SimonB

Hi guys

This is an urgent appeal to bloggers across South Africa to stand together and take action.

On the 1st of April 2009 - 16 beautiful South African lions will be “euthanized”.

Sadly This is NOT an April fool joke.

The reason for this seemingly cold hearted behavior is because the lovely people taking care of these lions over at SanWild have run out of funding and can no longer care for their needs. Permits could also not be issued to translocate the lions to other sanctuaries and as we all know a hungry lion is a dangerous lion so there is no other option, or is there?

To feed these lions for 1 month costs in excess of R64000.00

If we can get 640 people to each give R100, we can buy these lions 1 month extra. A month may not sound long, but when lives are on the line every second counts.

On the 28th of March we stood together for Earth hour, now is the time to stand together to save these lions. Ok so this is where you personally enter the picture. I am putting an open challenge to all bloggers across South Africa to please set aside 5min of your time on Monday 30 March 2009 to blog, tweet, facebook and whatever else it is we do to this story.

This is how the challenge works - I am putting up the first blog post and donating the first R100.00

All you need to do is blog about this challenge, get your friends, co-workers and readers to start matching my donation. If you are also financially able to contribute R100.00 please do so, but even if you can’t make a donation, every extra blog post, twitter message and facebook wall post can help. All pledges made should be added to the comment section of this post so we can keep track of how much is raised. Please also link back to this post from your blog, twitter and facebook.

We have exactly 48h to raise the funds, lets not delay!

Donations should be paid directly into the SanWild account:

SanWild Banking Details: ABSA, Danie Joubert Street, Tzaneen, SOUTH AFRICA. The account number is 9111221180, Branch Code 334349, Swift Code ABSAZAJJ, Iban Code ZA632005.

Please user “Blog challenge” as your payment reference.

I thank you for taking the time to read this post and save these 16 lions.

The guys over at Last.fm have just announced an “upcoming change to the way Last.fm Radio works in some parts of the world. In the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, nothing will change.

In all other countries, listening to Last.fm Radio will soon require a subscription of €3.00 per month. There will be a 30 track free trial… Everything else on Last.fm (scrobbling, recommendations, charts, biographies, events, videos etc.) will remain free in all countries, like it is now.”

For Last.fm South Africans fans this means handing over roughly R38.79 per month or R465.48 per year depending on the exchange rate at the time.

In return for your monthly premium “you’ll get unlimited access to Last.fm Radio, and a promise that” they’ll “be hard at work improving the service for years to come.”

Not sure if this is the best news for last.fm South Africans fans who are already strapped for cash in the current economic crisis but hey, it sure is good to know that we are able to carry the poorer last.fm fans in the USA, UK and Germany who can’t possible afford to even pay the €3.00 per month