NO KNEES NEEDED

Tidemarks’ favourite hobby horse is that many of our ills in this nation have their origin in the state’s program of distributing various grants to the needy in lieu of lifting the many barriers they have imposed on enabling the needy to get gainful employment. So proud are they of this redistribution system that the department of Social Development this week claimed that it was on a par with the world’s best. This dreadful boast is on a par with the reason offered by an unemployed young woman standing in the ruined litter-strewn wasteland of what used to be Krugersdorp city centre as to why she will use her first ever vote to support the ruling party. Her cross will be “In honour of Nelson Mandela.” Was this really Madiba’s vision? Mind you, pretty much any result is possible. It is reported that the huge number of candidates offering themselves to the electorate has overwhelmed not only the IEC organising the show, but the candidates themselves. Allegedly one candidate appears on a ward ballot paper representing 3 different parties. No conflicts there then? The number of injunctions on our behaviour these days requires a fully charged smart phone loaded with the latest software to keep track. What levels of lockdown and load shedding am I under at this moment? Can I buy liquor without a mask on Sunday? Is my vaccination passport up to date? Can I drive to the Kruger? Is the polony safe? Where is my polling station on Monday? Whew! But elsewhere on the globe they have similar problems. In about half a dozen years we will be able to rent a private space station named Orbital Reef from Jeff Bezos (the Amazon man). It will be a “mixed-use” facility “suitable for commerce, research and tourism”. Apparently, Sandton parents are already asking about booking it for a so-called Matric Rage venue. Ballito, you know, is so last year. What we should be proud of, however, is that this nation has eliminated discrimination against women when it comes to employment opportunities. The deputy national police commissioner is Lieutenant-General Bonang Christine Mgwenya and she strengthened her credentials for high office this week by being arrested for fraud, corruption and theft involving a R191-million tender. Atta girl. Anyone standing for election and the opportunity to become a tax-eater should be required to pass a test that ensures that they understand long division and the concept of the resulting two-part units. Like “rands per tax-payer” and “kWH per kg”. The former is tripping up the brains that run the USA as they find out that even if they were to confiscate all the transferable wealth of say the thousand richest people in the land of the (sort of) free, it converts into a rather modest once off payment to each of the rest of the population and critically, it can happen only once. Understanding the amazingly inconvenient truths lurking in a study of the second unit will not feature at all at the COP 26 Jamboree about to take place in Glasgow. A few years ago Durban hosted this gathering of the lethally hypocritical and they mostly were not very nice people. Their meetings are become Councils of War about how to rid the world of one of its most important gaseous compounds – carbon-dioxide. The fact that it can’t and won’t happen is no deterrent to the angry and tearful delegates who will themselves generate tons of this colourless and odourless gas. Travelling, shouting, sluicing and browsing on the taxpayer’s dollar in comfy and salubrious surroundings is the real objective. Will there be a weigh-out of the of single use plastic waste items the eco-warriors will leave for the Glaswegians? It’s a hypocritical circus run by clowns who have managed to convince everyone else that their cause is so just and important that they need not wear the surgical masks that they want the rest of us to do. The reappearance of the attention-getting stunt of gluing ones more prominent body parts to roads and other silly places is amusing while you are not the one rushing a sick child to hospital. Oh, for the days when “Taking the Knee” would be redlined by your teacher as ungrammatical and anatomically nonsense. James Greener Friday 29th October 2021

