DIMORPHOS HAS A BAD DAY

 The new Chancellor of the Exchequer for the UK is quite a surprise at first glance. Yet despite his name, Kwasi Kwarteng’s route to the second most powerful political post in the UK is utterly classic with Eton, Cambridge, Harvard and JP Morgan on his CV. In his first act as chancellor, Kwasi has dumped big and angry cats amongst some now very worked-up pigeons. He seems to be of the admirable yet oddly very unpopular view that individuals are quite able to spend their own money. He has cut taxes! And not even by very much. Nevertheless, so ingrained is the notion that only governments have the requisite skills, knowledge and empathy to keep we mere mortals safe and content, that the fact that governments are actually very bad at doing governing stuff, is largely ignored. Chancellor Kwarteng’s plan to replace reluctant taxpayers with willing lenders has been tried many times before, but as usual the talking heads are sure he has misjudged the whole thing and both the British currency and interest rates have reacted badly.

What will definitely end badly is “the incorporation and establishment of the South African National Water Resources Infrastructure Agency Limited as a state-owned company and major public entity owned and controlled by the State to administer, fund, finance, operate, maintain and provide advisory services in respect of national water resources infrastructure”. This sounds like Eskom for water and should have us all fleeing to install rain water tanks.

A small war in the centuries-old tussle between theoretical and experimental science is reaching an interesting stage as enthusiastic supporters of the electrical vehicle side-hustle of the greater climate change extravaganza are learning about efficiency factors. Very simply it is turning out that almost everything the theoreticians promised that electric vehicles would do is not happening and the experimental side (mostly of course the customers) is coming up with results way worse than predicted.  It’s not that the science was necessarily wrong, it’s that the theorists failed to factor in real-life human behaviour.  That is, the way we use our powered devices is usually very different from the way the designers expected we would and this severely reduces the efficiency factors that should be used in the theoretical calculations. We are just pretty hard on our stuff! EV owners are becoming increasingly disillusioned with for example, the realisation that fully charging an EV using one’s home electricity supply is very slow and it gets worse if the neighbours are charging as well. Suburban domestic utility networks were designed and installed a long time ago and can’t cope.

The war between Ukraine and Russia seems inexorably to be dragging in other nations. The US just keeps voting ever increasing sums of money to the Ukraine. This week a mystifying pair of underwater explosions at the bottom of the Baltic Sea may have been the linked to the severing two very large and critical natural gas delivery pipelines called Nord Stream 1 & 2 that originate in Russia. terminate in Denmark and are operated by Germany. All the usually garrulous internet search engines have gone strangely quiet when asked for more information on the incident.  The word sabotage which was common in early reports has all but disappeared. Disturbing. 

Another illustration of how science works was shown us this week when NASA deliberately crashed a purpose built bare-bones space craft into a hapless asteroid named Dimorphos. This small chunk of blameless rock, together with its companion asteroid Didymos was cruising through space about 11 million km away from Earth. Theory predicts that the collision and resulting transfer of kinetic energy will appreciably alter their orbits around each other and the sun. And provide data for designing further such deliberate collisions. With the space craft having left Earth almost a year ago and the expected orbit perturbations taking a few days to observe and confirm, this is a leisurely experiment to see if there is any basis for thinking that mankind could respond to an actual threat to Earth itself from a malignant piece of space rock headed our way. https://dart.jhuapl.edu/Mission/index.php

Meanwhile many fans think that referees are posing a very definite threat to the rugby. The official in charge of the bokke/ Argentinian game nearly caused micro climate changes by continually waving yellow cards about.

James Greener

Friday 30^th September 2020

 

MONEY BECOMES MORE EXPENSIVE – AGAIN

Another Monetary Policy Committee meeting, another interest rate hike. The sixth in a row. Clearly something has really spooked the good folk of the committee. The repo rate now stands at 6.25%pa, just 50 basis points below the level we were getting used to when China sort of announced that the cat may have been let out of the bag as far respiratory disease infections go. Our omniscient MPC duly knee jerked the rate all the way down to 3.5%pa and no one can even today say for sure how that helped. We seem to be in a pretty bad place anyway.

