Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. Mr. President, thank you for joining us at our centennial meeting as we fraternal in the United States. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here today to help you of the National Fraternal Congress of America to celebrate your 100th anniversary. Come to think of it, it's a pleasure to celebrate the anniversary of anything that's older than I am. Now, it's my intention today to talk to you about volunteerism. No easy task when you consider that the audience is full of experts. It's a little bit like preaching to the choir. The situation does remind me of a story. I find that increasingly things remind me of stories. This was one about the fellow that was the only survivor of the Johnstown flood. And he had been quite a speaker out along the mashed potato circuit, always telling of the adventures, his adventures in surviving that great flood. And then he died, went to heaven, and St. Peter was talking to him and said that the people who were already up there did like to now and then hear from the late arrivals as to things that were going on down on earth. And he said, oh, that'll be fine with me. And he told St. Peter what he'd been doing all these years and speaking about that great flood. And St. Peter said, well, all right. And he stood before the assemblage and St. Peter introduced him and said he had an interesting experience that they would hear about. And then as he turned and went by him back to his seat, St. Peter said, that fellow second from the left in the first row is named Noah. So it's with a certain humility that I'd like to speak to you for a few minutes this afternoon. And by the way, I'm sorry to say that it will be just some minutes. Congress is still in section and I got to get back to the office and keep an eye on them. But it's with humility and respect that I speak to you, all the more so when I consider all of this Congress, this Congress here and its member organizations have accomplished during these past 10 decades. Indeed, when the National Fraternal Congress was founded a century ago, it had just 16 member organizations and today that figure has risen to the neighborhood of 100. You count millions of Americans among your members. You spend an annual amount of, well, I was going to say you're $225 million, but you've topped me already, to support volunteerism and other fraternal projects. And each year, as you've been told, your members devote, it's now 36 million hours of volunteer work. Early in the last century, the French observer Alexis de Tocqueville wrote these words about volunteer efforts in America. I have often seen Americans make really great sacrifices for the common good and I have noticed a hundred cases in which when help was needed, they hardly ever failed to give each other trusty support. Having no particular reason to hate others since he is neither slave nor their master, the Americans' heart easily inclines toward benevolence. De Tocqueville was the same one who then told his fellow Frenchman when he went back that how Americans would get together and do these things and then he said, you won't believe this, but not a single bureaucrat would be involved. Well, ladies and gentlemen of the National Fraternal Congress, no one has done more than you to keep alive this distinctly American tradition, this habit of volunteerism that says so much about the essential goodness of our country. On behalf of a grateful nation, I commend you and if I may say so, I think you owe yourselves a round of applause. Well, now, since as I said a moment ago, you're experts in this field, all of you will have noticed that these are good times for fraternal and volunteer organizations, that the ethic of volunteerism seems to have gained new strength in recent years. Indeed, last year charitable giving in America amounted to some $79.8 billion, and amount larger than the national budgets of over two-thirds of the nations in the world. Perhaps still more striking, charitable contributions are rising dramatically. Between 1980 and 1985, charitable contributions increased by 82%. This success has not gone unnoticed. In fact, other nations around the world have realized the great value of charitable giving and volunteerism in their society. As a result, an international conference on private sector initiatives will be taking place in Paris, France this month, this autumn with the goal of, or I should say this autumn, not this month, with the goal of promoting such progress around the world. This increase in volunteer work and charitable donations tells us something about the mood of the country, the temper of the national mind. Just six years ago our economy had stagnated and the mood of the country had, in many respects, gone sour. Today all that's changed. Our economy is continuing to grow in one of the longest continuous economic expansions in our history. Our defenses are being rebuilt and the Strategic Defense Initiative, SDI, has challenged the assumptions that have dominated strategic planning since the end of the Second World War. In foreign policy, the United States has reasserted itself around the world on behalf of human freedom, aiding those fighting for liberty in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, and yes, Nicaragua. And may I say that I intend to press Congress unremittingly until it finally approves the assistance to the Nicaraguan freedom fighters that we requested so long ago. In fact, I don't and I don't think you intend to rest until Nicaragua at last experiences true freedom and democracy. Here at home a profound change has taken place in the mood and outlook of the country, indications of renewed social health abound. As I mentioned, charitable donations are up. And I can't help but point out here that when in 1981 we proposed that sizable cut in the income taxes, there were a great many people that said, oh no, that will hurt charitable giving because if it isn't as big a tax deduction as it's been, the people won't give anymore. Well, isn't that funny? Now we've broken all records for giving in this country. And I think the same thing will happen when the Congress votes that tax reform program that we have before them. Charitable donations up, yes, student test scores are up, crime rates are down, perhaps most telling for the future is the new outlook among our young people. It means a great deal when a president can once again go to a college campus and find there a friendly and happy and even cheering student body. When I was governor of California, if I went there, they burned me in effigy. Economic growth, broad success in foreign policy, a newly patriotic and self-confident nation. Why should this be? Well, of course, it has a great deal to do with the specifics of our programs. Our 1981 tax cut, which I've mentioned, was significant in restoring our nation to economic health just as the historic tax form we're about to see enacted as I've indicated before will lead us to greater prosperity. And in foreign policy, the rebuilding of our defenses was and remains absolutely necessary in order to defend our republic and demonstrate to friends and adversaries alike the seriousness of our arms. Yet beyond all the programs, there's something more basic and even more important. I'm referring to the vision, the national sense of purpose that our administration has worked so hard to enhance. At its most fundamental level, of course, the American vision is the vision of all western civilization, the belief in a just and living God, an individual responsibility, and in the importance of the family. And by reasserting, for example, the ancient belief in the goodness of creation, a belief found among other places in Genesis, we've been able to reawaken a sense of the goodness of our own land and our people. And by restating the belief that history has meaning, that it's a story unfolding according to the will of its creator, we've been able to reestablish a sense of our nation's own place and that story is a land of opportunity and a defender of freedom. And this brings me to the final matter I'd like to discuss with you today. Nothing in our nation's history is more offensive to our fundamental values, national sense of purpose than drug abuse. And in the face of all that, our country has accomplished in recent years nothing could represent a worse disappointment and heartache. And I know what you've been doing in that regard also. Disheartening as the figures are, I must outline the problem of drug abuse for you fully and candidly. Despite our best efforts, illegal cocaine, including crack, is streaming into the United States in spite of the fact that we have intercepted 10 times as much of that drug as was previously done. Four to five million Americans regularly use it. Half a million Americans are hooked on heroin. One in 12 persons smokes marijuana regularly. And drug use is highest among the age group 18 to 25, the young people just entering the workforce. And the victims of drug abuse, the victims of this terrible crime are countless. They're the people beaten and robbed by junkies. They're the people who pay higher insurance rates because of such robberies. And they're the people who pay higher prices for goods of all kinds because drugs in the workplace have undermined worker productivity. The victims in short are you and me, our friends, our families, all Americans. Even our children do not escape the tragedy and horror of drugs. As Nancy said during our shared address to the nation, drugs steal away so much. They take and take until finally every time a drug goes into a child, something else is forced out, like love and hope and trust and confidence. Drugs take away the dream from every child's heart and replace it with a nightmare. During that same address, I outlined a series of initiatives we're taking to deal with the problem head on. These initiatives include working more closely with foreign countries to combat drug trafficking, seeking to ensure that our nation's schools and workplaces become drug-free and strengthening law enforcement activities that put pushers and dealers behind bars. As part of these efforts, I'll be convening on October 6th and 7th a meeting of our ambassadors from those countries which face major drug production, consumption and transportation problems. Nancy and I will meet with them to discuss how we can mobilize an international commitment to win the war against illegal drug use. As I've said before, no drug network will remain alive. But the point I want to stress before you today is that while government can accomplish certain important but limited objectives, a fight against drug abuse can only be won through a great national effort involving all Americans and especially organizations like yours as you've been doing since 1971. I know that the organizations represented here, as I say, are already actively involved, increasing public awareness to the problem and establishing programs for students and parents in your communities. I commend you for that, and I'm grateful to know that we can continue to count on your support in the months to come. So please continue helping all Americans say no to drugs. And just as here in Washington we've established national goals, you can establish local goals of your own, drug-free communities and drug-free homes. As I said at the outset, you're the expert when it comes to Americans helping each other. And I know that when you put your minds to it, you'll be able to come up with ways to help that nobody in government ever would think of. I know that the same time that you helped to create a national intolerance for drug abuse, please join Nancy and me in stressing the positive side. All that awaits our young people if they'll only stay drug-free. We must remember that turning to drugs is very often an act of hopelessness and that in case after case the strongest weapon against drugs is hope itself. One figure says a great deal in this regard. During the past four years the number of high school seniors using marijuana on a daily basis has dropped from one in 14 to one in 20. Of course, that's still much too high, but it does represent quite an improvement. And it shows that indeed we can stop drugs. And I would submit that it has much to do with the trends in the nation, the nation at large that I cited a few moments ago, the new jobs, the new self-confidence, the new sense of opportunity. As author George Gilder has observed, the policies we've pursued in recent years have created countless opportunities for our young people. And in his words, quote, opportunities summon initiatives. Initiatives develop character and a sense of responsibility, a feeling of optimism. The future looks more open and promising to students than it did before for the simple reason that it is more open and promising. Nancy has brought back to me so many stories from her visits out to treatment centers, but could you believe there are unbelievable some, could you believe a boy in the fourth grade, eight years old, and this boy is not only a user already, he's a pusher. And he carries a beeper if he's in class and the beeper goes off, he excuses himself from class because that means there's a customer outside waiting for him. And we let happen in this country of ours over these recent years. God bless all of you. I thank you for all that you've already done all the hope that you've shed through our darnation for these past hundred years. Now, if I didn't know so much about what you've been doing, I would have been here asking you to join our crusade. But now I hope you won't mind if our crusade joins you. And this crusade against drug abuse. We can all be together. And I really mean it when I say join you because when I we made that speech my own view was that yes, government can do some things. Yes, we step up our efforts and continue to try to intercept the drugs and so forth and to catch the pushers. But the real way it's going to be done is when as has happened so many times in this country, two hundred and forty million Americans out here make up their minds that we're going to do away with drugs and right from the community level and the neighborhood on up the people mobilize to put a stop to this. That's when we'll bring an end to it. I to prayer phrase Nancy, and by the way I'm kind of glad I came on my own today. I found out on that recent broadcast she has the darndest way of stealing the show. But to prayer phrase Nancy to say no to drugs is to say yes to life. And once again, you've been responsible for creating life and making life better for so many that I feel a little humble in your presence very proud indeed to have taken up your time to be here. I just Mr. President we have a plaque for you here and I'd like to read it the national fraternal congress of America joins hands with their ten million members to say no to drugs. Presented to President Ronald Reagan on the September 2nd.


