happy valentine’s day oompies!
Johan, one thing is clear – the local Trump supporters are from the same demographic group as his American supporters. He is an actor that positions himself to get the support of the swing vote. That is the working class without a college education. This particular group identifies with a “successful businessman” who promises to act against the immigrants and foreigners who threaten their job security. They compete with a Mexican immigrant for the same job. Building a wall is the logical solution to sell to them.
Trump is an astute businessman all right – He sells the product that his support base eagerly buys. He knows his clients. He does not necessarily identify with them. The ratio between upvotes and downvotes here indicates the difference in the levels of education and perceptions of readers. It displays the demographic position of readers.
Invent? Surely you mean steal?
Yes ne — They are waiting for one of the cadres to invent toilet paper for pit latrines — A truly remarkable breakthrough !!
“When I left Africa in 1966 it seemed to me to be a place that was developing, going in a particular direction, and I don’t think that is the case now. And it’s a place where people still kid themselves – you know, in a few years this will happen or that will happen. Well, it’s not going to happen. It’s never going to happen.” – Paul Theroux
“That was my Malawian epiphany. Only Africans were capable of making a difference in Africa. All the others, donors and volunteers and bankers, however idealistic, were simply agents of subversion.”
― Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town
Still waiting for BC to hit $20,000 before nibbling.
If Woolworths upgrades its store management and its buying it will sell a lot more clothing.
When you walk into a Woolworths store and it has a new range of clothing, I always find it surprising that there will be 10 XS items, 20 S items 20 M items and a few L items on the shelves. No XL, XXL or XXXL items to be found.
Next year the buying gets done and as there were no sales of the larger sizes, they are not reordered.
No store management ever looks at sizes on their floor or anything like that.
And yet over at least 2000 schools still have pit latrines: “South Africa is to get rid of all pit latrines in state schools within two years after a five-year-old pupil drowned in a toilet in March.
“This is an initiative that will save lives and restore the dignity of tens of thousands of our nation’s children,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said.” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-45183593
Over three years of useless ANC control over the economy and society and this laughable character continues with his bumbling blather and an abysmal education system. The only way any dignity will be restored in SA will be when the crony culture ANC disappears.
Yes …. sigh …
Yes, the beautiful Zimbabwe and the beautiful Africa, destroyed by the lies, greed and violence of politicians.
Sigh …
so many down votes! Over a 100 on three comments! The mostest muchest amazingly beautifulest down votes (waves little hands and smirks)
what is unusual is there are no replies about mass media fake news woke cancel libtards. Strange
Crop farming, viticulture, and livestock farming to a lesser degree is a probabilities game. The retail, manufacturing, and service industries have relatively stable income streams because they are able to transfer their costs to the consumer. The local weather, currency fluctuations, international weather patterns and trade policies, as well as the local trade policies, affect the price of the products and the profit margin of the farmer.
In the most stable production regions, the odds for a lossmaking year is 2 to 3 times over a ten years period. Those odds are 4 to 5 times in other production areas, depending on rainfall mostly. The odds for a lossmaking year increase as the profit margin shrinks. The local weather, exchange rate, and international price determine the odds. The international competitor in the USA, Europe, and Japan each annually receives R2 million in subsidies from their governments. The government takes over the risks of farming in those countries.
Whether he realizes it or not, the local farmer is a currency speculator, who at the same time speculates with weather patterns and international commodity prices. In essence, he is a speculator that uses the bank’s money to get ahead of the odds. He uses his farm as collateral to motivate the bank to support him in this speculative endeavor. He bets the entire farm every time he takes out a production loan.
To survive in the commodities business you have to be the lowest-cost producer in the international arena. This competitive force drives the ever-growing need for scale benefits and increasing operational efficiencies. Farm sizes grow exponentially as companies buy out family farms. Every decade an average of 30% of farmers leave agriculture as farm sizes grow. The smaller farmer has to run flat-out on the financial treadmill just to stand still. When he returns from the field late in the evening he still has to pay the Eskom bill. Eskom increases the rates, just as the farmer managed to get his nose above the water.
When playing a probabilities game the operator has to structure his exposure according to the Kelly Ratio that determines the bet size according to the odds. Fourth and fifth-generation farmers have an instinctive feel for the Kelly Criterion because they understand the risks and constantly implement mitigating strategies.
