The egregiously misnamed Economic Freedom Party (a relatively minor force but with a terrifying history of fomenting considerable violence and criminality in short order.) is planning to arrange a nationwide “protest” about the lack of planning and action of the African National Congress in their task of running the country. Absent the simmering threats of violence, looting and lawlessness, the rest of the country is broadly in agreement with the EFF that the ANC is utterly useless and that a “protest” is long overdue. The nation is however anxiously waiting to see if it does take the form of a quiet walk in the park outlined for us by their erratic racist Commander in Chief (sic) These events usually end as a serious looting sprees from which the security forces are seen to flee. Usually after first levering the loot into official vehicles. Double-speak becomes the real official language of the nation.
Many years ago, when Tidemarks was an innocent wide-eyed liberal undergraduate with long hair and long-suffering suffering parents, I was made aware of the concept of reparations. The theory was simple. Descendants of (mostly white-skinned) families in the USA who must all have benefitted enormously from slave ownership, would be required to recompense survivors of those black-skinned families who had suffered from being slaves. So naïve was I then, that I was unsure about who it was that was expected to pay whom. It appeared to me that every slave descendant now living in the relative affluence of the US in the 1960s where there was jazz, Disneyland, ice cream, comics and cars with huge fins and even some measure of political freedom, were the lucky ones. It was they who should be visiting the steaming filthy villages in Africa with bundles of dollar notes. These and other questions and hideous misconceptions were painstakingly answered and corrected for me over the next three decades, culminating perhaps in a meeting held in San Francisco this week where the recommended reparation payment was confidently set at $5m per living American descendant. This is not as helpful as it will need to be, not least in the matter of where these funds would come from. And so, I suppose another generation of hopeful mendicants will be disappointed. But at least I personally can never again have doubts about social engineering cash flow statements.
A very significant financial event, missed by pretty much everyone, was triggered by the lockdown debacle that accompanied the official reaction to the respiratory infection, first noted in late 2019. Many people were told that they could no longer work in their employer’s office. This created a huge demand for home computers and then an associated surge in the number and size of banks that financed these purchases. These institutions grew at an unprecedented rate, and it wasn’t long before they were boasting about spending money on pronoun courses and other the “woke” guff to amuse their huge numbers of clueless and inexperienced staff. The ultimate danger signal flashed a few weeks ago but still few spotted it. The CEO of the Silicon Valley Bank –leader of the pack of banks now racing to the bottom – sold a large chunk of his own stock. Without exception every regulator seems to have been asleep at the wheel and now the usual “It was not me; I was not there.” stories are fighting for attention. The patently untrue claim that no one will lose money has been dusted off and another generation are learning that “Too big to fail!” is a lie. Shame.
One feature of professional sport that helps to keep the politicians from interfering too much (with of course the exception of good old South Africa) is the dispassionate speed with which the salaried staff are fired. The Supersport App has a “News” section which this weeks culling of soccer players and coaches has turned into a bloodbath. Merciless. No civil servant or ministerial lacky wants to stray too close to these shareholders and owners (think voters) when they are apportioning blame for poor performance.
Now at last here is a good news story. “One of the founders of Queen has been knighted by the King.”
James Greener
St Paddy’s Day 2023
