Memorial service for my father

Yesterday we said goodbye to my father for the last time. He died early in the morning of Christmas Eve in the Criccieth nursing home, Bryn Awelon, where he spent the last two weeks of his life.

His coffin was brought to St Catherine's church on Thursday evening where the vicar, Kim Williams, conducted a brief ceremony for close family members. On Friday morning the hearse led the cortege to Bangor crematorium where Kim led another ceremony, and at 2:30 around 80 family and friends gathered at St Catherine's for a wonderful service of remembrance. We assembled a scratch choir and sang Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus and Tallis' If ye love me, with our cousin Michael Chance singing a short solo piece in his inimical counter-tenor.

My sister Helena and I delivered the eulogies, which I reproduce below. We held the wake at the Lion Hotel and a dinner for 40 family and out of town friends at Dylan's restaurant. A splendid send off for my dearly beloved father.

Opinion piece in Business Day - why increasing the size of the pie beats redistribution

Today's Business Day newspaper carries my opinion piece on its main opinion page.

You can read it here.

Member statement in Parliament - 100th anniversary of the Russian Revoluion

Today is the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution, the day the Bolsheviks took over Russia and ushered in 72 years of rule which included the formation and death of the Soviet Union. I was chatting to James Lorimer on the plane to Cape Town this morning and he suggested that I make statement to the House, which is reproduced below (thanks to him for most of the wording).

What I do not mention in the statement is that around 1967, when I was 7 years old, Alexander Kerensky paid a visit to our family home in Rugby, UK. He was very old by then (he died in New York in 1970) but I vaguely remember him, I think accompanied by members of his family whom my parents had got to know as they lived nearby.

ANC presidential hopeful Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma joins the PC on Small Business Development

Today, ANC presidential hopeful Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma sat for first time as a Member of the Portfolio Committee on Small Business Development.

Her appointment was published in the Announcements Tablings and Committee Parliamentary papers on Friday which elicited some media coverage but little commentary as to why she had chosen or had been deployed to this committee.

She arrived shortly before the meeting opened along with another new member, Mervyn Dirks, also from the ANC (he replaced the late Timothy Khoza who was tragically killed in a car accident while on an Education Committee oversight visit in Paarl in August).

Opinion piece in Sowetan newspaper 5th September - how to reduce unemployment through growth of small businesses

South Africa’s unemployment rate has hit a new high, with 36,4% of working age people out of work or no longer looking for a job.

In the current environment of flat or no growth, with large firms slashing jobs and small firms just hanging on, any talk of new jobs may seem wishful thinking. A negative attitude towards the future is self-fulfilling, so we must craft a future of positive outcomes based on realistic scenarios.

In the NDP’s scenario, 90% of the 11 million new jobs we need by 2030 will come from small business. The NDP is already 5 years old, written at a time when SA’s economy was growing at around 3%. Now growth is less than 1% and a further ratings downgrade in December (or earlier) would undoubtedly keep it there, or worse. So is it realistic to expect small businesses to hire people in such depressed conditions?

Media Statement: Small Enterprise Finance Agency (SEFA) loses R20 million due to maladministration

Media Statement

by Toby Chance MP - DA Shadow Minister of Business Development

Date: 14 September 2017

Release: Immediate

Type: Press Statement

Yesterday, the Small Enterprise Finance Agency (SEFA), released the findings of a forensic investigation into a R20 million loan deal it made to a failed chicken project in Mpumalanga. The findings were an indictment on SEFA’s corporate governance practices as it found instances of embezzlement, fraud, theft and poor internal controls.

Interview on PowerFM - Department of Small Business Development fails to deliver on its mandate

Last night I did a recorded interview with PowerFM's Power Zone which was aired on the show between 12 and 3 am this morning. They had picked up my opinion piece which appeared in yesterday's Sunday Independent where I wrote about the Portfolio Committee's oversight visits to Mpumalanga, KZN and the Free State, and my view that the Department of Small Business Development is failing to deliver on its mandate. In fact this is not just my view: the entire Committee agrees.

On Wednesday we have Sefa coming to the Committee to answer charges of corruption and maladministration of its loan book, 47% of which was impaired in the 2016/17 financial year.

You can listen to the podcast of the interview here.