VERY LOW DENSITY GAS

Suddenly most places around the world are experiencing shortages of various goods, some of which, like fuel, are rather important. Spectacularly, ships and trucks are backing up outside ports and warehouses all over the world. There are numerous reasons for this on offer, which suggests that the actual main reason has yet to be identified. Tidemarks’ view is that it will in due course be traced back to interfering bureaucrats and politicians making their own judgements about supply and demand and not letting the market do the job it is there for. Which is minutely and ceaselessly to examine every aspect of the so-called supply chains and ensure that breaks are speedily repaired. Allowing someone behind a desk in a ministry to decide how many cans of beans are required in Boston is a very poor idea. Especially when that official is trying to encapsulate his own views of things like climate change and respiratory virus infections into the decision. In the meantime, despite all the doom and confusion, South Africans are selling stuff to foreigners at unprecedented rates averaging more than R30bn’s net exports a month over the past quarter. A year ago, imports outweighed exports. This statistic is part of the reason why President Frog Boiler and his chums can afford to look so relaxed about money and rumble on about Basic Income grants and so forth. Over at National Treasury, taxes are starting to flow in just like the good old days and the spending spigots are open wide. Whew. Just in time to impress the electorate and line up some fried chicken and T shirts as thank you presents. Now while some good news is starting to seep under the door, it is disheartening for all of us to be warned and even assured that covid-19 infections are certain to increase again as Christmas approaches. The latest to make authoritative and knowledgeable noises about the start of the next so-called “wave” is the Premier of Gauteng. He has obviously already sounded alarm bells in certain areas. One liquor retailer has warned that any reimposition of sales bans will be lethal themselves for the economy and for their businesses. This contrast between signs of returning to normal (undoubtedly a long and hazardous journey) and a seemingly never ending and even escalating levels of state interference and control is alarming. Our “State of Disaster” continues, albeit currently at a low level, but our leaders seem loath to lift it entirely as they undoubtedly enjoy having such powerful strings to pull. There is obviously substantial attraction to becoming an elected official in South Africa. Even at the lowest municipal level. There are 60 000 candidates and 325 parties standing in the local authority elections scheduled to be held on Monday 1st November It is very obvious that something is wrong and that this is not proof of a healthy functioning democracy. The barrier to entry must be raised. Simply rejecting candidates who don’t live in the ward they hope to represent would be a good start. In fact there was time when municipal elections restricted voting to actual ratepayers and political parties were not involved. This seems a very good idea. There is nothing vaguely political in a sewage blockage. Oh. Wait! The discovery of substantial volumes of Helium gas in the Free State is a great delight for me who was once one of South Africa’s few practicing Reservoir Engineers, as it highlights a fact which few outside the industry know. Helium comes out of the ground. Just like natural gas, with which it is often associated. Fortunately, the recently announced discovery is in already very permeable rock formations and so the dreaded “fracking” red herring need not be raised. It is rather alarming that the size of the reserve is being quoted in units of “party balloons”. Cubic meters is more conventional. Not only are the referees in the United Rugby Championship under scrutiny for suspected bias but they are clearly colour blind. The number of matches in this tournament where the two teams take the field in very similar coloured kit is silly. There have been matches where if the South African team had resorted to their usual home strip the game would have been far easier to follow. Formula 1 also treat the casual fan with contempt by allowing cars with identical livery, bar a yellow strip invisible from the back. Harrumph. James Greener Friday 22nd October 2021

DCCC

This is the 800th edition of Tidemarks. This weekly personal amusement began in April 2004 as a supposedly sophisticated and omniscient end of the week summary of events in the financial markets, written by one of the nation’s most endangered species – an independent stockbroker. It has since deteriorated into a carefully crafted collection of caustic criticism and contempt heaped on pretty much anyone. But mostly on the world’s politicians, bureaucrats and other tax-eating lowlifes who so richly deserve it. Its subscription price faithfully reflects its value to the roughly 1000 readers who assure me that it improves their Friday experience. It certainly gets me through to opening time down at the Bowling Club Bar and encourages me to hunt ceaselessly for stories and examples of life as it is lived on the southern tip. And now with local elections looming the candidates are resorting to every silly idea in the book to garner votes. There hasn’t been one of those gala toilet opening ceremonies recently but there is a picture of a mayor standing in front of a lavish banner at the side of a long dusty empty gravel road stretching straight as an arrow towards a distant horizon. The caption claims that His Worship is opening the road. Well hooray. Alarmingly some of the ANC top brass including President Frog Boiler are promoting various rather technical solutions for the country’s electricity shortage. None of the gents involved have much of a clue about the topic but nice clever sounding words are being traded in the media. Load Shedding, aka power cuts, have restarted – a rather inopportune and embarrassing time for the ruling party. Dollar based commodity price indices are setting six-year highs and a nation like ours should at least be benefitting from exports of stuff dug out of the ground or grown on top of it. Maybe it’s why the runt still has a bit of value. Sadly, the government has already scared away significant amounts of human resource (smart well qualified people) capable of managing these processes. There is a squabble amongst various of our government departments about whether the very new “Vaccination Passport” is ready for release, but the fact is that it is already out there. It is fiendishly difficult to control the internet hey chaps? Two aspects are interesting. The first is that the document expires in early January. The second is that it carries a rather special looking QR code that is proudly described as “not meant to be read by anyone”. This does rather fan the flames of the conspiracy theorists who worry that the whole passport thing is the precursor to “deep state” control and “digital currency”. But the rest of us are now merely excited by the idea that we can presumably visit our overseas families and vice versa. Our national history of long being known as the bad boy of the world certainly still shows up in our suspicion that sports rules and officials always have the South African team in mind when looking for infringements. The latest niggle for me was the Rugby Championship referees not using just the jersey colour to identify a side. The use of the country name is unsettling. Now it seems that the four SA franchises now playing in the United Rugby Championship in Europe, are battling to come to terms with referees’ interpretations, especially in the second half, if the SA side is leading. Lots is being said and written about the ability of the man with the whistle to be overzealous and prevent the match from being an enjoyable spectacle. But what does Tidemarks know? After all he is puzzled by the rule in Formula 1 that penalises competitors for changing an engine in order to go faster! Which is the whole point of the race. There will be no Tidemarks next week as I am going birding for lifers in the high grasslands of Mpumalanga. A venerable and prestigious annual event attended by some of the best twitchers and drinkers in the land. James Greener Friday 8th October 2021 800 in Roman numerals or Durban Country Club Committee

