Argus-watching in the Deep South

This year's Argus cycle tour in Cape Town was another roaring success with 35000 riders from around the world on the 109 km course. The winner clocked 160 minutes, giving an average speed of over 40km/hour. This is the world's largest individually-timed cycle race and, as with all such large occasions, offers a delightful mix of deadly-serious professionals and out-for-a-fun-day amateurs. One fellow hared past on an elliptical stairmaster on wheels. A group of tandems tore through with an ominous whoosh. Here in the Deep South, Simon's Town is the perfect vantage point for observers, as the road slopes gently into the village and riders take a bit of a breather or even stop at the large watering point on Jubilee Square. A lone bagpiper on the balcony of the British Hotel serenaded the pedallers through. Once the last of the stragglers had gone I jumped on my mountain bike and followed in the wake of the tour. Just beyond Miller's Point I stumbled across another large watering station, feverishly packing up after a long day and festooned with Coke flags flapping frantically in the breeze. It was a reminder of the huge logistical effort underpinning the event. This was the first cycling event outside Europe to be included in Switzerland's International Cycling Union's Golden Bike Series. The QSL is from Swiss Radio in Beromunster heard on AM in Kent in 2000.

Russian out of Cyprus

We’ve had a couple of holidays in Cyprus, in mid-summer when it is stiflingly hot. We stayed in a villa in the hills above Paphos. The routine was: get up late, have brunch, laze around while the sun was high, then head to the beach in late afternoon for relief. The first time we visited, in 1999, I was struck by the amount of Russian spoken on the beach and in town. With hindsight this was probably the vanguard of a surge in Russian connections with the island. This year it is estimated that over $30bn of deposits in Cyprus banks is from Russian sources. Russian depositors surely weren’t the only ones: there are thousands of UK expats on the island with money in local banks. The similarities with Iceland are quite striking: Icelandic banks were offering these great interest rates to foreigners to the extent that its bank assets grew to 12x GDP. We had many friends in the UK who were only too happy to put their cash with Icelandic banks, only to squeal like crazy when the banks were nationalised. Cyprus was doing the same thing and although the bank asset-GDP ratio only reached 7x, this is still pretty ballistic. Caveat emptor! South African bank assets are less than 1x GDP, for example. Bank failures have been around for a long time: the collapses in the US and England in the early 1800s are well documented. In short, we need banks but they will constantly come back to bite us – that’s leverage and no amount of regulation is likely to change it. The QSL is from the Cyprus Telecommunications Authority, a radio-telephone utility service in Nicosia, heard on 8mHz in London in 1995, using 3 kW.