9.25 on enhance 4th view with you happy Star Wars day so we'll let that go off and then after lunch we'll get cracking with some blood quick maybe Ya yna gor fel snton hwnnw'r hyn a'r thunderstorm yna'r thunder and lightning, so we've got in the van 9.25 on enhance 4th view with you Felly yn ddiwedd i'r arddangos. Felly, fyddwn i'n meddwl i gyd, fyddwn i'n meddwl i'r berthynau, yn meddwl i'r modr yn colli, mae'n gweithio'n meddwl i'r modr ac yn fysg gwyllt. Alex yn ystod am yma i'r meddwl, yn tympas. Gweithio'n meddwl i gyd? Felly, mae'n meddwl i gyd, mae'n meddwl i'w meddwl i'r meddwl. Mae'r meddwl i gymuned. Mae'n meddwl i'n meddwl i'r meddwl, Drink it, but it lives in my garage. So it's been practical to use for our first visqueen. There's a couple of pieces, we'll cut them down to a cold bridge strip and put them round We'll have a visqueen on top. ond mae'n gwysoch, ni'n gwysoch beth heddiw. Mae'na symud yr edrych yn gwneud fe'n g合io'r llyfr ar gyflwg fel angen, ond roedd dweud ond, mae'r twf spoiled mawyn iawn 3 i 4 padd y cement gyda ddim allan mae'n i gweithio feddwys felly mae'n gweithio'r bod ydych yn気er a hynny wedi cael gwc Moto Gwaith y ddoedd, ond felly mae'n gwleon wedi cael cyfyrdd felly mae'r camp o ddech Delta mae'n cael gallwch ychydig, gydig mai diweddysgron wedi gydig. rhywunol 25-30m. Dw i'n angen adeilad, rydyn nhw'n olygu gyda'r cyntaf. Ac rydyn nhw diweddysgron yn y cwrt honno. Rydyn ni'n gweithio'r cwrs'ch hyn neu'n gallu Majesty going around the whole building. Fu'r ganddo, mae'n gweithio'r cwrs cwrs'ch hynny am y tuill ac o gwch angen ag y gallu'r cwrs, o r Geoff cyntaf fy nghyddo'r methu ddechrau. yw'r profiliogau o'r cyflawn i'w'r gyda'i. Alex yn oed yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch. Mae'n ddod o'r cyflawn gyda'i, rwy'n arwain y gyflawn ar y cyflawn. Rwy'n ddiwrnod ar y cyflawn, ac yn dweud ar y llwyaf. Mae'n ddim yn unrhyw bwysig i ddweud. Rwy'n ddweud i ddweud ar y cyflawn, a ddweud ar y cyflawn. Cymru'r cyflawn. Rwy'n edrych yn ddweud. Rwy'n edrych i ddweud yr olygu o'r cyflawn. ydych chi'n Rydym ni'n jei iawn, allan drwp Alex ydydd tydd Rwy'n golygu'r tyngau Fy y gallu bydd hynny, nid rhwp- Newn digwydd ddim oed Yr rywbeth ychydig yn rhad Rwy'n golygu'r digwydd a dwi'n gweithio chi 大fau Ddim effaill yma Nydw i'r wneudatt Ar ni, ddim oed Fy yw hefyd Fyddi'r hefyd Felly, mae'r rôl yn llwy. Felly, mae'n rhwng. Felly, mae'n rôl, fel hynny, mae'r rôl. Mae'n ddechrau yma o'r ddod o'r bobl. Felly, mae'r rôl yn llwy o'r bobl yma o'r bobl. Felly, mae'n ddod o'r bobl. Felly, yn fawr, mae'n ddod o'r bobl. Rwy'n gwaith gwneud. Mae'n gwneud yma oherwydd y byd rôl yn llwy o'r bobl. Felly, mae'n gwneud. I can't show you the time because I'm currently filming on the phone because we forgot the camera. So, mixtures in, profiles are up, most of the cuts are done. I've just decided I'm going to change these cuts. I'm going to get rid of these little things here. I'm going to cut two big halves here.  So, erm, I'll get the cuts done as I cut the station and Alex can jump on the beast. Which is currently having its battery charged on the new battery charger. Six batteries, one plug. Brilliant. And then there's the, erm, that pack out radio. So made up with that. Slash charger. Oh yeah, that was Alex's idea. That arrived yesterday. We've also had a couple of other little bits, like a square. That's good. Now, what was the other thing that arrived at? Oh, the little blower. So, yeah, erm, this is going to be done today. So, by hook or by crook, it's getting built today. So I'm going to jump on the sora, like I said, and Alex is going to have a go at this, to see how much this week can get off. So, erm, I can't set you up for a time, that's because it's on the phone. So I'll catch you in a bit. The camera's on its way. Alex's mum and Sarah are currently on their way shopping, but they've turned round to come back and bring the camera for us, which is very kind of them. So I'll get them to give us a wave when they come here, when they come. Seen a bit. Go back on the camera because we had the camera, I just couldn't find it in the bag. So, there you go. 5th of May, 2012. And they've forgotten to record since break time. Whoops. So this is what we're up to now. I think it's one course on top of that. It's a little bit now. So we're nearly there. I've swapped the pieces round instead of these little shitty pieces. I wouldn't be happy with that, so I've swapped it to two big halves. I've got a better job. And then the off-cuts. So we've used one of the, just to use everything up. Yeah, we've just used a small piece and the off-cuts, they're 210. So just to use pieces up instead of just cutting more blocks. Don't like waste. We might not have enough blocks. We will. Tiny little pike. There's a lot of cuts there on the pike there, isn't there? There you go. We had to go up the render before. We've got some of it off, so we've got the block work back to brick work. And we're using bluebirds on that side, putting them in as we go.  Oh no, you've done the front tab on the side. So we'll put you back on for a bit, trying to get the last bit. And then we're on hop-ups at the moment. And once the sides are up, we're not going to bed the wall plate on, because we don't know what height that's going on at the moment. Whether it's going to be 4B, 3B, 4B, 2B. So we'll just leave it at that. And then we'll form the pikes. I think we'll allow for the wall plate to come all the way through. And then they can fix to the end of the wall plate then, yeah. Yeah, and then that's what we're following. That's what we're following, the original roof. So let's put the camera a bit further back and see what's going on. And then let's get this last bit on. We've just had a rain shower come over. A very short, sharp one. So hopefully it'll give us an hour just to get done. And then we'll see what the customer wants us to do. She wants us to carry on with the render. We'll go home. So we'll see. Happy Friday. Where's it Easter? That's a good Friday. A range of the fifth. Right, a bit after we've gone.  Well, yeah it is. We weren't going to come in today, but we're here. It went black all of a sudden. I've got a couple of pictures of it. And then it bombed it down. Thunderstorm for a little bit. Ten minutes, that was it, wasn't it? Yeah, but it's enough to just... You don't want to be stunned under this in a thunderstorm when there's thunder and lightning. So we've got in the van. We've got one pike together. There's nothing in it. We just need to get up there. Get a line set up and get it on quick. Get it covered up and go. Just for straightening, it's like this. Some shiny showers and heavy showers. You can see the big clouds rolling in. It's an anguish guy that. It's black behind us. But it's just been hit hard anyway. So let's get it set up and get this done. Get out of this. I'm going to go too far back. One pike, up. One porch finished. Nice strong cuts around the lintle. I think it's only porch, that won't take long. But the way it goes into these, it's deceiving. I'm messing around putting trestles up and setting the lines up, getting the pike right. Doing the cuts. It all takes time and it all adds up. Whereas you stand back and look at it from there. So it's small porch, not when you block in that. There's a lot of work in it still. But it's done. It reminds me to beat the weather. The scenery is looking really nice now. It's spring and all the greens coming out. So yeah. Ready to get the profiles down.  Cos it is only single skin. It is only single skin. But we're just doing what we're told. That's how we've been asked to build it. Really it should have a 250 mill cavity. But we wouldn't even fit a 150 cavity in there. I personally think that door should be moved to the centre. Going forward it's probably getting the porch on there. I'd put the door in the centre of the porch. There's no reason why that can't be moved. And yeah. Done it. 10 to 3. 10 to 3. Not bad. We were going to finish the hour ago, it wasn't for him. Funder storm. I don't think we've done too bad orphans. We've got the scaffold, put it over there and get tidied up. So we're catching a bit for the outro. So. Almost an hour's cleaning later. There we have it. One finished porch. It's all propped up ready for the weather conditions. That was tough. I can say a lot of stuff but I'll say tough. So there you have it. Just doing our last little things then we'll be going home. So that'll be the end of this video. If you enjoyed be sure to give it a thumbs up. And if you're new to the channel and you want to see more be sure to hit subscribe and tap on that bell for notifications because that is a massive support for the channel and obviously we greatly appreciate that. That man keeps going on about subscribe a goal. What's your goal? It's an ambitious one. 50,000 this year. Well. It's a tall order. But obviously any support for the channel all the likes and subscribes in the comments all interaction always greatly appreciated it helps the channel grow. So. This has been Brooklyn with Stephen Alex with a buddy nightmare porch. And I'll see you in the next one.


Good afternoon, everybody, you're very welcome to the IIA. My name is Alex White and Director General here at the Institute. We're delighted to be joined this afternoon by David O'Sullivan, EU sanctions envoy. And I think it can fairly and accurately be said on this occasion that he needs no introduction to this audience. We're very much looking forward to hearing David reflect on his role as EU sanctions envoy thus far and the objectives of sanctions on Russia following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. So in the normal fashion, David will speak to us for about 20 minutes and then we'll have a Q&A with the audience, both here in the room and online. So if you are watching online, you're welcome. You'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on your Zoom and send in those questions as they occur to you, as we always say, rather than waiting until the end. We tend to get a bunch of questions towards the end we're just watching the clock and we're trying to finish. So if a question occurs to you, of course if you're watching us online, you can pop that in just as soon as it occurs to you. Those of you who are in the room, more than welcome, you can put in your questions in advance and we're afraid you just have to memorize them and then we'll have a great opportunity once David has finished his introductory presentation. That presentation and the Q&A are both on the record. You can join the discussion as well on Twitter or X, I should say, using the handle at IAEA. And if you're going to do that, please tag us any post that you share about the event. David O'Sullivan took up his role as EU sanctions envoy in January of 2023, leaving a certain vacancy in this organization, which I was pleased to fill. Prior to this, he was director general, as I say, here. Before working in the Institute, he was with the Brussels office of the law firm Steptoe and Johnson as a senior councillor between 2019 and 2022. David served as ambassador of the European Union, delegation to the United States from November, 2014 