rand's heroes are, without exception, egotistical geniuses who triumph over the ignorance and envy of the mob. It's a short step from there to contempt for that mob. When Trump said in an interview before his first term that he identified with Howard Roark, hero of The Fountainhead, you could only imagine that 'some people count' is exactly what he took from it. As mentioned, I should not have been surprised to find Trump nodding to Rand. Correctly or not, she is said to be a major influence on right-wing thought. While you'd struggle to find a Republican who'd endorse her atheism or support of abortion rights, her antipathy to government regulation was an inspiration for the Tea Party movement that preceded MAGA, and she has been name-checked by Trump-backing tech moguls such as Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, not to mention quoted by Musk in his war on the US government. More than 40 years after her death, Rand's voice is still heard.
The Age
14-05-2025
- Politics
- The Age
She's the reason my parents fell in love – and Trump's idol. That's the part which breaks my heart
I was unhappy to learn recently that the woman who played a central role in my parents' relationship, and by extension my creation, is an inspiration to both Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Since the woman in question is Ayn Rand, author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and chief apostle of 'ethical selfishness', perhaps I should not have been surprised. She is someone viewed as anything from the godmother of libertarianism to an enabler of sociopaths. In my family home, she was very much the former. When my parents met, my mother was an objectivist, as Rand's most ardent followers call themselves. She was drawn to the philosophy by its moral code, its emphasis on reason over emotion and its rejection of guilt. My father soon signed on; he has often said that Rand's prime contention that people deserve to be happy changed his life. Objectivism became a shared passion that eventually led to the marriage that led to, well, me. I've always thought I had one of the better childhoods, and at least some of this was down to Rand. Objectivists, or at least the ones I knew, don't do indoctrination, but are big on honesty, reliability, encouraging curiosity and letting children make their own choices. It made for a golden combination of security and freedom. Which is not to say things were entirely conventional. Out and proud atheists were rare in 1970s Queensland, as were 'Taxation is theft' bumper stickers. The hands-off approach meant I didn't read Rand until my late teens, by which time my mother had parted ways with Rand's philosophy. I liked many of her ideas: that integrity is important, that people like and need to feel productive, and that those who crave power should be feared and distrusted. I never thought of myself as an objectivist, though; her vision of a society based on undiluted capitalism and rampant individualism seems foolish at best and repulsive at worst. Something I didn't understand then was quite how differently others saw Rand. It was, of all things, the cheesy/sleazy 1987 romance Dirty Dancing that opened my eyes, in the scene where Max Cantor's odious, preppy character justifies himself by brandishing The Fountainhead and saying: 'Some people count. Some people don't.' It left me sputtering with outrage and wondering how anyone could form such a perverted version of the book's message. Now, it is no mystery at all. Rand's heroes are, without exception, egotistical geniuses who triumph over the ignorance and envy of the mob. It's a short step from there to contempt for that mob. When Trump said in an interview before his first term that he identified with Howard Roark, hero of The Fountainhead, you could only imagine that 'some people count' is exactly what he took from it. As mentioned, I should not have been surprised to find Trump nodding to Rand. Correctly or not, she is said to be a major influence on right-wing thought. While you'd struggle to find a Republican who'd endorse her atheism or support of abortion rights, her antipathy to government regulation was an inspiration for the Tea Party movement that preceded MAGA, and she has been name-checked by Trump-backing tech moguls such as Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, not to mention quoted by Musk in his war on the US government. More than 40 years after her death, Rand's voice is still heard.