JUST VOTE THEM ALL OUT

One of the most eye-catching chart movements at the moment is the weakening of the Hong Kong all share index. Presumably investors are selling in response to mainland China discarding the Mr Nice Guy disguise. Supposedly the complete absorption of the enclave by the parent was always going to happen despite all the platitudes uttered in the last decade. Political legs are being stretched everywhere with the most benign looking regimes unexpectedly turning into jack-booted thugs. Australia anyone? Our government has stepped into the crocodile-infested waters of philology and insulted many folks’ history, pride and citizenship. It widely thought that none of the tongues in common use on our land today were widespread in these parts say 350 years ago, so to decree some to be “indigenous” and others not, is rather foolish. As always, Tidemarks would like to leave the decisions to the market and the data that Afrikaans (currently being targeted by our leaders for euthanasia or at least downgrading) is spoken by 14% of the population seems like a big enough cohort to deserve a place in the sun.. The share of English is only 11%. Zulu and Xhosa are the top 2. Please note that the tax collector’s forms are available in English only. So don’t go too far down this path Mr Government! The analysis of the latest Voters Roll reveals that 26m of us are registered to vote in the forthcoming municipal elections. Voters under the age of 20 comprise only half a percent of the roll, with women outnumbering men throughout the age spectrum and in total making up 55% of the list. The first stat shows that the youth are utterly disillusioned with what we oldies are promising for their future and that there is no need to spend time and money lowering the voting age. The gender disparity proportion tends to increase with age, perhaps indicating that the fairer sex do believe as they get older that they can make a difference. The campaigning for this election has been dire with the ruling party whimpering that they know they haven’t performed in the last 2 dozen years but just to give them another chance. Please? We all suspect this is merely another way of asking for extended visiting hours at the public money trough. Tidemarks is aware that his thoughts on climate change don’t conform with the popular view. Reader’s reactions have been as harsh as to cancel their subscription. (say what?) It is indeed very unlikely that a population of 8 billion self-aware and focussed consumers, known ironically as homo sapiens, don’t have an impact on this planet that we occupy. But where and crucially, exactly how this works is not at all certain. The dreaded “green house” effect is particularly puzzling. The worst enemy of the planet allegedly is the carbon dioxide produced specifically by man’s insatiable demand for a good life. It turns out that consensus for the mechanisms at work in this supposed relationship are still elusive. Most of the outputs in this endeavour are spewed from computer models using approximated chemical and physical processes. Among the actual measurements available, are some from experiments conducted at the back end of domestic farm animals. Even that is probably tricky to carry out! The research waters in this field are tremendously muddied by the lethal symbiosis between researchers in need of grants and suppliers of that funding in both the private and public sectors. Strings are bound to be attached. The commercial interests are delighted to build and sell whatever heat-destroying gizmo a client wants. The politicians garner supporters by boarding whatever bandwagons are rolling through their constituency. Recently it was stated that investments (really?) of about $280-billion will be needed to cope with the effects of climate change in 35 cities in South Africa, Kenya and Ethiopia by 2050. New research (wowee!) shows that Africa is the fastest urbanising continent and also the hardest hit by global warming. Good luck with that, guys. Or are the stories of economies flattened by Covid, just fake news?. The All Blacks performance last weekend with uncharacteristically many handling errors, seemed also rather fake. Hmm? James Greener Friday 1st October 2021