Category: politics

Election confusion

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With the municipal elections just 4 weeks away, the ANC have launched a new tactic to confuse the local electorate into voting (presumably) for them. A couple of weeks ago, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe admitted that the party had no chance of winning the Cape Town Municipality from the incumbent DA:


At first, I thought that this was either reverse psychology or actually a strange moment of honesty from a politician. Although, I have to say that Motlanthe has always struck me as being a fairly honest sort of bloke, which is pretty unusual for someone in that profession.

Anyway, apparently he was wrong because 2 weeks on, the “ANC can win Cape Town” according to his boss – and indeed everybody’s boss – Jacob Zuma:

Bewildered? Of course you are. So allow me to explain.

Actually, I can’t.

Quite how two leading members of the same political party can publicly differ so much over a simple issue is beyond me. And of course, they’re both correct. Mathematically, the ANC can win Cape Town; realistically (barring any bombshells in the next couple of weeks), they probably can’t. Does anyone actually need to be told this? Probably not.

Are potential voters likely to be swayed by this sort of apparent difference of opinion? Probably only as much as they are by the overblown promises of either of the main parties in the election race.

Meanwhile, if any local political organisation can come up with a plan to stop my neighbours dogs barking at 5 o’clock every single sodding morning, then they can have my vote instantly and without question, whether they think they can win in Cape Town or not.

Wait. What?

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After I joked just yesterday about launching a Pirate Party for the upcoming elections, the results of the Finnish general election arrived in my email inbox with a small “ding” earlier this morning:

And, as you can see, the vote was fairly evenly split between the top three parties, including the somewhat defeatist National Coalition Party (motto: “We’ll never get enough votes to govern on our own”).
Mind you, they were right.

There are a couple of other interesting points in there too: the dramatic collapse (81% in the number of votes) for the Senior Citizens Party, presumably due to the deaths of most of their voters since the last election in 2007.
Also note the stability of support for the Swedish People’s Party. It seems that there are still approximately 126,000 Swedes living in Finland.
Change 2011 didn’t get enough votes to force through their election promise to “change 2011”, though analysts believe that this was mainly due to a concerned public not knowing what they were going to change it into. Watch and learn, Helen: communication is everything.

But look there: slap bang in the middle with 15,164 votes – an incredible 15,164 more than they managed in 2007 – is the Pirate Party of Finland. And as their leader, Pasi Palmulehto says:

Tervetuloa tutustumaan Piraattipuolueen toimintaan! Olemme pyrkineet kokoamaan sivuillemme mahdollisimman kattavan paketin tietoa ajatuksistamme, toiminnastamme ja tavoitteistamme. Kuitenkin paras tapa piraattien pääkopan sisälle pääsyyn on tulla käymään piraattien paikallisiin tapaamisiin ja vaihtamaan ajatuksia verkkoyhteisöissämme.

Toivon ajatusmaailmaamme tutustumisen auttavan kutakin kyseenalaistamaan vanhentuneita käsityksiä ja löytämään oman sisäisen piraattinsa.

Indeed, Pasi – I will be looking for my inner pirate!

They even have their own Youth League – the Piraattinuoret. I wonder if they like sushi?

You couldn’t make it up. And, let’s face it, you wouldn’t even know if I had.

(which I haven’t)

Time on Shale Gas

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Another sensible article on shale gas, its value in the energy demands of the modern world and the environmental dangers of its extraction? Surely not.

But yes, it is.

Bryan Walsh gives us a few thousand words on the natural gas boom (poor choice of word, I guess), the need for alternative energy sources, the benefits and the difficulties that it has brought to the communities where drilling is taking place and the the awkward balancing act between powering and protecting our lifestyles.

Along with the Scientific American article I pointed to here, this has to rate as one of the most balanced pieces of reporting I have read on this often hyped and unnecessarily emotive subject.
Walsh takes in both sides and, importantly, doesn’t conclude by coming down on either. After all, that’s not for a journalist to do: that’s the politicians’ decision based on the evidence set down before them.

And, once again, I must stress that I am not fighting for the oil companies here – merely for people to have all the information laid out objectively in front of them before they choose sides in this debate.

“The gas is out there, and it can be accessed,” says Dean Oskvig, president and CEO of Black & Veatch’s energy business. “But we do need to solve the environmental issues surrounding that extraction.”

