And Whether Pigs Have Wings

Dear Marketers, Hustlers And Others

Can we agree on some rules so that I don't have to dig for long forgotten adjectives whenever I receive your calls or your mails.

Please don't begin any message with the word congratulations unless it's accompanied by a handsome cash deposit. I'm sure someone somewhere is thrilled to know that he or she just might be approved to be a finalist in some obscure competition to win an ant farm or a truckload of toilet paper. It's just not me. I can just picture the scene and some remote Libyan desert village. " Ibrahim, Ibrahim" he calls to his neighbour, excitedly brandishing his cell phone. "I'm  a finalist in the South African 'Win A Shi.., sorry, Truckload Of Toilet Paper' competition.
"Wonderful, my friend. Congratulations."

Incidentally, I can be monumentally stupid about some things but I do know that I at least have to enter a competition to have any chance of winning anything. Please, can we just drop that line of hustle. We South Africans can smell a con all the  way from a neighbouring state. We've had practice. We've been bulldusted by the best. For years. Mainly in government and politics. We know a flying pig when we see one.

To the guys with very English names and thick Eastern European accents, if your binary trading robot has an 85 percent success rate, what the dickens are you doing in such a crummy job? Making futile phone calls to penniless people like me.Who, in his right mind, would fork out a thousand dollars  (US, no less) on the say so of Henry Pendleton, who is clearly from Nizhny Tagil?

I am now terrified of flying. According to emails that I receive with monotonous regularity about 20 gentlemen with my surname have crashed in remote corners of the earth, leaving vast fortunes which I can share in if.... Will I be next? And I don't even have a fortune to leave.

Fellas, let me sum it up. I cannot afford a holiday at your plush, plane- fares-not-included locations. I cannot afford a trading account, latest-does-everything-but-cook cellphone, insurance or membership of your exclusive, mysterious wealth-creation club or whatever other pixie dust you are selling.

Want to make my day? Show me the money. Cut the...

Yours in the fight for economic freedom.

Richard