Hello

Richard’s Bay

This port is in Natal, aka Zululand, near Durban in South Africa. As we enter it up a narrow channel it seems riverine, edged with pleasant beach strips and woodlands, which temporarily sooth until the bay is apparent, revealing a huge industrial landscape, acres and acres of a moonscape, large peaked mounds composed entirely of stored coal all set in a bustling coal-dust black universe. It’s 10.00am and atop the mounds and at the base of each diggers are at work endlessly shifting the coal into other situations, into loading areas, and some of it is being dumped immediately in a dock where a Chinese coal-carrier is filling its empty belly with this quality dark energy.  This is the largest coal-loading port in South Africa and the export engine of what is left of the country’s economy. This is where the good coal South Africans are denied using goes to other more privileged Africans in Mozambique and onto the coal-hungry open market. In the distance are other mounds of taupe-coloured earth, bauxite for the large aluminium smelter that exists here. Also here is a large paper mill, where the thousands of neat rows of the eucalypt forests we see later out of town are turned into another major export.

But we, the tourists, are off to see crocodiles and venomous snakes, in a purpose-built reserve for the care and rehabilitation of these animals. So onto a bus we pick our way, white shoes in puddles of coal water, into an older bus and one of the few with working aircon, so we are lucky; we settle in for the two-hour drive there. And here’s where it gets interesting. Our tour guide is a young Zulu woman in her early thirties, with bleached blonde locks curling in profusion, and impeccable English. I know nothing of crocodiles, she assures us, and so for the next two hours I will tell you stories of Zulu life, for I am an expert on being a Zulu girl. I was born into a polygamous Zulu family and I am married but I am my husband’s only wife. I do not want him to take another wife, though many men do, paying bride price for the sheer experience of having a young virgin girl, which in my view is a great waste of resources, and so I tell him that, because after one night only she is simply a burden. A fairly instrumental approach I guess.
 
These men are vain, she confides, so many of them chase young girls and the wives are always told they must smile and not complain. Young wives must never complain, that is what we are taught, she emphasises, adding that she has learned to complain because she is a modern girl whose father thought she was his ‘precious’, paid for her education above her seven other siblings and told her to complain, and even come back home if her husband beat her, an unheard of thing in a culture where the bride price of eleven cows purchases a woman who should never return home. AIDS, a solved disease in most of the Western world, is a heterosexually transmitted and dangerous disease still here in Africa, for which our guide blames the rampant male culture of machismo and failure to use condoms. She also blames ‘young girls’. These young girls are so silly, she says, they are taken in on social media by the smart talk and money of older men, and they end up pregnant and no one will then pay a bride price for them so they never marry.

I nudge Hairy. You should have read Alexander McColl Smith’s novels of the redoubtable Precious Ramotswe, a similar tale of traditional African mores. The failings of ‘beautiful girls’ is especially redolent in this regard, as readers of those gentle stories will recall from an earlier and more hopeful time (set in Botswana not South Africa).

Our guide, herself a ‘beautiful girl’ who has romantically caught her man, and is caught herself between her polygamous family origins and her marriage today, now proceeds to tell us of the privations of the once-were-middle-classes in Zululand.  Things are very bad in our country as you see around you, she says, gesturing at roadside humpies and piles of litter. We pass by a disused railway terminus, overgrown, and she notes that South African railways no longer operate, especially electrically run ones. We have no electricity, she emphasises. No electricity. The first thing we ask each other when we visit is what are your load-sharing times this week. We have to work our lives around that. It is very hard on the poor people, she says, who now cook with kerosene or use cow dung again, and they have lung problems from this in the huts. Their children also use candles at night for study and we have many fires and deaths of children from candles at night. Study is so important, she says, for it means a job. Though jobs are hard to find. You see me, she says, I am a trained electrical engineer, but I cannot get a first placement to gain experience. There are not many placements and politics matters in getting them. So we take any work we can, so I do these tours.

We bump over some roads, overtaking double coal trucks on the way from mine to port. Our roads are so wrecked by these trucks, she comments, which are owned by politicians, who don’t care what happens to the roads. We have so many accidents with them, because drivers who accept any sort of pay come in from Mozambique and they are not trained. You have to take whatever pay is offered these days with all of these migrants. Many Zulu have now gone back to the land from the cities and live growing vegetables and by the old ways, sharing meat from cattle. There is a set routine as to who gets what within the village. Not everyone is married as it is costly to marry and many girls are also ‘spoiled’. Such outcasts as eternal bachelors and ‘spoiled’ girls sit at the back and get whatever food they are lucky to get. I am working hard to stop beautiful girls being spoiled, she says, I do education of beautiful girls.