The risk-control strategies of crop farmers are on par with, or even exceed, the capabilities of hedge-fund managers. In reality, a crop farmer is a hedge-fund manager.
This is why the entire socialist idea of emerging farmers is dead in the water. To prepare new entrants into the agricultural arena, give each R100 million from the GEPF to manage for ten years. If they have proven their capability to manage risks and survive after ten years, they have climbed the first step towards being a successful farmer. As it stands now, transformation in agriculture is a naive socialist project, and a growing cost center for the taxpayer.
Such is the way of the Narcissist … I know all, am surrounded by idiots and only I can see it.
people can like who they want.
What amazes me with Trump disciples is that they are so desperate for somebody, anybody, that is also anti climate change, pro racism that they ENTIRELY ignore the many personal aspects of the man that should fundamentally offend these generally religious and conservative people.
Their greatest disappointment with Trump not is that he is a wife cheating, chauvinist, narcissistic tax cheating con man, but that he is vaccinated.
Good article, fair assessment, it appears to me.
The IMF and the World Bank were created as part of the Bretton Woods Agreement after WW2.
According to this agreement the USA prints the reserve currency of the world. The World Bank distributes it to the Emerging Markets who use that money to buy American government bonds to hold as reserves to finance the imports of oil and American exports which are dollar based.
To cut al long story short – the money that is created by the Fed ends up as a loan to the US government after it has traveled through the World Bank and Emerging Markets.
They enslave the Emerging Market nations in the process. This is the modern, sophisticated, and cross-border version of the old feudal system. There is no free lunch in the capitalist system.
More corruption and money stealing opportunities from the politicians.
From now on I will only buy Clover products. A purchase of a Clover product is a no-confidence motion against the Tripartite Alliance. Long live clover! Long Live! Cosatu must Fall! Down Cosatu Down!
Merrily bankrupting the country and ruining it for the following generations !!
There is no need to argue about facts.
Get two universities to do an independent report. I’ll send them my past year of 350+ cent/kWh industrial energy bills. I pay more than prime California.
I do not care that a former Eskom boss organised a pillage tariff for his post-Eskom nest egg, that is on Eskom and should not form part of any averaging for the university report. No subsidy should, which is exactly what cheap tariffs are.
Same if our exports to some countries are not what the Energy Regulation Act requires – cost reflective.
Same with free basic electricity. If government buys votes from a third of the population then government must transfer that lost revenue into Eskom. It too cannot form part of averaging.
All this debate will stop when we stop the crazy notion of 100 councils and municipalities having 1000 tariffs compiled with varying degrees of incompetence and/or agenda. Implement an objective set of tariffs nationally -which tariffs also apply to Eskom Distribution clients. If there are subsidies (and penalties), those should be in a Treasury document and form part of the national budget, just as fuel taxes, sin taxes and social grants are public.
If Eskom believes that their product is priced competitively, why are they defending their monopoly at all costs? Why do they need a socialist government with their failed central planning dogma to protect the Eskom inefficiencies and incompetence? Why don’t they privatize the grid?
Eskom has the cheapest source of high-grade and shallow coal beds in the world. They have access to the cheapest source of renewable energy in the world. We have some of the best engineers and managing skills in the world. Still, Eskom implements cadre-deployment and favours and protects the preferential and extractive BEE projects that hold the nation at ransom.
This monopoly monstrosity deserves to implode like the USSR. There is no place in the free market for a socialist disaster like this. ANC voters cannot afford this Frankenstein Monster they have created.
There remains the issue of bonuses for Eskom executives. In it’s efforts to reduce costs, bonuses should be the first thing to be suspended. COVID lockdowns forced most executives to suspend bonuses or even take voluntary salary cuts in view of business survival. They don’t have the backing of government when it comes to massive losses of income. Executives making prudent personal income decisions might strengthen their case for a tariff increase, but not in the double digit range.
Hahahaha, I don’t often buy Clover products.
These kind of actions only endanger the financial viability of Clover even more, and increases the change of more people loosing their jobs, or having to accept pay ccuts Eish, unions in SA.
If no one believes there is an undercover operation against anyone exposing the State, and by association, ANC corruption over decades which has brought us close to being a failed state, they must have been living in a cave.
LOL
I reached my Gatvol level about 5 years ago and embraced solar.
