Lending money
to the US government for 10 years will now earn you only around 1.5% pa. and
yet their President seems to think that’s too much! But there are worse current
examples. Anyone lending 30-year money to the German government has to pay IN
for the privilege! Negative interest rates are a definite thing and not just
something for the maths geeks to play with. Unsurprisingly though, it’s
unpopular with savers and the providers of capital and its main use is to
signal to the politicians that their meddling is starting really to do harm to
an economy. Of course, the other end of the scale (hyperinflation) is toxic
too. This risk and return equation is solved only when every one in the nation
(or currency union) is allowed the freedom to sell whatever they have for what
ever they can get and not have to give away too much to (over) feed the
sour-faced bureaucrats and politicians who think they can allocate resources
better than the markets.
President Cyril is really warming to this presidency thing. He has
quickly learned how much fun it is to travel in your own cosy jet to places
where, for the price of a few handshakes and delivering a speech or two (fortunately written by someone else) he
inevitably gets his knees under a table groaning with local delicacies and can make small
talk about the terrible price of bulls and buffaloes these days. This is so
much better than a draughty office in the Union Buildings where a steady throng
of people bring you boring stuff to read. For example, this
week he put his signature to the Protection, Promotion, Development and
Management of Indigenous Knowledge Bill. This new act “aims to prevent the
unauthorised use and misappropriation of knowledge developed over time by the
country’s indigenous communities”. It
also provides for a group of assessors and indigenous knowledge
practitioners who will be responsible for maintaining and adding to a register
of appropriate items. I trust that they have already added a stout copy of an English Dictionary
to the register as it represents my Indigenous Knowledge. Oh, and Newton’s
“Principia”. Unfortunately, the example chosen for illustration are traditional Xhosa blankets.
The internet link explaining what these are, showcases “the Ingcawe
blanket (which) is a dazzlingly bright white blanket with a striking black
stripe (top and bottom) ….. The blanket, warm and fuzzy, is
extremely soft to the touch… is 90% acrylic (and) 10% Polycotton!” The
sounds suspiciously non-indigenous and may be an early case for the National
Indigenous Knowledge Systems Office to investigate.
It has already been noted that the late Johnny Clegg would have fallen
foul of this incredibly foolish legislation which this week was joined by the
utterly meaningless declaration of a historically significant flag to be “hate
speech”. While it would be unwise not to recognise the power and significance
of bygone icons the declaration is linguistically and practically an
impossibility. But nevertheless, it will undoubtedly soon be used to attack and
punish insignificant minority fringe groups. The sad part of all this divisive
and inflammatory law-making is that it comes as a tactic for moving attention
from the very real issues in our nation. Like explaining clearly and
unambiguously exactly how the undeniably worthy idea of universal affordable
health care will happen in a nation that can’t keep the electricity flowing or prevent
overloaded school buses from being driven by incompetent drunks.
In passing, it is worth noting that the image of a woman rolling up her
work shirt sleeves that is being used in the media to highlight Women’s Month
2019 is identical (except for modern colouring) to the famous WW II
motivational poster of Rosie the Riveter.
Cultural appropriation anyone? Or copyright infringement?
Not all
sports have quite got the hang of using TV slow motion replays to check the
umpire or referee’s immediate on-field decision. Tennis and cricket aren’t bad
and there’s not much delay or dissension. Rugby isn’t good yet mainly because
the official in his eyrie seems to miss a lot and asking the on-field guy to
peer up at a distant poor-quality stadium screen is cruel. It also tends to
take too long. But the so-called Beautiful Game has fouled it up completely.
Astonishing!
James G[1]
Greener
Friday 23rd
August 2019
