hi, all is ok with me yesterdays post was done as a favor for someone who was trying to get a message to someone else. I hope the person concerned can open his heart to R & work on a friendship with her again....

There is no real news, Steffy slept through the night Yippee, Keira has a chest infection, Daniel is on school holidays as of today even though he has not been able to write all his exams because of the bloody strikes, he will write the other exams when school re-opens. Vincent is studying very hard.

DH has a nastey eye infection it looks like I socked him a shot in the eye. I promise I did not....

Me:'work is hectic nothing really to report

hope you all have a great weekend

Its strange that at time you wake up & see that you might have made a mistake when you walked away.

This is dedicated to ....... from R



My mind keeps drifting back
To things we said this morning
Now i'm sitting here alone
Watching the world pass me by
Every time we part i fell like i'm falling
No matter what you think
I still love you

You will always be a part of me
No matter what we do
You will always hold a piece of me
Wherever i may go
Always....

The sky gets darker
And i sense that you are far and away
I miss the times we had when things were going our way
But every time we part you know how much it hurts me
No matter what you think
I still love you.

You will always be a part of me
No matter what we do
You will always hold a piece of me
Wherever i may go
Always....

Yesterday afternoon I get a call from Vincent saying that he had just spent a good ½ hour trying to rescue a mouse from one of my seven cats. He finalyy caught the little critter & had is safely tucked away in a basket. Now comes the question “Can I keep it, it has a nice little house & is safe & will be in my room” My question “what about the cats, they will think it is Kentucky fried Mouse” Him “mom the cats do not come into my room”

Then comes the big one… “mom Keira wants to talk to you”
Keira “hello mommy, I got a likkle mouse, Keira wants to keep it”
Me “we will talk to daddy”

Yeah I know I am a sucker. Anyway in the mean time Vincent had organised a cage for mouse & set it up with food, water, house & toys.

On the way home I break it to DH that we have a mouse in the house & its not dead & Keira wants to keep it. So being a good dad he calls home to talk to Keira he get the story that Vincent had to chase it around the house & it was in mommy’s plants & that it was a brown baby mouse, it was a girl & she wants to keep it. So daddy agreed ok you can keep it.

15minutes later we get a call from Vincent & we can hear Keira howling in the background, the mouse had made an escape & was nowhere to be found.

Now if I was a mouse in my house & noticed 7 cats I would also have made a hasty escape. Well done Mighty Mouse!

I CAN HONESTLY SAY THAT I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS CRAP, PEOPLE ARE DYING BECAUSE OF THIS STRIKE & THINGS ARE ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE.

Police threaten to join strike
11/06/2007 21:20

Johannesburg - The Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) warned on Monday that the public service strike could soon "turn violent".
"Workers will be soon angry, they will be frustrated, and they will see anybody going to work, irrespective of how genuine their reasons are, as basically betraying their cause," said general secretary Zwelenzima Vavi.

Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi has already hit out at the "unprecedented" violence and intimidation which has characterised the strike.

On Monday alone, 31 strikers were arrested for trying to enter Bloemfontein's Pelonomi hospital.

"They intimidated working staff and two wards had to be closed," said police spokesperson Captain Magda Muller.

In Middelburg, Mpumalanga, 10 strikers jumped the fence of the Steelcrest High School and started toyi-toying.

Public service unions are also thought to be losing public sympathy for their cause with the deaths of infants and the elderly blamed on the absence of nurses and ambulances.

Government welcomed new wage proposal

In KwaZulu-Natal, domestic worker Busi Dlamini was told there were no workers and nobody at the hospitals when she called an emergency number for help for her pregnant daughter.

Thabile Mthembu, 19, waited 12 hours for an ambulance, only to deliver a still-born child on Monday.

The government has welcomed a 7.25% wage hike proposal by two independent mediators, but Cosatu has rejected it as not substantially different from government's offer.

The unions initially demanded a 12% increase, but later reduced this to 10%.

The government has increased its offer from 6% to 6.5%.

"The complete rejection by labour unions of the salary offer by government... raises the question whether there are not other more politically inclined motives from labour bosses," the Afrikanerbond said.

The Police and Prisons Civil Rights (Popcru) union on Monday threatened to join the strike if the wage dispute was not resolved.

'No dispute' with Samwu

Until now, there has been no disruption of policing or prisons services - out of respect for the safety of South Africans, Popcru said.

Popcru would give negotiators a week to come to an agreement, said its president Zizamele Cebekhulu. "If they fail to solve it, we're going to strike."

At the start of the strike on June 1, Cosatu called on metal, mine and transport workers to down tools in solidarity with public servants. It plans national strike action on Wednesday.

However, the Labour Court, in Johannesburg, will on Tuesday hear an urgent application by the SA Local Government Association (Salga) to stop municipal workers joining the action.

Salga maintains that it has "no dispute" with the SA Municipal Workers' Union or any other union, and its workers are therefore not entitled to strike.

Samwu expects 60% of its 120 000 members to participate in the public service action.

Backtracking on its earlier refusal to strike in sympathy with public service workers, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA said it was now appealing to its members to participate or hold lunch-time pickets on Wednesday.

Attempt to crush workers' resolve

Meanwhile, provincial health departments on Monday started making good on a directive by health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to fire strikers.

In Gauteng, 380 health workers were dismissed, including drivers, cleaning staff, nurses, porters, security guards, laundry staff, food staff and porters.

In the Western Cape, 75 were fired - only 15 of them nurses.

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union described the move as an attempt to crush workers' resolve to strike.

It was "a clear attempt to witch-hunt union activists and try to intimidate workers into ending their strike," added Cosatu.

Cosatu president Willie Madisha said those dismissed should "rest assured" the sackings would not be allowed to be effective.

"We will make sure that no one is dismissed," he said, adding that there would be no wage deal unless they were allowed to return to work.

A simple symbolic act might end the war over wages
Published:Jun 11, 2007

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More than two million striking workers are set to bring South Africa to a complete standstill on Wednesday.

If the labour action is not headed off in the negotiating chamber over the next 48 hours, this country will see the biggest confrontation between workers and the state since the mass stay-aways that helped end apartheid.

It is, of course, ludicrous to compare those protests with the current war over public-service wages.

These protests are perfectly normal expressions of power in a perfectly legal wage-bargaining process.

There is, perhaps, a political agenda of sorts. The unions have made it plain that they do not respect the current government and President Thabo Mbeki, whom they blame for a conservative economic agenda and a generally pro-business orientation.

But the strike has not been about bringing the government to its knees — it has been about the widely held belief that workers are not sharing in the enormous economic advances made under Mbeki’s rule.

There is a belief that the elite — Mbeki has just been awarded an increase of more than 50 percent on his salary — are feathering their nests at the expense of the poor.

The fact that Mbeki’s increase was decided on by an independent judge is not sufficient to placate these increasingly restless workers.

From where they are sitting, it looks like one member of the elite handing a giant cheque over to a fellow elitist.

The merits of government’s argument against the inflationary effects of a large wage increase for public servants are not being considered because of the emotion generated over increases for “fat cats”.

The truth is that the government perpetually underestimates the importance of symbolic actions. How much would have been achieved by the President publicly taking an HIV test? It would be of little significance in and of itself, but it would send a giant signal to the people that the cranky Aids theories are finally out the window.

Mbeki probably deserves a big increase, but does he really need it?

If he were to state that he would take the same increase as public servants, you can be sure the strike would lose its impetus.