If that can be done right, shale gas really could change the way we use energy for the better. But even if it does, the industry will still fundamentally remake parts of the U.S., and of the world, in ways we won’t always like. But that’s the price of extreme energy, and it’s one we’ll continue to pay until we can curb our hunger for fossil fuels or find a cheap, reliable and clean alternative to them.

Opponents of fracking will pay heed to the 1,218 violations issued the Pennsylvanian Department of Environment “for offences ranging from littering to spills on oil sites” last year, but what this article emphasised to me was that fracking is as safe as any other industrial process if it is done properly. The vast majority of issues around pollution stem not from wells exploding or aquifers being polluted (a “huge concern” for the Karoo groups, but as Walsh mentions, there are actually no proven instances of the latter), but from the mismanagement of waste water. That such a simple part of such a complex process can be the cause of so many problems is inexcusable, but it should also be easy to remedy.

Walsh also compares the localised pollution from fracking with the more generalised pollution of coal-powered electricity generation: a methodology which is especially relevant while the problems at Japan’s Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant continue.

The economic benefits are also taken into account – from both sides. Obviously, while there is profit for the comapnies doing the drilling (otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it, durr) there have been both positive and negative economic effects on local communities:

“I think it’s been a good thing overall,” says John Sullivan, a commissioner for Bradford County. “But I just wish we could keep the economic benefit and minimize everything else.”

As Walsh says: “Good luck with that”.

Sullivan’s pipe dream is an ironic parallel to those who feel that we can produce enough energy through renewable sources such as wind and solar to bypass the need for fracking – either here in SA or anywhere else in the world. Yes, of course, I agree that that would be the ideal solution, but it really isn’t possible given the demands of our society. And yes, of course, I agree that it would be ideal if we could radically alter those demands, but as Eskom’s call for saving electricity back in 2008 proves, you’re smoking your socks (an environmentally damaging activity, incidentally) if you think that’s going to happen, as well.

Anyway – despite Time’s horrible habits of linking to other articles in big red letters every two lines, putting adverts everywhere and breaking it up into five pages – this is an informative article which weighs up both sides of the fracking debate and is well worth a read, either as a first introduction to the subject or for those seeking more facts and figures and further questions posed by our need for alternative energy sources.

Cape Party want to turn the Cape into France Shock!

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Possibly, anyway.

If you’re from these parts, you’ll have no doubt seen the Cape Party’s election boards on streetlights all over Cape Town. They got them up early, presumably to catch those voters who, rather than making their decisions on party policies, manifestos and the like, thought “I know, I’ll vote for the first party whose election boards I see on the streetlights on my way home this evening.”
It’s like taxi companies who try to be first in the Yellow Pages by calling themselves “A1 Taxis” or “AAA Cars” in the hope that you’ll pick them because they are top of the list. I have a deep mistrust of these companies – what are they trying to hide? Would booking with a taxi company with a name beginning further down the alphabet really be a worse option for my travelling requirements? Why?

But back to the Cape Party and their early-bird advertising tactics. It’s a small number of voters that will be influenced in this way, but then the Cape Party appears to be a party of small numbers anyway.

So why should we be bothered about them at all? Well, the Cape Party wants the Cape Provinces to become independent, becoming a new country: The Cape Republic.

The Cape Party will return the Cape to its rightful independence and once and for all bring an end to the racism and oppression suffered under this colonial Union.

Which sounds “ok”, I guess.
And their manifesto lists several reasons why this would work, including some recent “successful examples”:

…we have a long history of not being a part of South Africa. Many people believe that South Africa has passed the tipping point and that Independence for the Cape is the only viable solution.
Successful examples:  former USSR (15 countries), Yugoslavia (7 Countries), Czechoslavakia [sic] (2 countries) and the peaceful secession of South Sudan only a month ago.

They do seem to be ignoring conflicts in Georgia, the ongoing crisis in Chechnya and the tiny, almost insignificant Yugoslav wars of the 1990s (conservative estimates of 120,000 deaths). There was violence before, during and after the Sudanese referendum.
Dividing up Czechoslovakia seemed to go quite well though. Let’s hope that the Cape can follow that road to independent governance rather than any of those other “successful” examples, hey?

But their blatant glossing over of the truth behind what actually happened when those countries went their separate ways is not my real issue with these guys: after all, the definition of success is subjective. My real problem is the fact that they are secretly trying to turn the Cape into France. Check the party emblem and compare the shape of the new Cape Republic to… France:

OK, Normandy is a bit out of proportion, but that Southern coast looks dangerously familiar.