until February, 2019. And prior to his appointment as ambassador, he was the chief operating officer of the EU's diplomatic service, the European External Action Service. He previously held a number of senior positions within the European Commission, including director general of trade, secretary general of the European Commission itself and chief of staff to commission president Romano Prodi between 1999 and 2000. And I think many of you will be aware that David started his career, his illustrious career. I think it may be said, an eventful career with the Department of Foreign Affairs back in 1977. Now, before I introduce David and invite him to address you, I think it is appropriate that we should note the very sad death this week of John Bruton, former Taoiseach, also a former EU ambassador to the United States, opposed to that I mentioned David subsequently held. John Bruton was an esteemed member of the board of the IIA, a huge supporter of our activities down through the years. And in particular, I think, as I understand it, although I wasn't here during the period of the IIA's engagement with Brexit, but he was an especially active and energetic member of the Brexit group that we had here within the Institute. And in fact, subsequently, and I am aware of this in the kind of post-Brexit years, if I can call it that, that we're in, he continued to be very, very closely engaged with the questions of Irish-British relations, the impact of Brexit, the implications of Brexit. Right up to the current period in our UK group here, and he appeared regularly on our Friday morning sessions as engaged and as, as I say, as energetic and as interested as he ever was. As well as being a politician, obviously, a minister, Taoiseach, a diplomat working on many, I know when I was in government myself being conscious that John Bruton was working on many initiatives, some sung and some very unsung on behalf of this country internationally, but as well as all of those things, he was also a public intellectual in the truest sense, curious, extremely well informed and genuinely open to all views, despite holding some really unshakable principles throughout his life as many people will be aware and appreciate. So we feel a keen sense of loss at the IIA as indeed people do across the country, obviously in the Finnegale party, but across the country. We want to send our sincere and heartfelt condolences to the Bruton family, especially to Finola and their children, and most especially to Richard Bruton, who in fact was in this room only last week in the same tradition as his brother contributing to a session that we had on the circular economy. So it's a sad moment, but we will remember John Bruton, I'm sure you'll all agree with great respect and affection. So it's my pleasure now to hand over the floor to our friend, David Lisulman, to address you. Well, thank you very much, Alex, and just let me echo your remarks about John, much has been said, but he was a wonderful man and a great friend of this institute, and much has been said about his Irish political career, but of course he was a very committed European, did a fantastic job as EU Ambassador in Washington, even I remember being in far-flung parts of the United States, and they would say, oh yes, you remember that Irish Ambassador John Bruton, he always left a strong imprint wherever he went, both for his humanity, his friendship, he was a very likable person, but as you say, Alex, and this is really what I remember, it's just an absolute font of ideas and thinking and stimulating all the time. I cannot count the number of times he would ring me up and say, listen, I've just had an idea, I'm thinking of writing something, what do you think, and he'd go on, and it would always be very clever, sometimes provocative, didn't always agree with everything he said, but he was a fantastic, always thinking, always the mind always functioning and thinking a bit out of the box as well, so he's a great loss, and I could only join in the condolences that you've offered to his wife and his children and all his family, he will be sorely, sorely missed. But I'm glad to be back at the Institute, it's great to be here and see so many familiar places, see the place in such good shape. I wanted to talk a bit about sanctions and the conflict in Ukraine. I think it's important, I want to talk about a few things, I mean, firstly, why sanctions? I mean, obviously, the proximate reason was, of course, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but I think it's very, very important to put that in a context that this is not just about Ukraine, this is not about a sort of little local border argument in Ukraine, and we were perhaps collectively guilty of taking that approach to previous crises of this kind. Actually, President Putin set out rather clearly his ambitions for a sort of new Russian imperialism at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. I think people were not perhaps listening as attentively as they should have. In 2008, we had the war in Georgia, which was already a first sign of Russia's willingness to use military force to pursue a certain agenda. Then, of course, we had the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and we had the disruptive activity and the starting of a war by Russia in the eastern provinces of Ukraine, a war which went on for eight years before we finally had the full-scale invasion. I think the scale of the threat which Mr. Putin's behavior poses to the security of this continent is never to be underestimated. This truly is a debate about who gets to define the rules of the 21st century in Europe. Are we going to have a multilateral rules-based, law-based structure recognizing the sovereignty of states and working on some basic principles? Or is it going to be the law of the jungle and who has the biggest army and the most might? That is really what this is about. And there's a very good speech which Vice President, High Representative Borel, gave to the Ukrainian parliament yesterday, I think, which very sets this out very clearly. So the stakes are enormously high. And while it is about Ukraine, and we have to show support for Ukraine, the stakes are high for all of us. This really, people will look back in 20 years and say, how did they manage that crisis? And either we will come out of it stronger and we will have the good thesis will have prevailed or it will not. And that is really how it will be judged. So our reaction when the full-scale invasion happened had to be strong. Obviously, it's got three pillars. It's got military assistance, and this has been absolutely crucial. It's got macro-financial and humanitarian assistance and it's got sanctions. I want to talk mostly about the sanctions, but of course we should not forget the other two pillars because they are very, very important. And the remarkable job which the Ukrainian army did in pushing back on the First Offensive, frankly could only have been achieved in large measure due to British, as I understand, training of the Ukrainian army since 2014, but also the equipment and the funding which they've had, including from the European Union we've had an unprecedented situation where the European Union is now putting money into armaments and military equipment for Ukraine's defense. The macroeconomic is of course crucial because this is a massive shock to the Ukrainian economy. The destruction, the wanton destruction which Russia is wreaking on civilian infrastructure and capital is going to take a long time to rebuild and it's going to cost a lot. And then of course sanctions because why sanctions? We have never had a series of sanctions like this before and the objective of the sanctions is threefold. Firstly, to deny Russia access to the advanced technology needed to make sophisticated military equipment. Secondly, to deny the Russian government the revenue to continue to fund this war. And thirdly, to impose a high economic cost on the Russian military industrial complex in response to the unprovoked full-scale invasion. These sanctions, which started almost immediately with the immobilization of Russian assets and the blocking of Russian banks to the Swift system which disconnects them from the international financial system, have over 12 and soon to be 13 successive packages extended to cover nearly all aspects of our economic and commercial relations with Ukraine. We cover about 60% of our imports and about 55% of our previous exports. It has covered some 7,500 products including hydrocarbons, including oil and gas imports. It's important, however, and we've never seen it. We've never adopted sanctions on this scale against anyone in the history of the European Union. It's important to understand also what we did not sanction. This is not a full-scale trade embargo. There was a conscious decision taken by the sanctioning coalition of the G7 Plus that we would not actually sanction Russia's continued trade in oil with other countries because we didn't wish to cut the global south off from oil supplies, which they needed. The same was true of agricultural and fertilizer. We also, for humanitarian reasons, did not ban medicines, pharmaceutical products, or medical equipment. So there are quite a number of exceptions and exemptions which have allowed Russia to continue to trade. I'll come back to the oil price gap in a moment. But these sanctions have been very challenging, frankly, for our member states to implement because previously, if we had sanctions say against Iran, the implementation of sanctions was mainly focused on oil. It was mainly run by foreign ministries and deep respect I have for foreign ministries. Implementing these sanctions runs deep into the economic and commercial fabric of all of our member states. And as you know, sanctions are adopted at European level but are implemented at national level. And so the member states have had to mobilize customs officials, police, investigative authorities, prosecutors, ministries of industry, ministries of economics in order to police the full implementation of these sanctions. And this is going to be a continual challenge because wherever there are sanctions, there is circumvention. There are efforts to get round them. There's money to be made through circumvention and there always will be people who are willing to take a chance on trying to break sanctions or to evade sanctions. So we must understand that we're never going to completely eliminate it. What we have to do is progressively make it harder, slower and more expensive for Russia to obtain any of these sanctioned products in order to impede their ability to continue to pursue this war. Now, my role has been to focus on the leakage of products through third countries who are not aligned on our sanctions. What we did was a fairly crude analysis of where trade previously went to Russia, which was now going in unusually large quantities to some other destinations and from those countries to Russia. That was a first list where we thought there were issues of circumvention potentially. And this threw up a first list, mainly Central Asia, Caucasus, Serbia, Turkey, you know, I had our Emirates were the first