June 21, 20196 yr 1 hour ago, Gabriël said: speaking about colonies... i notice 2,000,000 people took to the streets in hong kong [now a chinese colony] China worries me. Even if you are not a religious man, it has been said that religion is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to freedom. And China appears to be moving towards a system of state-approved religion vs. everything else... I am firmly on the Hong-Kong side in this case. Edited June 21, 20196 yr by plonkster
June 21, 20196 yr Author 4 minutes ago, plonkster said: I am firmly on the Hong-Kong side in this case. the ironic thing is china's money is also there - so you made a smart bet 😎
June 21, 20196 yr 19 minutes ago, plonkster said: China worries me me too. There is a revolution waiting to happen.
June 21, 20196 yr Author Just now, Fuenkli said: There is a revolution waiting to happen what colour is the manual this time?
June 21, 20196 yr 29 minutes ago, plonkster said: China worries me. Jip. And less we forget, my bud in the USA is kicking that hornets nest each time he has a itch to scratch. And (only in Hong-Kong) when 2,000,000 younger people take to the street ... man, I would start listening to them. Hope the youths worldwide keep on pushing harder!
June 21, 20196 yr And if you read the news a bit more closely, this protest has a very Christian tint to it. They clearly see this as a part of a larger threat.
June 21, 20196 yr Author 10 minutes ago, plonkster said: this protest has a very Christian tint to it this is what REALLY gets the politburo or whatever they call it in bejing edit 1 most of the bibles you buy in sa, even afrikaans, have been printed in china! edit 2 plonky, you really give us the broadside with those links 🙂 Edited June 21, 20196 yr by Gabriël
June 21, 20196 yr 11 minutes ago, Gabriël said: this is what REALLY gets the politburo or whatever they call it in bejing And at the risk of preaching a bit too much from my own perspective, let me bring in a bit of history. There are those who believe that Mao did good things for China (his Birthday is still a public holiday over there, he is the founder of the PRC after all). They believe the British messed it up. They are angry at the west (and Christianity) for halting that progress. Apparently Xi Jinping is of this school of thought. So you will see things like this, and this. Jinping is a follower of Chinese Buddhism. I disagree of course. Mao was responsible for between 20- and 45 million deaths. He is (along with Stalin) one of the greatest killers of the 20th century. Between the two of them they totally destroy the myth that "religion is the biggest killer"... both of them were atheist. So as I said... I am worried about China. Edited June 21, 20196 yr by plonkster
June 21, 20196 yr Author 51 minutes ago, plonkster said: Some comic relief on the topic... cussing faggot 🤮
June 21, 20196 yr 1 minute ago, Gabriël said: faggot That's not very nice. He's actually straight. It turns out most transvestites are in fact straight. They like women AND their clothes.
June 21, 20196 yr Author 1 hour ago, plonkster said: I am worried about China Proverbs 24:19 "Fret not thyself because of evil [men], neither be thou envious at the wicked;" how's that for a lekker old english word... fret! 🤩
June 21, 20196 yr 5 hours ago, Gabriël said: we were a colony, remember Mmm, seems THIS colony is making it work 🤣 Mamre wind farm
June 24, 20196 yr And there Germany goes: Germany Ditches Fossil Fuels Yet back in SA ... (facepalm) : SOWETO RESIDENTS' ELECTRICITY BILL SURPASSES R18 BILLION And SA and tax breaks on solar: Own an SME? Tax perks of going solar
June 24, 20196 yr Author 53 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said: And SA and tax breaks on solar: Own an SME? Tax perks of going solar that is eye candy as sars is about to recoil and inject the tax payer with the 'eskom survival' venom - by this time not even propaganda regarding your favourite rugby team should be able to fool you 😬; am i despised for being a realist ?
June 24, 20196 yr Look north boys. Eskom is just fine. Zim's electrical supplier ZESA on the other hand , is in the hole for about 83million not Rand but US $ to Eskom and Mozambique so now they have 19 hours of load shedding a day. I think they owe Eskom about R 600 000 000. But they are also busy rolling out the new Zim $ currently. ............ Oh dear
June 24, 20196 yr 1 hour ago, seant said: 83million not Rand but US $ Yeah that's about a 1200 million or 1.2 billion. Eskom owes various people about 500 billion. Drop in the bucket. Of course that is a bad way of measuring it. You got to look at debt vs GDP. As I said to a Mercedes Benz owner one day -- you have to understand that I feel the same way about dings in my door as he does, even if my car is worth a third of his. It's all a function of how much you make... 🙂
June 24, 20196 yr 1 hour ago, plonkster said: 500 billion. Eskom is not selling enough power right? If Eskom increases the price, then less electricity will be sold for we just don't have the spare capacity anymore and the economy is taking strain and living costs are increasing / fuel price ... am I missing something? So tell me, does anyone think SA can sort out that half a trillion rand? If so, how? More taxes / VAT? More taxes, how much per taxpayer? Think deeply about this ... how can SA sort half a trillion rand of debt, debt that is increasing each and every day. EDIT: Tell me HOW to fix this, not that we cannot. Work if from the other side in other words. Edited June 24, 20196 yr by Guest
June 25, 20196 yr I recall reading somewhere that Eskom is the only business in the entire world that used its marketing budget to tell people NOT to use its product, during loadshedding