Or maybe not. President Biden’s throw away declaration this week that the covid pandemic was over, apparently based on his observation that “everyone seemed to be doing fine” was welcome as well as startling. The truth is that at any given time in the past two years mostly everyone was indeed doing fine! But that did not prevent our leaders from conducting internationally co-ordinated social experiments on just how compliant and obedient citizens could become. Joe’s remark was therefore a surprise and drenched in irony and conflicts with the fact that his government has not relaxed any of the public health guidelines and regulations relating to Covid. There are, however, midterm elections looming and Joe is frantically managing public awareness about all kinds of public concerns. There’s nothing to be gained from reminding voters how devastating to the economy the government’s handling of the pandemic turned out to be.

Just in case anyone forgets our own official responses to the virus included periods when sales of tobacco and alcohol were enforced. This measure had of course no basis other than to demonstrate ministerial powers and was the brain child of Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma who, terrifyingly, is being touted as a strong candidate in our own mid-term elections to select a leader for the ruling party.  The suspicion that she personally benefitted enormously from the subsequent black markets in these products has not yet been quashed.

Eskom must be nearly unique among organisations in that it is using a huge price increase of its product to cover the revenue shortfall caused by not having enough product to sell. Contrast that with military and ceremonial outfitters in the UK. 4 billion of we proles watched transfixed as a cast of tens of thousands on stages all across that soggy island displayed a never-ending variety, number and styles of uniforms, costumes and props that had obviously been waiting for moment when the Brits had very sadly to bury a monarch. King Charles III himself had days when he appeared to change his outfit almost half a dozen times. Forget about technology folks. The new big thing is the rag trade. And trinkets and badges to pin on them.  It was indeed a never to be repeated spectacle. Sad but unique and amazing.

It’s a long time since Kings Park was a sell-out, as it is for the test against the Argentinians tomorrow.   This is something of a surprise, especially among long time season ticket holders at the Shark Tank who in protest at the way they were treated in the covid years did not renew their tickets this year. And now will have to watch from home. The ‘boks have a slight chance of claiming the Rugby Championship trophy for 2022 if they win by a sufficient margin.  The emergence these days of the Touch Judges as vocal and powerful components of rugby needs to be treated with caution. It immediately increases by 200%. the possibility of there being a biased or false call. And it results in lengthy on field conferences which are dreadful. Except for egregious incidents of deliberate attempts to harm the opposition these guys (and girls) should stick to identifying where the ball goes over the line! People like me who don’t bet on sports outcomes are obviously not the fans being targeted by the promotors of the ever-increasing number and formats of many sports which require players to chase a ball. The explosion in the numbers of advertisements for and sponsoring deals by  betting shops confirms how far out of touch I am with public demand. Curmudgeons however are increasingly wary.

James Greener

Friday 23^rd September 2022

Quelle heure est-il ?

This was the week when most of the world appeared to spend their time watching people in the UK queuing. It was riveting TV fare and a master class in crowd patience and organiser skills. Royal fitness was also impressively showcased. King Charles who is a mere 9 days older than I, managed that march up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh quite magnificently. The day before, his sister was a part of a six-and-a-half-hour motorcade through Royal Deeside and on to Edinburgh. A fascinating but barely noticeable feature of these blue light brigades is how they have perfected the art of creating and managing a rolling roadblock, trying to disrupt the normal traffic as little as possible. They also appear to obey the speed limits! More obvious is that almost none of the motor vehicles involved in events marking this end of the second Elizabethan Era, are of British origin. Most decidedly none are electric vehicles either! Despite having men armed with bows and arrows to guard the coffin there have been some clever uses of modern technology. In London at this moment there is a chap whose job it is always to be at the very start of the line waiting to get into Westminster Hall several miles distant. He is equipped with a cell phone that is continually broadcasting his location using the What 3 Words app – a particular favourite piece of geolocation software for me. He does also have a flag waving above his head flag proclaiming the same thing. Loadshedding backup perhaps?

 The news that President Ramaphosa is calling in to meet with President Biden in Washington DC, enroute to the Queens funeral, suggests a considerable ignorance about either geography or the current international situation. Or maybe Cyril just needs the airmiles and an opportunity to move some dollar bills to a couch offshore. The meeting pleasantries will be short as Joe likes flashy American sports cars while Frogboiler is partial to graceful long-horned Ugandan cows. Reportedly Cyril intends to convince Joe and Vice-president Kamala Harris that Russian president Vladimir Putin is a fine fellow and that they need to go and meet with him. And have a chat. This advice is unlikely to go down well with Joe who has been sending shed loads of cash and stuff to Ukraine to help them in their war with Russia. Before things go even more pear shaped the aides will hopefully point out that the bar is now open and that the White House chefs have whipped up some great canapes and biltong nibbles. In any case, both need to get to London in time for the Queen’s funeral on Monday,