countries on the list and that's where I've spent a lot of my time in the last 12 months is talking to these countries about these issues. It is important to note that two of those countries, Serbia and Turkey, technically speaking, legally speaking, should be aligned on our sanctions as they are candidate countries. They have each chosen for their own good reasons not to do so, but I think this needs to be reminded from time to time. The other countries have chosen not to implement the sanctions because for one reason or another, they don't feel these sanctions, of course, do not have UN approval. They're not adopted by the UN because Russia as a permanent member of Security Council was not going to acquiesce in its own sanctioning. So they are by definition and necessarily unilateral sanctions even though they are adopted by a very wide international coalition. And of course, they are backed up by many resolutions of the General Assembly supporting the territorial integrity of Ukraine and condemning the unjust invasion. But the argument that I have used when I visit other countries is to say that they all say they don't want to be a platform for circumvention because this is potentially damaging to their reputation. Many of them are actively seeking foreign direct investment. They don't want to be on the wrong side of the companies from countries who are sanctioning and who would be hesitant to get caught up in anything which might look or feel like sanctions or costing or sanctions evasion. But also we have made the argument that they don't want to be involved, particularly in anything which might have a military application. And we were able to identify it from an early stage with the Ukrainian colleagues, products found in Russian weaponry on the battlefield, found in drones, found in missiles, found in artillery shells, mainly low, I would say low advanced tech, stuff which is fairly commonly used in civilian application, but which we know when it goes to Russia, it's going to end up in missiles or drones or artillery shells. And this was a list of some 45 Darif lines which we were able to identify and which we have asked countries not to re-export from their countries. And we have been able with some success, I think, to persuade countries that they will not allow the re-export of these products on their territory. And that has been a primary focus for some time. We, of course, have other products where we need to work as well, including we will probably lengthen that list to include numerically controlled machines, machine tools, because we've discovered that these can be used to make the very things that go into the weapons. So this is one of the, now the other thing I want to say is that from the list of countries I first gave you, it's clear that we have had a good deal of success in cutting off the flow, but we now observe new channels of circumvention which arise with other countries popping up in the statistics and we will continuously be working with these countries to address this issue of circumvention. Commissioner McGinnis next week will convene the Member States National Component Authorities, the authorities of Member States responsible for the implementation of sanctions in the afternoon. I will bring together the coordinators of the International Coalition, particularly with our US and UK colleagues who are very active. And we will discuss how on the, as we approach the second anniversary of this horrible war, how we can continuously improve and make more effective the implementation of sanctions. You may have seen that Commissioner McGinnis and Vice President Dombrovskis in the run-up to that meeting have written to Member States yesterday. We need to do more domestically. This is not a criticism of Member States, it's just an observation that when I traveled to third countries, in many cases they say, well that's very interesting, Mr. Sullivan, but I mean it's your companies that are exporting this stuff. Now that's a little unfair because in many cases our companies are in good faith, think they're exporting to one place and then it ends up in Russia. But there is much more that I think we can collectively do at home to reduce circumvention, to reduce the possibilities that goods are actually diverted. In the last package we asked our companies to introduce a no Russia clause in the resale of any of these products. No matter where they're sold, it should say that they may not be resold to Russia. I think companies need to do much more due diligence of asking where has this order come from? And if it was a company that was created in February 2022, doesn't appear to have much of a track record in trading, you might ask yourself some questions, you might like to get some additional information. So I think there will be a continuous need on our side to increase and improve our ability to identify at source the risk of circumvention, which of course we will still work with third countries. We will still push third countries not to allow themselves to be used as a platform, but at the end of the day, these products are our products, they're European, they're American, they're British, they're of other manufacturer and we need to all the time come back to what's happening domestically. In this, of course, we have the issue of the oil price cap. We allowed Russia to continue to trade to sell oil, but in order to reduce the revenue available to the Russian government, we set up a price cap of $60 a barrel. And the enforcement of this was that you cannot ship it, you not get insurance for shipping this oil unless the price cap is being respected. It worked very well for the first half of last year. To be honest, it has been slightly less effective in the second half because we've seen two innovations. One is the creation of a shadow fleet. This is a Russia basically acquiring end-of-life vessels and ensuring it in some way that is not entirely clear and continuing to ship the oil on that basis in a sort of maritime dark web, if you see what I mean. This is deeply worrying because, frankly, these vessels are often in bad condition and we're not entirely sure what the insurance is worth. So if it were to crash on a coast somewhere and there was to be a massive oil spill, it's not entirely clear whether there would be any money there to clean up afterwards. Another trick is to understate the price of the cargo and increase the, overstate the price of the oil. So this is a sort of formal attestation that tankers have to have about how much, what's the cost of the transport, the cost of the content. So these are areas where the G7 is working again. We took measures already in the 12th package and we will take further measures. But the fact is that Russian revenue from oil and gas is considerably reduced since the war began. It will never be completely eliminated. We have to be clear because we have chosen to allow it to continue to flow for good reasons of relations with the global south. Let me now touch briefly on the issue of the impact of sanctions. This is much debated. I'm an economist by training, though a long time ago, but I never believed economics was a science. I always thought it was much closer to an art. But there are differing economic views. My personal conclusion is that the sanctions are very definitely having a deep and negative effect on the Russian economy, structurally. The problem is that it is more a slow puncture than a blowout. And there's a war going on and people are dying every day in Ukraine. And so we would have liked to blow out.  This requires us to be extremely diligent and double down on the sanctions and on making the sanctions work. This is not a moment to lose our nerve or to think because some of the growth figures coming out of Russia look good, that sanctions are not working. What is happening in Russia is the transformation of a previous civilian economy into a war economy. 30% of Russian government spending is now going to the military. Military expenditure in Russia is close to six, seven, eight percent of GDP. If you cannibalize your economy and you basically sacrifice all the productive parts of your economy, social welfare, education, research, and you put it into the unproductive military sector of producing tanks and weapons, of course you will get growth. But it's not solid, reliable growth and you are actually eating away at your ultimate potential and future growth. And this is what's happening to the Russian economy. Russia, we estimate that Russia has been denied about 400 billion euros, including the 200 billion central bank assets that have been frozen in Europe and others immobilized in other parts of the world. The revenue is down and what was previously a very healthy surplus in the Russian economy is now a deficit. So there has also been massive brain drain exit of some of the best and talented people whenever I travel to Astana or Tashkent or Bishkek in all the coffee bars you see young Russians, some of the brightest and best IT people working away on their computers, all setting up startup companies, probably making a life for themselves outside of Russia, they will never go back. So there's a brain drain at the higher end of the labor market, but there's also a shortage at the lower end because of the mobilization and the many tens of thousands of young people who've been forced into the military and who are no longer available to work in the more menial kind of jobs. So there's a massive labor market squeeze. Now, none of this is to say that sanctions are the only answer or that they are a silver bullet that will solve the problem. I want to come back to my beginning, the three things, military assistance, financial assistance and the sanctions. We need all three. It's great that we have managed in Europe to reach agreement on another financial package. I sincerely hope that the Americans can find agreement on further military assistance. We will have to do more on military assistance. It is for me kind of strange to see that we're actually talking about bullets, artillery shells. I mean, this is not high tech warfare. This is just do people have enough of the sort of rudimentary elements that you kind of remembered from old war movies from another era. But that's what it's down to, unfortunately. And here there's a lot of work to be done, particularly here in Europe. We need the financial assistance, but we also need the sanctions to work, to continue to push, to continue to squeeze. We will have another package this next week, again in the run-up for the second anniversary. And we will be asking when Commissioner McGinnis convenes the member states to, for member states to really improve and continue to work on the domestic implementation of this package, because this is hugely important. The adoption of sanctioned packages is quite sexy. People like to have the fanfare. The hard work is actually, it's the customs officials, it's the tax officials, it's the prosecutors, the investigative police every day going out there and looking at what's happening on the ground. That's what makes sanctions work. It's the task of trying to persuade third countries to make it more difficult, to make it slower, to make it more expensive for Russia to break these sanctions. And I think the stakes here are so high that I never forget when I'm doing this job and I'm only doing one small part of a remarkable job done, I must say by the commission staff on this, that it's an obligation and a historical moment where everyone has to do their bit and all the small bits and pieces that you do across the full range of the sanctions, whether financial sanctions or sectoral sanctions or the hydrocarbon sanctions. This is all a contribution to a struggle which really is about what kind of world do we want to live in for the rest of this century and I don't believe that we can allow Mr. Putin to be the one to define that. I think we have to be the ones to define it and support for Ukraine is essential to our being able to do that. I'll stop there as my web introduction and of course I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you.