See those round metal cooking pots along the roadside, she points out. They are cooking meals for the truck drivers who love the boiled cows’ heads in those pots. They make a tasty stew, she says, but it is thought good mainly for men, not for women. These are the ways of our ancestors, she says, we believe in our ancestors; every round hut you see has a shrine in it to the ancestors. My father consults the ancestors for my future, and I also bring special food gifts for the ancestors which the people share the day after the offering ceremony. We believe in God but also in the ancestors, she explains. Christmas, coming soon, is still a big occasion for the Zulu, when no one gets turned away from a meal. She then proceeds to teach us some Zulu words, and demonstrates how the vowels of a, e, i, o and u are pronounced in linguistic clicks, with the tongue flapping on the front of the hard palate. Extraordinary, though dying out slowly as a communication mechanism.

You notice the litter everywhere, she says. We nod, because we do. My house doesn’t have litter in the yard or in front of it, but then people say to us why do you want to be like Europeans. We Africans like to litter, they say, and it is colonialist to not litter. We throw things aways so that creates jobs for someone to pick them up. Strangely, our girl doesn’t see the false logic in this – that you have to pay someone to pick litter up, and that money comes from taxes. They love to litter, she says. Always, they throw things out of cars. We need to educate the people not to litter. I mutter to Hairy that it takes more than ‘education’. When we were in Tanzania a few years back a strongman in charge there didn’t see tidiness as colonialist. He refused to allow shops to open before they had cleared away street litter in front of them and put heavy fines on litterers. The country was pin perfect. Nothing colonialist at all about that. Colonialism provides a ready excuse for any unpleasant reality.

Eventually we arrive at the crocodile reserve and have a great time watching many, many crocs of all sizes being fed, plus receiving a good talk on venomous snakes, illustrated with real snakes (including a ‘spitting’ snake who spat at us into the sides of his plastic container). The very competent young Africaans European man leading the tour and part of the management then held up a snake whose one strike of venom, he said, could take out a whole Rugby team. Rather him holding it than me.

Horse psychology.

And after the burning of a synagogue, the sensible response would be to deport every muslim in Australia. Then they might learn to keep their loonies under control instead of admiring them for being outstandingly devout.

I know this is tough on decent and law abiding muslims, the overwhelming majority. But if one in ten thousand is a homicidal lunatic and we don’t know which one, there’s no real alternative.

Kel December 6, 2024 3:24 pm

Advice sought from any Jews please – would this be appropriate.

Thinking of buying some Kosher biscuits or something from a Kosher shop and dropping them off at a Jewish meeting centre.

I buy from the shops that do online sales, and use them for gifts. My problem is that I forget the names of the shops.
So. Can someone remind me of the chocolate shop that had the Mass Murders protest outside it a few years back? I’ve bought several boxes for sisters, the shop sells a small case called a chocolate Red Cross Emergency Supply or something similar – or perhaps not even that similar.

Bruce, my high school physics isn’t up to understanding all the terms and capabilities surrounding “spinning reserve” and renewables. It was covered in a program on Broken Hill a couple of weeks ago but remained obscure to me. Is it an Alternating Current issue?

Is it possible that battery storage can supply this, or is it the wrong type of delivery system? I want to keep your answer in my back pocket for New Year greenie meet-ups.

Thanks for your answer, Bruce.

I need a simple explanation, not reams of graphs and obscure scientese to prop up the argument. This is how these warmie have won the argument while the people who have real expertise surround themselves with almost impenetrable walls of text.

Keep it simple so low intelligence people like me can make a cogent argument. That way we win.

The only other understandable argument will be ruin, and that will be too late.

Makka December 6, 2024 6:02 pm

Don’t worry. Jim has got our backs…

Public sector to blame for Australia’s poor productivity

Australia’s economic story has become dominated by public rather than private activity as politicians spend crazy amounts of money to buy votes.

The Union tail wagging the Labor dog.
Unions have been the driving force behind Australia’s inability to advance at any more than a glacial pace since Federation.
The growth of the bureaucracy only benefits one sector – the Unionised one.
Now they have their filthy mitts on the Superannuation, it’s only a matter of time until they proclaim “This Strategic National Asset” as theirs.
Unions are the ultimate parasite in Australia, and they will not stop feeding on it’s ever weakening corpse until it dies.

