At 7.25%pa the repo rate is now higher than it was since 2009 and at anytime since the global calamity which was covid. Expensive money is not really the way to help a nation without a reliable electricity supplyto keep going and competitive. This week we all discovered just how critical electricity is in the poultry business which most of us fondly picture is mostly about a jovial man in a hat scattering mealies. The nation’s staple meal, KFC, is under threat.
We also learned that that our Defence Force is planning a joint exercise named Operation Mosi - the Tswana word for smoke -- with fleets from both Russia and China. Our contribution is a mere 350 personnel, many of whom will probably be covered in officers’ gold braid and unable to do much harm except peer through binoculars and be on time for meals (if not incapacitated by seasickness). It does, however, signal clearly whose side we are on, and The USA has already reacted by cancelling an agreement involving supplies and parts for our sole nuclear power plant.
Most politicians and others who eagerly and willingly take momentous decisions on our behalf, are clueless ignorant oxygen thieves oblivious to the concepts of embarrassment and humiliation. These characteristics are a global phenomenon, but here in SA they are coated with a thick veneer of racism. The school-leaving exam results were released recently, and it remains clear that this government, who invented the 30% pass mark, still don’t understand that a decade aiming for too easy an educational target has done the nation a grave disservice. No one who uses a calculator to work out the change due from a R50 note tendered for a R20 purchase will be able to aspire to much more than a lifetime of menial labour and with luck, state handouts. But perhaps that’s what the lefties wish for as the future of their nations.
The agenda of global warming now dominates all debate at every level and in every subject. The thesis is that thoughtless greedy human consumers have adopted or even just aspire to a life style that produces uncontrollable clouds of carbon dioxide which in turn, through a process known as the “greenhouse effect”, is forcing an unprecedented and unsustainable increase to the ambient temperature of the planet. Which is a very bad thing.
Tidemarks believes that most of this thesis is nonsense but is in awe of how successful it has been at creating an industry rich in pickings for entrepreneurs, academics, and charlatans (politicians). It is even giving birth to disciples who claim that they alone know the truth and where to find it. For a fee. Here, for free, is the simple elegant, exciting and satisfying real story. All our energy comes from the sun in the form of light and heat. Once it reaches Earth the glorious biological process, otherwise known as “life”, uses, captures and stores some of this energy in and on our planet. The timescales for some of these conversion processes are unbelievably long and must be measured in millions of years. The longer they are, the greater the concentration of the energy captured. Coal, oil, gas and biofuels are common descriptions for these commodities. However, they produce carbon dioxide when burned. This is not a problem if you believe that the properties of this important gas are well understood and not particularly harmful. In fact Nature has stored energy in the nuclei of all the chemical elements, of which Uranium is already known to be very important and reasonably carbon dioxide benign. Green Hydrogen” is trendy but still in need of much more understanding.
In the meantime supporters of so called wind and solar (the latter through direct heating or via photovoltaic conversion of light energy) try hard to disguise the fact that they are just modern day versions of perpetual motion machines. This effort is made because it is well funded. Puzzling but true. “
The Blitzbokke really have lost their way. But the SA20 is unearthing all kinds of talent.
James Greener
Friday, 27th January 2023