Good evening and welcome to episode 336 of the Private Property Podcast. I'm your host, Uzamando Moa Kumalo. So Wednesday edition of the Private Property Podcast, if you're almost for the first time, you are tuned into the only daily property show in South Africa with a leading property show catering to all of your property needs. It doesn't matter where you are in your property journey, this is where you can get resources to help you and certainly enable you to make better property decisions. And to all our regular viewers on Facebook and Instagram and on YouTube, welcome to it. You know how we do. We're certainly always in conversation every weekday at 7pm, where I'm always tackling a hot property topic with an expert who helps us get a better understanding on all things relating to property. And of course, talking about all things relating to property, you know that we also have a whole host of other shows that you can tune into every single weekday at 8pm. It is a Wednesday, so you can catch SD classes on the first time homebuy show later on. And of course, every Mondays and Fridays, Chad brings you the home shoppers show. We always see access through exclusive properties that you can find on www.privateproperty.co.za. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a warden and farm out in Baleno got pictures through the farming podcast and all things agriculture. And I know that many of us are always taking notes and implementing them in our very own backyards. And of course, there's myself for every single weekday at 7pm. We have an appointment and always, of course, great interacting with you across our social media pages. You can follow myself at Zaman Donga underscore K across Facebook and, you know, certainly across Instagram and Twitter, as I always tackle all things relating to property. And of course, this, you know, Wednesday evening, and you can see a part of us already thinking it's Thursday. I don't know what it is about the end of the week, but I'm almost tripping on the Wednesday. But of course, we are still running our competition where we've now set an even bolder target of reaching 20,000 comments on the post that we have pinned on our Facebook page.  And of course, we also want to make sure that we give away this money. Now all you have to do is interact with the post and you send a chance of walking away with 500 grand in cash. Now, the only catch is you need to be watching us live so that you can claim the money. And of course, if nobody claims the money, then it rolls over to the following day and makes certainly goes into the money bag. I see the money bag is sitting at 1500 grand. So we'll see who's going to walk away with that money this evening. I do hope that they're watching and they're ready to claim their prize. I think 1.5 can actually go such a long way, especially as we draw nearer and nearer to that time of the month where our money runs thin. So do make sure that if you've entered that competition, you're ready to raise your hand should we call your name. Well, this evening we're looking at something that I know a lot of people who already have rentals always want to know about. I've been getting asked this question quite a lot on my social media platforms with many landlords saying that they're struggling to track tenants and they still don't quite know how to increase the value of their rentals. And that's exactly what we are going to be looking at. In the short term, what can you do when it comes to your rentals and making sure that either you increase the value or at the very least maintain and don't make a loss because I think one of the other realities is that a lot of landlords have been losing money quite significantly and not just your DIY landlords, even the big landlords have been losing money in their portfolios. And then of course looking at long-term interventions, if what are some of the things that you can do in the long term that will have a substantial change in the value of your rentals. I want to find out from you at home, are you a landlord and what kind of interventions have you already put in place for your respective rentals to make sure that you either increase or certainly maintain the value to share with us down here below and helping us get a bit of sense of what we can do as landlords to do just that. I'm joined this evening by Nigel Adrianse, I was the founder and CEO of the Enterprise Development Property Fund. Nigel, good evening and thank you so much for joining us on the show. Good evening Zama and thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure interacting with the private property and all of your fan base and I hope that I'll be able to add some value to your people that listen to you every evening. And I think Nigel, I want us to actually just get straight into it before we even look at the do's and don'ts when it comes to the value of our rentals for people who are already in the property market or already property investors and especially because this is something that you're in and you've seen the activity from last year and this year and during COVID and the difficulty that a lot of the property investors have been facing. I think firstly just any insight that you'd like to share for property investors particularly when it comes to managing your portfolio in times of crisis or turbulent times. All right so yeah as we were discussing offline before this show started the last 18 months has been horrific. We have all suffered. I don't think there's an individual that I know that has not suffered during this pandemic especially those who are in the property game. We were talking about the big corporates even that are on the stock exchange and even they are suffering because they did not have enough reserves in order to keep themselves going and especially if you have retail tenants and commercial office tenants it has been exceptionally difficult to manage your portfolio over the last couple of months. So yeah it's been a difficult time but I think there is hope. There is a you know the fact that we are potentially going to level 2 will open up even more opportunities and I think over the next couple of months as everybody is vaccinated we will then go back to our better normal not the not the old normal but a better normal and that will then open up opportunities for us over the next few months. So I think definitely there is hope. There is light at the end of the tunnel and it's not a train coming. It is real genuine light and I think we'll be able to make it if we just hold on a little bit longer. You know Nigel I actually love that framing you know because I think when COVID started and probably a good year into COVID we called it the new normal we wanted to go back to what we knew and I think we're now at that stage we're recognizing that there's no going back. That part of the system that we're living in was also just not particularly sustainable and so what what does it look like when we even talk about a better normal right? So if anything now some of the systems and interventions that we're you know trying out and rejigging as much as possible towards that better normal. So I like that concept and it's the first time I'm actually hearing somebody talking about a better normal as opposed to even a new normal because I think even the status quo as it is isn't quite there. I think we're we're very clear that it's not quite there so what can we you know actively do to work towards a better normal. Now I see the love that we're getting on our Facebook page many of you at home are watching Roshika. Kassirian is watching and sending those green hearts Sharon Naidu is also watching. I also see Colin Janssen is watching. Nong Vola Mutsuneng is watching one of the top fan Bong Samukwe and us also watching Howard McGatani is also watching this evening. Do you keep the love coming? We absolutely love it and of course to the landlords at home I want to find out from you you know what have been some of the interventions that you've put in place when it comes to maintaining the value of your rentals because I think it's one thing looking towards obviously increasing the value and we're going to be looking at that briefly certainly this evening but what have you just done to keep the rentals your rental value as constant as possible especially now. You know I was saying of A to Nigel that one of the realities is that as much as we talk about how it's a buyer's market it's actually also a renter's market where so many renters right now are spoiled for choice they're seeing a lot of different rentals coming onto the market almost every second day you're seeing that the price is being reduced on certain rentals so as a renter you really are in a good position to be able to negotiate the rental that you may want with your particular landlord and I think it's been interesting to kind of see that play out which in some ways has also put some landlords in a very tight spot but it's also meant that they also need to be as innovative as possible and also just as active as possible when it comes to engaging with their tenants and so then Nigel I think when we look at in the short term because I've painted the picture of where the market currently is right now as far as rentals and how renters are spoiled for choice so if you're going to overprice your property you're just not going to get any joy you know renters are smart they're savvy they go on private property.co.z and they really do go through various properties they watch the show they know that there are different ways that you can vet and you negotiate when you're looking for a property so if you're a landlord in the short term you know what can you do to just maintain the value of your property or at the very least just make sure that you don't lose as much value as possible I think one of the things that we have to realize is that there is we we in a stage now where you are going to lose value there is no doubt about it but if you start calculating from an investor's perspective in terms of your yields and so on there are a few things that you can do that's going to help you to increase the value of your property from a yield perspective in the short term as well as in the long term. Now we in the property