Drinking glasses of tap water instead of alchoholic beverages would surely reduce intoxication, and that's what some people are doing when "spacing" their glasses of wine with some water. Furthermore, I often like to be drinking *something*, and if I stuck to wine throughout the stay at the restaurant I'd be too physically incompetent to leave at the end of the evening. As Dax says, it's pretty obvious. Your arguments from economic principles are also rather spurious - of course water/ice/lemon/glasses etc. cost money, but those costs, factored alongside the number of these "free" drinks served, are surely outweighed by the goodwill not lost if a restaurant was to decide to stop serving tap water? In other words, they make a profit from serving free tap water.

Just revisited Kyoto tonight. Good cocktails, great tempura, but the sushi rice was disappointing - not sticky, and was a bit on the porridge side of the scale. Then, seared tuna, which was very good (but the menu doesn't jest when it states that mains are served "as is" - slices of tuna were pretty much the sole occupants of the plate). The curious thing (as has previously been observed by Chris Roper) was the owner - his abrupt and dramatic pause at the table, followed by the horrified "are you dipping your tempura in the soy sauce, not the tempura sauce"? seemed somewhat rude, in that one could have a legitimate preference for something more salty, regardless of norms. Otherwise, a glass of Glen Carlou chardonnay in something which could either be a very broad flute, or a very narrow martini glass, left us feeling like the 100ml or so in the glass was a tad overpriced at R45.

Have to disagree with "We are highly politicised in this country with EVERYONE having an informed (maybe wrong) opinion, regardless of education or social rank". As someone who teaches thousands of 19-22 year-old's per year, I see little evidence of the youth being politically informed - at least if politically informed includes understanding what the ideological/practical differences are between things like liberalism, capitalism, democracy, equality before the law, etc. And seeing as youth at UCT would presumably be more informed than the average youth, much work would need to be done before votes are cast based on identification with policies, rather than prejudice, habit or historical allegiance.

On the re-launch, I'm also inclined to wait before judging this. The policy statements that are going to be rolled out will (hopefully) amount to more than a mere re-branding exercise.