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