game hopefully if you're an investor you're not there for the short term games because property isn't about short term games it's not a get rich quick scheme property is always and will always be a portfolio of investment that is for the long term and when we talk long term we're talking easily 10 to 20 years that if you want to make a real money in the property sector you've got to be in it for the long haul so even though I may want to talk about some things that you can do now that will hopefully enhance the value of your property as well as increase your net income because we're talking mostly net income here and not gross income because as you well know even the big corporates have suffered in terms of rentals they've had to drop their rentals commercial office blocks have some have shut down completely because people are no longer working from the office I know Altmutual as an example we talk to Altmutual on a regular basis and they've shut down their entire facility in Pine Lens where all their staff are currently working from home so I think we'll delude ourselves into believing that we can make big money in these times but if we start prepping now if we haven't already we can start making inroads in terms of from a medium to long term perspective what increase the value of our property so there are four general areas that you can help affect or change the income strategy of your business in my opinion the four main ones there are more but let's talk about the four main ones number one is increase your rent but obviously because of the pandemic and as you've well you know noted that the the the renter the person renting is actually in a very good position now because there's so much stock on the market at the moment so increasing your rent right now may not be the best idea however you can possibly increase other things and we'll and I'll talk a little bit about that now the second thing is decreasing your costs obviously you've got certain costs that you have to cover but there are ways to decrease your costs and therefore increase your net income which will also then increase your cash flow and to collectively that will then increase the value of your property from a yield perspective as an investor then the next thing is changing your strategy you could potentially change your strategy where maybe if you've got one property that is led by a family and it's maybe a four bedroom house you could then go into a multi-let option instead so you then bring in four different people and rent it out per room so that's maybe another strategy that you could use as opposed to having just one family and that will then increase your rental income by changing your strategy that's just one option then renegotiating your bond the banks are very open at the moment to renegotiating bonds because they understand people are struggling and or if you if your own bank doesn't want to renegotiate you can go to another bank and change your bonds to another bank so those are the four big things that you can do in terms of changing the rental income or increasing your net income in order to add value to your property and as we go along throughout this discussion I will expand a little bit on each of those I'm this evening in conversation with Nigel Adriansson as the founder and CEO of the Enterprise Development Property Fund we're looking at ways to increase the value of your rentals and I see there's a hot conversation on our Facebook page that's going on with tellin I wouldn't say my landlord wants a 10% increase and you know many timing in Bongsabakwena saying that move suggesting that they should move and I'm going to go up and say maybe try and negotiate with them first if they're not willing then you can always move and I think one of you know one of the big things is anyway even just saying that that this is actually that period where tenants are spoiled for choice as much as buyers are spoiled for choice when you talk about you know how buyers can you know access quite a number of different properties because there's a lot of stock on the market we're seeing the same thing with the rental market where if you know a tenant is unsatisfied with where they're staying perhaps a landlord wanting to increase you know rental I think a 10% rental escalation in this market is also quite an unrealistic ask just you know generally what we've been seeing if anything a lot of landlords have maintained their rentals and there have been tenants who've gone back to you know renegotiate and have been able to get an even lower rental than what they previously had so I think as a tenant you also need to assist what are similar properties in that same complex or in that same street going for and is your rental at that current average or is it you know substantially higher than what everybody else is paying because I think those kinds of facts on you when you want to talk to your landlord and want to negotiate and also want to move because there's some landlords unfortunately who are sometimes delusional and and don't know to also do their own market research and see what their neighbors are charging and you know kind of stick their head in the sand and thinking I'll ask what I'll ask and budget according to their finances as opposed to where the market is and I think that's one of the big things and I can see Nigel Nodigal talk about that right that it's so important as a landlord not to be budgeting according to your budget you really do need to look at where the market is particularly when it comes to setting up your rental costs I want us to go for a quick break and see who the potential lucky winner of that 1500 rand is this evening I hope that they're watching so that they can claim their prize and when we come back we'll see more of your comments and questions and of course look at ways that we can increase the value of our rentals we'll be back just after this yeah I you never um end of that lucky winner this evening goes to Solani Pillay Solani Pillay you are potentially walking away with 1500 rand I usually see Solani Pillay in the comment section I hope she is watching this evening and if they are watching drop us a message down here below you're going to be walking away with 1500 rands that's Solani Pillay and we'll see if they are indeed watching this evening and of course this evening we're looking at ways to increase the value of your rentals I want to find that from your home if you are a landlord have there been any interventions that you've put in place to help your tenants but also actually to help yourself because I think beyond helping your tenants is about you as a landlord being proactive around what is happening in the market and you know where rentals are at we have seen that a lot of landlords unfortunately have not been able to escalate rentals in the percentages that they've wanted a lot of smart tenants have gone and when they look at that escalation clause actually say nope I'm not going to sign on for 8% and this was even pre-covid so there are different ways that I think as tenants but also as landlords we need to be engaging each other now Nigel before we announced that the lucky winner was Solani Pillay we're talking about how as a landlord you shouldn't be budgeting based on your individual personal budget when it comes to setting their rental but you really need to do your market research see what the neighbors or if they're people if it's a unit in a sectional title scheme you see what everybody else is charging as opposed to thinking well my expenses come up to X and I want to you know make a mock-up of X therefore I'm going to charge this amount perhaps I think take us through that because I think there are still landlords that especially during these difficult times think well I still have my expenses so I'm going to leave the price where I want it to be and of course those are the same properties that we're seeing staying on the market for months and months from the end. Absolutely and you know I've often come across landlords that have been so focused on getting the net rental income that they want and they completely lose the plot because you know they're completely unmarket related and their tenants will then move out and go elsewhere so I think there are a number of ways that you can number one secure your tenant and make sure that they don't move out and at the same time increase your net rental income by offering them certain perks to stay so for example number one the most important thing is the relationship building I wait too often we see landlords who are we just don't care about the tenants sometimes even become slum landlords and and the tenants then eventually say you know I've had enough here now I'm paying way too much I can get a better place elsewhere in the same area and my landlord is just treating me like crash so that's the first thing you need to do is build that relationship if you can build relationships with your tenants where your tenants believe that you actually care about them then they will more likely stay and when you say to them listen I really need to increase my rent because I you know I'm not getting enough money to pay my expenses then the tenant most likely will be accommodating so that's the first thing building relationships then number two cutting your costs to make sure that your net rental income will increase even though your rental may not increase so there are lots of ways that you can cut your cost you can renegotiate your the value of your property especially in these days renegotiate the value of your property with your municipality and that then would determine your rates will then hopefully decrease you can negotiate with if you're in a complex negotiate with the body corporate that they drop their levies you can maybe manage your building properly in a way that you don't pay too much maintenance you can do energy management water management facilities management there's a whole host of things that you can do where you can reduce your costs maintenance cost energy cost municipal costs and levies and so on in order to get a higher net rental income but if you want to increase your rental the relationship is important and always making sure that when you sign your lease agreement that you have an escalation clause inside of your lease agreement that is predetermined and agreed by you and your tenant it is very important that that that you have that escalation clause because when you get to the end of the lease and you haven't put that into your your lease then you will find yourself trying to negotiate with your tenant and he's wanting to drop the price because there are better units elsewhere so those are some of the the immediate things that you can do but then there's also medium to long-term things that you can do things like changing your tenant profile so as I mentioned earlier you could potentially take a property where there's a family and when the lease comes to an end rather put four different people in the property and charging them a different kind of rental on a multi-let opportunity so that is changing your strategy from having your house being rented to a family versus renting it out as a