This gathering of the great and good has already been described by the UK security folk as a challenge. There are so many people who will want to have a word with other people while they are out and about. Just for a start our own man might want to buttonhole Xi Jinping (yet another BRICS peer) about the details of how his guys manged to drop and damage a critical piece of our only nuclear fuelled power station. Durbanites are suddenly interested in this topic now as our compassionate omission from the power cut schedules following the devastating floods, has ended. We are back to the days of smiling weakly at renditions of the old Garfunkel number “Hello darkness, my old friend”.

Tidemarks would like to offer a new economic indicator of national wealth and status. Any country with a team in the lethally costly and spectacular Sail GP competition is undoubtedly an A grade nation. Not only are the crews fearless heroes and heroines able to sell their skills to the highest bidder in iconic free market fashion but they are on board wind powered identical “foiled catamarans” capable of reaching 100kph on water. Nations like my own will never be that cool or rich.

Safety Hint: Don’t for a few weeks ask a Wallaby fan the time in French. It’s a rugby joke!

James Greener

Friday 16^th September 2022.

 

Larry the Downing Street Cat gets a New Carer

The US bond market is in the grip of a rather chunky bear. Simply, this means that people with cash to invest have over the past two years been demanding that the borrowers pay increasingly higher interest rates. Conventionally the text books tell you that this is a manifestation of perceived higher risks in lending money. Even if in this case the borrower – the US Government -- is considered to be the least risky of all.  Recall that they print the world’s reserve currency. But the problem probably is that they have been printing a great deal of it recently, because they (the US) have an ever-growing list of causes they deem worthy of support. Now it appears that there is yet no sign from the White House of any less generosity (profligacy?) in the immediate future, so those interest rates (including the inflation rate) are probably going to keep on drifting higher. It’s a mess and rumour that presidential candidates for 2024 could include all the usual suspects including Hilary Clinton, should alarm everyone. Globally we ought to have a rule that anyone over say 65 years old may not hold any political office. It is time for them to learn the arts of golf, fishing and dandling. There really is scant evidence that any leader over that age has done much for their nations beyond aggressive nest feathering.

Our leaders just don’t get it. We really are unconvinced and bored by the sight of a president trying to fill a pothole in the road. His time is way more valuable than that. Isn’t it? What we want to see is our president appoint assistants (aka The Cabinet) capable of causing pothole repairs to be swiftly and effectively carried out by people skilled and equipped for the task. Importantly everyone in the responsibility chain from the shovel wielder right up to the Cabinet Minister  and of course the President should be aware that failure to perform will result in being fired. It’s simple really. Mind you President Frogboiler seems to be your man if you need a sofa stuffed.

There is evidence that the world is becoming wise to the energy scam perpetrated on us all by a handful of zealots largely ignorant of the basic science of the subject. Few could object to the reminder that we have only one planet and need to take far better care of it in future. However, the remedies proposed by the activists and enthusiastically adopted by our equally clueless leaders have inexorably led us to this point where despite there being plenty of energy available there are serious local shortages which are causing great difficulties. That the wealthy and well connected can use their cash and clout to ameliorate their own circumstances should be clear and annoying evidence to everyone that markets work. While glib and meaningless phrases like “Net Zero” can never do so and are making life unpleasant for much of the planet. The amount of energy from the sun that has been sequestered over millions of years in the geologically created coal, and oil deposits completely outstrip what is capable of being stored in any manmade mechanism yet invented.

Barring the Bledisloe Cup, our rugby fix should be provided by the Sevens World Cup taking place in Cape Town starting about now. Good luck to the team. Its sudden death format is heart stopping. I do miss the lads with the streaming dreadlocks who used to dominate the Blitzbokke, however. The old adage about ocean yacht racing being akin to standing in a cold shower tearing up ten pound notes probably still applies but owning a Formula 1 team must have a similar simile. The rest of us are merely grateful for the moneybags that finance these spectacles. What proportion of the showroom floor price of a new Ferrari goes towards making Sunday afternoons entertaining?  Particularly astonishing in F1 are the fully equipped hospitality suites that are dismantled and flown to the next venue each week.

The Queen is dead. Long live the King.

James Greener

Friday 9^th September 2022.