One of the best decisions I have made to give me peace of mind and freedom from this crowd!!
Crop farming, viticulture, and livestock farming to a lesser degree is a probabilities game. The retail, manufacturing, and service industries have relatively stable income streams because they are able to transfer their costs to the consumer. The local weather, currency fluctuations, international weather patterns and trade policies, as well as the local trade policies, affect the price of the products and the profit margin of the farmer.
In the most stable production regions, the odds for a lossmaking year is 2 to 3 times over a ten years period. Those odds are 4 to 5 times in other production areas, depending on rainfall mostly. The odds for a lossmaking year increase as the profit margin shrinks. The local weather, exchange rate, and international price determine the odds. The international competitor in the USA, Europe, and Japan each annually receives R2 million in subsidies from their governments. The government takes over the risks of farming in those countries.
Whether he realizes it or not, the local farmer is a currency speculator, who at the same time speculates with weather patterns and international commodity prices. In essence, he is a speculator that uses the bank’s money to get ahead of the odds. He uses his farm as collateral to motivate the bank to support him in this speculative endeavor. He bets the entire farm every time he takes out a production loan.
To survive in the commodities business you have to be the lowest-cost producer in the international arena. This competitive force drives the ever-growing need for scale benefits and increasing operational efficiencies. Farm sizes grow exponentially as companies buy out family farms. Every decade an average of 30% of farmers leave agriculture as farm sizes grow. The smaller farmer has to run flat-out on the financial treadmill just to stand still. When he returns from the field late in the evening he still has to pay the Eskom bill. Eskom increases the rates, just as the farmer managed to get his nose above the water.
When playing a probabilities game the operator has to structure his exposure according to the Kelly Ratio that determines the bet size according to the odds. Fourth and fifth-generation farmers have an instinctive feel for the Kelly Criterion because they understand the risks and constantly implement mitigating strategies.
The risk-control strategies of crop farmers are on par with, or even exceed, the capabilities of hedge-fund managers. In reality, a crop farmer is a hedge-fund manager.
This is why the entire socialist idea of emerging farmers is dead in the water. To prepare new entrants into the agricultural arena, give each R100 million from the GEPF to manage for ten years. If they have proven their capability to manage risks and survive after ten years, they have climbed the first step towards being a successful farmer. As it stands now, transformation in agriculture is a naive socialist project, and a growing cost center for the taxpayer.
Let’s talk about a fraud that is something worth talking about. Fraud to the tune of R5.5 bn that bankrupted Lonmin, the 3rd largest platinum mine in the world. The current president never repaid the money. The Nkandla issue pales in comparison.
We don’t call it fraud, because the ANC legalized this fraud to allow it to continue unabated to this very day. Legalized plunder is the most damaging type of fraud because the process actually robs the poor and tramples on the unemployed masses for the benefit of the wealthy BEE elite.
The fact that they are “turkeys that vote for Christmas”, describes and underscores the cognitive inferiority of populist voters. They plunder themselves, hoping to get a kickback.
https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/companies/how-lonmin-lost-billions-to-shanduka-1992607
https://www.news24.com/Fin24/lonmin-how-cyril-never-paid-back-the-money-20151022
Two interesting perspectives! My view however is, if you are taking all the risk why would you let someone else make the decision! Rather like going to the Casino and giving your chips to someone else to place your bets! What’s the fun in that! Wether it’s equities, etf’s, crypto’s – it’s all a game… trust your instincts, do the research and go for it!
If Woolworths upgrades its store management and its buying it will sell a lot more clothing.
When you walk into a Woolworths store and it has a new range of clothing, I always find it surprising that there will be 10 XS items, 20 S items 20 M items and a few L items on the shelves. No XL, XXL or XXXL items to be found.
Next year the buying gets done and as there were no sales of the larger sizes, they are not reordered.
No store management ever looks at sizes on their floor or anything like that.
“The electricity Regulation Act provides that Eskom’s tariffs must enable it to recover its prudently incurred cost and a reasonable return”.
I wonder what Eskom has done about its costs? Staffing level was quoted as 46000 (some time ago). Industry metrics suggest this should be around 30000. This alone will have a massive influence on costs.
You can cancel at any time.
Yet, in sunny SA, Eskom and NERSA are conspiring how to charge users with solar more because they use solar.
Face palm moment