multi-let to several different people you could also go to an AB&B strategy where instead of paying or renting your property out on a monthly basis which is normally a lower rent to a AB&B type opportunity where you're renting out on a nightly basis and that will increase your rental significantly however the warning there is obviously in the kind of environment we in now to do AB&B maybe a little bit risky because obviously not many people are traveling but if you can find a niche market you could potentially make a lot more money on an AB&B opportunity versus a family living in your property and then student accommodation if you are close to a university you could convert your property into a student accommodation and in that way bring more people into your property and therefore bringing more rental into your property opportunity. And I think those are such great tips Nigel and I think one of the big things it really is about as a property investor being able to understand that the current property that you have you can use it in different ways and you also need to be able to be adaptive in the event where for example you may have had a student accommodation unit and talk about student accommodation last night and you are hard hit because your students are not going on campus and many are choosing to stay at home as they of course adapt to online learning perhaps then your property becomes a multi-late or you find different ways to still be able to collect rental as much as possible and I know that we have our winner Celani Pele is in fact watching so congratulations to Celani Pele. Not only is she watching she's raised her hand and you know send comments down here below so congratulations to Celani Pele saying thank you to each and every one of you this what is this for this beautiful congratulatory message I love and appreciate it and of course just sharing that with the many people who are showing us some love on our Facebook page of course because we are a family right and we're always happy when one of our own makes it so congratulations to Celani Pele. 1,500 rand is on its way to you and I think one of the great things of course to your home you're watching you want to make sure that you go and engage the pinned post on our Facebook page if you want to stand a chance of walking away with that 500 rand's cash every single day when somebody doesn't raise their hand which certainly increases we put that money in the money bag and the following day of course you can have another shot of winning so if you know you've entered make sure that you watch us in order to claim your price. Now Nigel I think then one of the other big things that landlords are having to contend with right now and I'm only slipping it in because I know that there are some landlords who have you know been invested in property and you are already saying that property is a long-term goal and so if let's say you had started just a few months prior to lockdown you know excitedly thinking I've got my foot in the property ladder and and then a few months later you know COVID hits and you're not having to deal with your first major crisis how do you or what would you say to you know those at home who are now thinking of selling off some of the you know their rental units because of COVID and they're thinking I can't do this maybe they've even had you know vacancies that say for three months as a and they haven't tried to use different adaptive strategies you know what would you say then to people who are at this moment thinking maybe I should just cut my losses and and not do property anymore so there are many ways in which you can try and salvage the scenario that you're in so obviously every scenario is different so I'm going to try and be as generic as I possibly can yeah so there are a few strategies that you can implement like I've explained for examples multilates and student accommodation where you could potentially in a short term try and enhance your income so that you can still survive during these difficult times but then there are some medium to long-term strategies that you could implement in order to increase the the rental income that you achieve as well as enormously enhance the value of your property what I would say to the these people that are struggling and wanting to get out now I would say hold on hold on hold on because if you sell now chances are you're going to lose money because normally in these difficult times there are sharks out there who are wanting to buy your property on the cheap hold on guys and if you can't hold on come talk to me because we can help you re-strategize and try and put together a package where you don't have to lose your home or your investment opportunity and continue in changing the strategy bringing on partners there are many ways that you can salvage your scenario but what I would say is do not sell hold on as long as you can because you're going to lose money if you sell now there are two things that I'd like to say from a medium to long-term perspective how you can enhance the value of your property number one if you've got a property where let's say it's just a house but you've got land available you can develop the backyard in what they call a backyard development and there are funders out there who will help fund that type of development so you don't even need your own money where you can either put on one extra unit or even two units depending on which municipality you in they will allow you to build one or two more units in order to enhance your income and like I said there are investors and organizations out there that will help fund that type of strategy so that will then allow you to use your house and then either rent that out take one of the smaller units and live in that and make more money by a third unit where you can then rent those units out then number two maximizing the zoning that you have sometimes we'll find that somebody is sitting in a property where there's only a house on it but it's zoned for say residential two or residential three you could then build on and there are funders again there are funders out there who will fund that type of strategy so you don't have to lose your house or sell your house or your property if you are in an in an area where your zoning allows you to build more then the third thing that you could do is rezone we currently busy working on a project at the moment where we've bought a house in a certain area here in Cape Town and we've subdivided that property into four ovens and we're putting 10 units on that property and again there are funders that will fund that type of strategy so instead of selling the property we've subdivided it we're putting 10 units on it and we can now determine whether we want to rent it out or sell the 10 units and keep one or sell nine units and keep one um as a as a long-term investment my choice is to hold on to all of them and rent them out because we will be able to find the funders that will be able to fund that type of strategy so again I reiterate if you are in a scenario where you are um wanting to sell don't because you're going to lose money and there are ways for you to hold on to your property and even enhance the property investment value by adding certain strategies to what you already have. Of course we've gotten a great comment here on our Facebook page coming through from Carlos Scoltz saying always something new to learn when listening to Nigel Agianse. Thank you very much there to Carlos and of course many of you to Lusmenia Bongani Mabunda also watching on our Facebook page um before I let you go Nigel any final tips for our property investors when it comes to certainly navigating their property portfolio not certainly particularly for the remainder of the year because we're now also approaching you know festive season where we know that as landlords we do tend to struggle collecting rentals over that festive period uh whether it's you know December. December rental is always a struggle I've seen with many landlords sharing their own stories and oftentimes even January rental often being a struggle so any final tips for our property investors at home when it comes to managing their rentals for the remainder of the year. So unfortunately you know there's always a rider to everything I say and right now it may be a little bit too late for you to be implementing any strategies that's going to help you to um to to make sure that you get your rentals in in December if you have not implemented a strategy at the beginning of the year already then it may very well be too late however there are some things that you can do just a few little things that maybe will help you uh to get your tenants to uh to to pay their rental in December or to even pay a little bit more so things like adding in a solar geyser um giving them a um you know a fridge as a bonus to say guys I know that you guys are also struggling and I see that you don't have a fridge in your home um if you if you pay your rental I will buy you a fridge yes it costs you a little bit of money but at least you know you're gonna get your rental income there are lots of those little strategies that you can uh play around with um giving your your tenant gifts that uh you know to say thank you for for being such a loyal tenant um and and again that relationship building is so important you have to build relationships with your tenant don't be an absent tenant uh sorry landlord if you're an absent landlord that's when your tenants will take advantage they will break your stuff they will not pay rent they will um you know they will abscond they'll just disappear on you if you are a present landlord then your tenants will most likely uh pay their rent and they will not disappear on you so that that's about all I can really encourage you at this point in time but for the medium to long term I would suggest that you build a strategy for your tenant throughout the year so that when you come to the end of the year you don't have those kinds of problems and that's a great place to leave it at this evening Nigel thank you so much for joining us on the show thank you for having me it's always a pleasure and that is Nigel Adrienne sir who's the founder at the enterprise development property fund wrapping up the wednesday edition of the private property podcast with myself Osamanto Moacumalo I'll be back on your screens on Friday tomorrow's Thursday so I'll be attending my law for property development and management lecture which is always a very heated lecture and and and of course I'll be back on Friday it is of course wednesday so you can catch the first time home by show with esti class and this later this evening at 8 p.m. until then I hope you're staying home and staying safe