It was because of this concerning similarity that I looked into the Cape Party in greater detail. And look what I found as the very first line in their Vision for The Cape Republic:

The Cape Republic is roughly the size of France

Oh – isn’t that convenient???

So we look like France and we’re about the same size as France. Now all that is needed is an hatred of the British because you once lost a war to them.

The selfish motives of politicians a political system that is as racially divisive and oppressive as the others that have plagued this land since the British Empire forced the Union of South Africa upon us in 1910…

Bingo.

Further evidence: constant references to Cape Provence and suggested adoption of the Swiss system of voting – a country where they speak French and which borders France.  In addition, the Cape Party headquarters is in Franschhoek. Need I say more, except for informing you that I actually made this last bit up – they’re actually based in Claremont. Which sounds very much like Clermont-Ferrand, which is in France.

The Cape Party manifesto ends with this quote from Mahatma Ghandi:

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.

Look, I’m already well into stage two, but more fool them for revealing their modus operandi as I have no plans to go any further, breaking the chain and thus ruining any chances of them winning anything ever.
And that is a good thing, because turning into France is no decent future for us.
Or anyone else for that matter.

Good People of the Cape, while it may improve the overall quality of the cuisine in this corner of Africa, this is scant reward for the annoying accents, dismissive arrogance, constant and overwhelming scent of garlic and terrifyingly bizarre toilet habits which we will be forced to endure if the Cape Party ever get their way for this little bit of Europe. You have been warned.

Plus Plus

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If you add a “Plus” to something, you suggest augmentation or improvement.

Example: The Freedom Front party in South Africa was simply… The Freedom Front party until 2003, when the Conservative Party, the Afrikaner Eenheids Beweging and the Freedom Front decided to contest the 2004 national election as a single entity under the name Freedom Front Plus (FF+), led by Dr. Mulder.

Whether this was actually an improvement or not is down to your personal politics, I suppose. But the fact is that there was MORE to the Freedom Front than just the Freedom Front and therefore they were (and still are) known as the Freedom Front Plus.
In my view, they missed a trick when the Federal Alliance joined up some time later. Surely then the Freedom Front Plus had the opportunity to become the Freedom Front Plus Plus paving the way for additional mathematical symbols to be added in the future:
“Freedom Front +++”, “(Freedom Front)³” and on toward the Holy Grail of “Freedom Front X” which might accidentally get counted as a vote. (If Jacob Zuma reads this, you can be assured that the ANC X will be contesting next month’s municipal elections.)

But I digress. The subject of this post was never meant to be the recent history of Afrikaner politics.

It was to be about this stuff:

Based on the discussion above, just imagine how many positive changes this sucrose-free, gluten-free super seed cereal must have gone through to attain the dizzying nomenclatural heights of “Miracles Plus Plus”.

Presumably two.

But look at the starting point for those improvements. Before we even started with the product refining process, we were dealing with Miracles. I’m talking walking on water here, curing the sick, feeding the 5000 (albeit with just 0.1g of seed cereal each). I’m talking restoring a severed ear while catching a fish with a coin in its mouth. Proper Derren Brown stuff.
Miracles, people. Miracles.

And then they made it better (possibly by removing the sucrose, possibly not. I actually have no idea, but it was obviously improved in some way) and it became Miracles Plus.

At this point, many cereal manufacturers would have rested on their laurels.
“We’ve just improved on Miracles,” they would be saying.
“What more do you want? The moon on a stick?”

Not Nature’s Choice.  Oh no. They had to push the seed cereal envelope, test the limits of bio-friendliness and essential fatty-acid wealth. They only went and improved it again. Boom. Maybe this time they took the gluten away. Or maybe it was the sucrose that they hadn’t actually removed the first time. Either way, what had simply been Miracles Plus now had to be renamed to reflect its superiority over that product. And what better way to go than down the Pieter Mulder School of Renaming Things That Have Been Made Better, again?

Thus, Miracles Plus Plus was born.

I’m aware that you may be struggling with what you have just witnessed here.
I know. I rushed it and serial cereal evolution is not a subject that can or should be hurried.
I apologise. Let me take you through it one more time.

Miracles became Miracles Plus, which in turn became Miracles Plus Plus.

When you look back at the extraordinary history of this product, from not so humble beginnings through repeated processes of amelioration and augmentation to where it is now, is it really any wonder that it is the super seed cereal that everyone is talking about?

Go. Tell your friends.