Take the Liberal Party – they refuse to move against the Unions even though Union power rests on three words in the legislation – “may conveniently belong’. It prevents any group of wukkas from starting their own union, and if it was removed from the legislation, the wukkas would move away from their current Union Masters and form their own.

All together now: awww.

New blow to sale of Brittany Higgins’ French abode (Tele, paywalled)

The former Liberal staffer has faced an uphill battle trying to sell her French countryside abode and has been forced to significantly drop the asking price.

That $2.4 big is rapidly depleting. Maybe she will need to learn the French for “fries with that?”

Many thanks to Bruce and White Robot for the info. Copied and saved to my Notes for easy regurgitation.

White Robot correctly points to the rotating mass of a steam turbine controlling the frequency of the AC electricity sent out into the grid.

‘Spinning reserve’ relates to the energy stored in the large rotating mass of the steam turbine. This energy is directly coupled to the generator unit and is immediately available to balance the constant fluctuations in electricity demand (big motors being switched on, thousands of a/c units being turned on simultaneously etc). Think of a flywheel keeping a motor running smoothly.

This is a feature of coal fired power stations and their 100 tonne turbines.

The suggested alternative is to crank up a gas turbine (which is far from instantaneous) – or switch in battery power or a spare windmill or Snowy 2.0 (also ‘laggy’ and not smoothly instantaneous).

The outcome: an unstable power supply, flickering lights and inefficient electric motor operation.

Darwin Award.

Actress dies after consuming amphibian’s venom at spiritual cleansing retreat (5 Dec, via Instapundit)

A Mexican actress is dead after voluntarily participating in a spiritual cleansing ritual during which she reportedly consumed poisonous Amazonian frog venom. …

Police are investigating a shaman’s involvement in the incident.

Ok actors and actresses are notoriously not too bright (except James Woods) but the religiosity of this sort of thing is interesting. As I’ve said previously: when lefties decide to become atheists they just fill the spiritual hole with weird stuff instead. Like Amazonian frog venom.

You can synthesize AC from DC with modern inverters- BassLink is DC and so is the Frog-Pommy link across the Channel (or it used to be iirc).

“God is an artist..”

https://x.com/Am_Blujay/status/1865116506696380475

Third World brothel keepers wanted. Urgently!

Oh wait (the Tele):

Brothel keepers have been axed from a new list of key workers deemed desperately-needed in Australia, in an eleventh-hour intervention by immigration Minister Tony Burke following inquiries from The Daily Telegraph.

The Australian Government’s Core Skills Occupation List (CSOL), released earlier this week, revealed that foreign brothel workers were among those eligible for temporary skilled migration to Australia – while cafe and restaurant managers were cut, triggering outrage from the hospitality industry.

Restaurant managers? Pfft. Surplus to requirements, thank you very much. What we really need – apparently – are people who can keep those uppity hookers in line.

However on Friday afternoon, following inquiries from The Daily Telegraph, immigration Minister Tony Burke’s office confirmed brothel keepers would be expressly excluded from the CSOL.

This list of required occupations was said to have been compiled by a group calling itself Jobs and Skills Australia. This requirement for brothel keepers was contained in the list sent to government, which then promptly published it.

Evidently nobody bothers reading this stuff before it’s published. Perhaps ‘Proof Reader To Stop Government Making A Dick Of Itself Yet Again’ should have been on that list.

Croissants are so fecking gay.

Chiko Rolls, however, are not

I have two ambitions in life.

One is to win a $20 million (or higher) Powerball jackpot.

The other is to eat a Chiko Roll without the arse falling out of it.

I will almost certainly die alone and unfulfilled.

A slightly earlier story:

Syrian rebels say they have reached the city limits of Homs, taken over Daraa (6 Dec)

Syrian rebels reached the city limits of Homs, making last call for Syrian forces to defect, rebels said on Telegram.

In a parallel setback for Assad, a US-backed alliance led by Syrian Kurdish fighters took Deir el-Zor, the government’s main foothold in the vast desert in the east of the country, three Syrian sources told Reuters on Friday.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Assad was still in Syria on Friday. His children and his wife went to Russia last week, and other members of his family left for the United Arab Emirates, Syrian and Arab officials told the WSJ.

The sources said that Egyptian and Jordanian officials are imploring Assad to form a government in exile. 

I’m putting this up because of that last fairly astonishing sentence. I can scarcely believe it, so maybe it isn’t true. But if Jordan and Egypt are telling Assad to bug out then this is the biggest ruction in the Middle East since 1948.

Dammit
Now I have to go out just to get a Chicko Roll.
Also, cross ants need to lighten up.