Okay, so as promised, I am going to be showing you guys how I do my little assembly line over here and how I organize all of my washi for my shop. So today I just chose this order as an example. I'm putting things on their contact information and addresses and things because y'all don't need to know that. And anyway, so I print out two different items. This is actually the individual's packing slip and then this is for my reference. So I actually have like skew numbers for all of mine and I categorize them. So like animal 0002, animal 00019. So it tells me what this individual wants on their order. And let's go look at my categories. I have some of them out here because this is my last order that I'm filling for today. But this is how I categorize them in here. And this cabinet, sorry, it's like a kind of a hot mess at the moment. This cabinet is the Billy Bookcase from Ikea. And I have some doors on them. And the knobs are not from Ikea. I think I got those at like Marshall's or something. And I have these washi organizers. And then I have my category right here. So it just tells me what category I am looking for. So right now we are looking for animal and we're looking for pretty low numbers in animals. So right now I have two animal. This one I know is the higher numbered one. So we're gonna pull out the bottom one, which is the fuller one. That's the one I need. So this is what I need. So let's pull out the proper animal ones out of here. So I'll show you guys what I do. So let's see animal 002. So here's how I have them organized. And I just put these little tabs. And these are ones that are sold out. I keep these in case I find the washes again and I want to re-list them or something. So I do keep those. But right now we're looking for the mouse heads, which are 002. So I just grab one of them and reconfirm that yes that is what they want and they only want one. So I'm gonna put it right here. And then next is gonna be the elephants and it's animal 0019. So number 19. These ones are kind of kitty wampus in here. But here we go. Number 19. Confirm that it's the right thing. We are good to go. So yeah that's kind of how I do this. Let me fill the rest of this order and then I will show you what I do at the end. All right so now that I have my little pile here, I like to go down and make sure that I've checked off all of them. And then I double check the quantities. Make sure that they want just one or sometimes they want several. I filled an order today that had five of the same one. I take my little stamp here and it says packed by the favorite daughter. And I put that on there. And everyone's favorite stamp seems to be this one, the judged by Doyle. I try to put this down at the bottom. So there we go. And it is true this was judged by Doyle. Hey Doyle, did you just judge the package? Good job buddy. Good job. So now the stamps are on.  And then I'm also going to use one of these seals. I will show you what it looks like in just a second. All right so here is the finished product of what the customer gets from me. And then everything is packed in here. Right now I have some extra washes that I'm giving away in my orders. This is not something I do super regularly but I just have some random washes. And it all gets packed into here. I have their packing slip in there. So I know who to send it to. Because now I am going to put all the shipping labels on all of the packages that I have. Right now unfortunately I do not have a label sticker maker. So it's just a piece of paper and I put clear Scotch tape over it. So I don't know. No one seems to mind. It still gets there. So anyway that is how I fill my Etsy orders. I know a lot of you have been curious but that's how it happens. And just for another quick look sorry the sun is just crazy today. It's pretty early in the morning right now and the sun is blaring in. But that is how I organize all of my different categories. And that seems to work for me pretty pretty well. And I really really like this organization. Oh and if anyone's wondering I got all of my clear plastic containers at Michael's. All right so I'm going to move on with my day but I will talk to you guys in just a little bit. There's a doggo behind me. He has been so clingy today. He's just wanted to be in the same room with me all day long. All day long. So I don't know. I don't know if he's like worried about me or I should be worried about him. I don't know. Which is very strange. Very yeah not super out of character but kind of out of character for this one. He'll get up on that chair in a little bit probably. But anyway it's like a really late at night you guys. I took those clips of me packing orders pretty early this morning and then I just did like domestic things and you know finished up or actually I did all the laundry and things like that. And then I did one of my favorite things. I took a shower in the evening. So I took a shower I don't know a couple of hours ago. My hair is still just a little bit a little bit wet. But one of my favorite favorite things is taking a shower and then putting on pajamas and going to sleep. It's like I don't know something of being like fresh and clean and getting in the sheets. I don't know. But yeah that's that's totally my jam but it's currently 10 15. I'm up in the office. I swear I've left the office today and it just made myself a delectable treat and got it right here. Hold on I don't want to spill it. It's still really hot so I haven't had any yet. But this is my hot cocoa and if you guys watched one of my other vlogmas videos I did like a gift wrapping thing and that is what I'm currently drinking. I get the they're like tins from William Sonoma and this one's actually the peppermint one.  It's like chocolate shavings. So this one is the peppermint one so it's it's actually chocolate shavings but they have like some peppermint flavor to it. And then I also have two other tins that are just the plain hot chocolate. So they're good for like a year. So I stock up during the holidays because the only time William Sonoma has them so anyway but I love them. They're so good. They're so yummy. It's just delicious and I just warm up some milk on the stove and then I put it in there and then it's very hot right now so I'm gonna give it a minute but anyway the internet decided to work for me today so that's fabulous. I have been editing videos throughout the week but my internet has just been like really shoddy and apparently it takes a lot of internet power to upload videos so I actually was able to upload quite a few today. I've only published two so I published oh I don't even remember what I published today. Is that bad? I think because I've been in like editing mode today as well just to kind of like get caught up on stuff. Let's see. I posted okay so I posted day seven of Vlogmas and then also my December monthly budget. I've been trying to upload this December monthly budget for a while and it just wasn't working so um I don't know I've had lots of conversations with my internet provider and then finally today it started working but I had to like unplug and re-plug in my router thing so I don't know it's just it's just annoying but that's okay. It's on the men they're like oh yeah it'll be up in less than 24 hours. No so anyway Saturday. Saturday was the day. I've already got day 10 and day 11 edited and ready to go so those are gonna be published probably tomorrow and then I've got some other I've got one other non-vloggy video or actually no two other non-vloggy videos to put up at some point as well that are on my desktop so yeah it's very exciting but um let's see if Doyle oh Doyle left me oh no oh no Doyle left that guy that guy but um tomorrow I will be taking you guys for a little tour of the office. There's a few things I need to like not clean up but just put in the right spots because it's just been like sitting out so I'm gonna do that tomorrow for you guys um because today I showed you kind of how I pack orders so I don't know it's kind of always a interesting process of how people like organize all other things and whatever um so yeah I don't know just kind of fun to go behind the scenes but I am going to enjoy my late night treat of a little hot hot hot hot chocolate and um I'm gonna say goodbye for now but thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the peek inside of my Etsy business and I will see y'all in the next video. Bye guys!


How did you create an environment where active learning and authentic experiences thrive while staying on course to meet your learning outcomes? Well first I base a lot of my interaction with education on goals. Learning needs to be meaningful, needs to be relevant, needs to be authentic and needs to be applied to real world application. But beyond that, for my learners, I think they need to have a safe environment. I know I do when I'm learning something new, it needs to feel safe and comfortable. So when we come together as a group, we get to know each other, have a sense of comfort, present information to each other, have development in a face to face community of learners which is what's always talked about being online. I think that's part of the beauty of it. When you get online in this environment, you already know your peers and myself as the instructor. You feel safe, you feel like you can ask your peers questions. They talk a lot about, my students have talked a lot about, it's such a community there. I just email Judy or I email Eve or I email Mary for the answer and I feel like my students will say that they feel like they're in charge of their learning which ideally is the goal. I'm facilitating, setting the guidelines, I have my goals and objectives but they're in control of their learning environment because of the way that I've designed these presentations and their experience online and in the class. So I think that's why it's authentic and relevant because they are doing something, they're evaluating how they did it, they're getting peer feedback, they're having to write it up how they felt about teaching online, they have to write the pros and cons of how it worked for them and they need to write a piece about how they would make changes in the future and sometimes they say, well do I have to write this up, can I not just present it verbally and I go, it's part of my assignment to have you write it up I go because it's my belief that if you write it up and have that piece to reflect on later it will come back to you and you'll see what did work good and what didn't work good and it will help you when you actually get out there into the real world. How would you take your own advice and revise this course in the future? Well I also do an end of the quarter assessment and I ask specific questions after they've had the midterm assessment or a small group of inventory diagnosis I do one at the end to see future directions that they'd like to see go because I keep doing ongoing research of my own so for my, what I'm thinking of doing next time I teach this class is I would like to develop a module of learning so that they were in a group and each one had a specific role I've actually come up with an idea for a K-12 educator if they were a K-12 education it would be a technology task team and I've been looking at different areas where adult educators are going into the training field and I'm trying to come up with a module that would be relevant for them so I know that I'm probably only going to get students from one of the two avenues so I'm hoping that this module would work for either one of them and then I'll get feedback on that kind of assignment also.