June 25, 20196 yr 11 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said: EDIT: Tell me HOW to fix this, not that we cannot. Work if from the other side in other words. The is an old slangish spanish saying (from an old US advert) where a small girl wants to know why they cannot have both (kinds of food): Por que no los dos? It is often used as a humourous way to point out that someone is committing the fallacy of the false alternative: When the argument is stated in such a way that you have to choose between A and B as if they are exclusive. By asking: But why not both?, you point out that another option exists. Anyway, so I am not saying that any such fallacies are being committed, but rather that we need a whole lot of "por que no los <insert spanish word for everything>". And I'm pretty sure "los" will change too because of the word that follows. Languages are weird and wonderful. So my point is that we will need to do ALL of the suggested things. So that would be: 1. Retrench a very large percentage of the workers. I mean like 30% at least, probably more. A large portion of these would have to come from management, because Eskom is top heavy. 2. Increase the price of electricity. Yes, we may not like that, but out electricity is STILL cheap. It's expensive for coal-generated electricity though, so this will have to go hand-in-hand with a concerted move to other sources. The higher price makes it profitable for IPPs. 3. Split Eskom into generation and distribution. This is far from the silver bullet some think it is. Distribution can likely be made profitable fairly quickly, but the bulk of the problem is on the generation side. Again, this goes hand in hand with bringing in IPPs. 4. The single shareholder (the government, aka the taxpayer indirectly) takes over a part of the debt. Essentially, this is like using money from your own homeloan to bail out your brother who is about to lose his car. You use your own good credit to save him from his bad credit. There are limits to how much of this you can do before it affects your own credit. 5. Allow cities to procure their own power from IPPs and invest in their own generation infrastructure. 6. Now, hopefully all these moves inspire confidence in the economy and the exchange rate improves. This makes imports cheaper, makes fuel cheaper, and hopefully helps to improve profitability of the whole plan, plus it relieves pressure from the taxpayer. 7. This is where I think things will go wrong: Crack down on government corruption. The point here is to free up a money stream to get out of debt. If your "agents" are just going to steal the money as soon as it becomes freed up... then we just end up a decade later with the same problem... and even less money. So I tend to look at this in reverse: Will we see CR and kie actually PROSECUTE anyone. That was the biggest thing that was missing from SONA. If he got up and said "we're coming for you" and actually put his money where his mouth is... that would make me trust him on all the other stuff. I kinda understand why it is not happening: The ANC is still too divided. I don't know what is needed to get rid of this factionalism, because we don't have another decade to get rid of them, we'll have to work with them.
June 25, 20196 yr 3 minutes ago, plonkster said: I don't know what is needed to get rid of this factionalism Well I do know of one thing that works very well. You convince people that we are all brothers, that there is no Jew or gentile to borrow a phrase from the good book, that we are all equal. That is to say, you acknowledge that most people have a difficult time making good decisions unless you give them a sound philosophical basis to work from. Fix the philosophical base and the rest might follow. That unfortunately also takes a lifetime...
June 25, 20196 yr Author 28 minutes ago, plonkster said: fallacy of the false alternative do you still assault your wife 🤣 23 minutes ago, plonkster said: Fix the philosophical base ... the same 'good book' which you 'quote' in the previous sentence rules out this option as God is not a philosophy but a reality and not one person on earth will by nature choose that option for they hate being 'not in charge' and they just plainly can't - as a reading of romans will clearly prove. re cr, is it on the basis of righteousness and integrity that he survived and ended where he is or some other 'qualities' - and if any of the latter, do we really think he is about to change his colors for the benefit of the populus??? the 'good book' comments the following: Jeremiah 13:23-25 AMP "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also can you do good who are accustomed and taught [even trained] to do evil. Therefore I will scatter you like chaff driven away by the wind from the desert. This is your lot, the portion measured to you from Me, says the Lord, because you have forgotten Me and trusted in falsehood [false gods and alliances with idolatrous nations]."
June 25, 20196 yr 48 minutes ago, Gabriël said: do you still assault your wife 🤣 That fallacy is called the "Loaded Question". Another very topical example from American discourse: Why do anti-choicers dislike healthcare? It looks like an innocent question, but it is loaded because you already added an insult to the question. It also begs the question when it assumes 'healthcare" without arguing for it. Now your interlocutor starts on the back foot and has to first explain that he is not against choice in general, just the ones he considers wrong... Anyway... I digress. 53 minutes ago, Gabriël said: God is not a philosophy You do realise you are doing philosophy by just saying that? When a materialist tells you that science will give him all the answers, he has just killed his position: Science cannot tell him that science will answer his questions (that is circular), he needs philosophy to do that. Everything is philosophy. Even the statement that everything is philosophy is in itself philosophy. Every world view is philosophy, whether they be theistic or atheistic. And you can basically count the number of basic philosophies that people work from when they decide what is good and right on your fingers, if not on one hand. And hence I will concur with you partly: That ultimate reality is not material, it is in the information space so to speak 🙂
June 25, 20196 yr But speaking of fallacies... the one that cracked me up completely, was when Afriforum was in parliament and accused someone (I forgot who) of making a strawman of their argument. A few minutes later (I suppose it took some time to digest the statement), another lady parliamentarian became terribly upset because she has been called a strawman... Let me translate: People paid to sit and debate... often have zero debate training.
June 25, 20196 yr Author 14 minutes ago, plonkster said: You do realise you are doing philosophy by just saying that? you knew i would react to that, didn't you... so that was it 🤩.... must say i like 'doing philosophy'... like 'doing cha cha' 🤣 12 minutes ago, plonkster said: People paid to sit and debate... often have zero debate training that's why some fall asleep there - unfortunately not in the pauline sense ... 🤨
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