And in the latest news:

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is considering whether to back a proposal to improve troubled Eskom’s debt terms by closing polluting coal plants early to make way for renewable energy.

A special purpose vehicle would lower interest rates paid by the state-owned utility by accelerating the closure of coal-fired stations, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the information isn’t public. The plan was submitted to Ramaphosa by a task team, which has suggested a range of options for rescuing Eskom, the person said.

From here: Ramaphosa mulls green energy plan to cut Eskom’s debt payments

3 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

A special purpose vehicle

an electric maserati painted black green and gold with bumfluff on the dash

Eskom says ‘no thanks’ to skilled engineers and technicians

23 hours ago, Gabriël said:

Eskom says ‘no thanks’ to skilled engineers and technicians

So, Gordhan saying they are getting Engineers to help and report on Eskom, where is that report, a report that was imminent months ago?

Edited July 1, 20196 yr by Guest

56 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

a report that was imminent months ago?

like the running water and toilets promised to all voters back in 1994

"Eskom lost at least 25 billion rand in the year through March and isn’t generating enough cash to service both its interest and debt repayments, even though it has secured rate increases of more than 500% since 2007..."

darkest africa indeed - the rape, the corruption, the pillaging... rainbow nation??? renaissance??? what a joke!

and then my gp wants to know why is my blood pressure elevated 😎

Edited July 1, 20196 yr by Gabriël

20 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

So, Gordhan saying they are getting Engineers to help and report on Eskom, where is that report, a report that was imminent months ago?

They will need those old toppies who are familiar with the old equipment they are using in the power stations.

2 hours ago, DeepBass9 said:

They will need those old toppies who are familiar with the old equipment they are using in the power stations.

Ditto ... 

Seems to me here is something brewing, or probably not ... https://www.fin24.com/Economy/Eskom/analysis-times-up-for-eskom-unbundling-must-happen-in-2-years-20190702-2

Not in the it is "leaked" to reporter/s to make it seems something is potting ... I don't know. 

1 hour ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

Seems to me here is something brewing, or probably not ...

the essence, and i quote: "There is no more time." 

and we know that time=money in this world.... 🙄

13 minutes ago, Gabriël said:

and we know that time=money in this world....

We do.

So I'm wondering, are "they" (ANC):
1) really trying, best efforts, but have they have no real clue of the size of the problem, no-one does?
2) do they "get it" and are really getting to get to grips with it, but it will take time? Medupe has another unit online I read.
3) they have no idea and are BS'ing themselves and the creditors in blissful ignorance yet with good intentions?
4) it is all a huge farce and the raping is still taking place, just with much more "financial finesse"?
5) or that Eskom is really dying, no chance, bottomless pit?

Now be careful, we must not assume all is corrupt and bad, so keeping that in mind, what is the real true "feeling" of where we stand on Eskom today, best / worst case?
 

43 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

We do.

we do also know that money equals secular power - whether you show it off by being obese, having multiple wifes or wearing a rolex or driving a 600sl or wearing a designer jean like the eff hoofseun - in some way it will show --- my twopence is that 'death' of the organism 'south africa' will never be 'complete' but a long suffering and artificially supported process; as always the top less than 1 percent will still live well, there will, as elsewhere be the have not's BUT WHAT WILL BE TOTALLY LACKING IN THE LONG RUN IS THE MOST IMPORTANT, A HEALTHY MIDDLE CLASS

On 2019/06/04 at 9:31 AM, The Terrible Triplett said:

- supplying power to Zim to a tune of $33m ( R 475 990 350.00) - uhm, what the F..k am I missing ... YET AGAIN!?

Well blow me down ... Eskom confirms Zim paid back the money (some of it)

 

This is not going to end, is it?

Eskom Has Yet Another Headache: An $813 Million Annual Carbon Tax Bill

That's OK, we can all sell them carbon credits.

27 minutes ago, DeepBass9 said:

That's OK, we can all sell them carbon credits.

And I bet you it will be sold to a Gov backed Co ...more fraud potential! 🤣

On 2019/07/02 at 1:09 PM, Gabriël said:

we do also know that money equals secular power - whether you show it off by being obese, having multiple wifes or wearing a rolex or driving a 600sl or wearing a designer jean like the eff hoofseun - in some way it will show --- my twopence is that 'death' of the organism 'south africa' will never be 'complete' but a long suffering and artificially supported process; as always the top less than 1 percent will still live well, there will, as elsewhere be the have not's BUT WHAT WILL BE TOTALLY LACKING IN THE LONG RUN IS THE MOST IMPORTANT, A HEALTHY MIDDLE CLASS

Meh. I'm starting to think the middle class are the problem. 

I regularly eat the same breakfast cereal. The packaging proudly proclaims that there are no GM ingredients.

I want GM crops. With population on the rise, and with less and less land available for farming, we need to improve yield per acre (or start eating soylent green). GM crops are good, and we need them to feed populations going forwards.

But who is the big road block in the way? The middle class, who don't want their kids exposed to "chemicals" and who can afford to buy crops grown from "heritage seed" which produce less per acre and drive costs up for the short term gain of people willing to supply that market.

OK... not just the middle class. Prince Charles, Britain's most high profile peddler of quackery, must help carry the can.

The middle class will direct the markets because of their buying power, but they will likely direct us to low yield crops that keep farmers in poor countries from maximising the potential of their land and thus push up the cost of food in those countries.

I'm inclined to open up a restaurant franchise whose speciality is that they use as many GM ingredients as possible. A sort of anti-hipster chain. Unfortunately I've just spent a chunk of my potential seed capital on a solar power system 😞 

Hmmm. GM is not necessarily the problem. The problem is specifically what the plants are genetically modified to be resistant against. The flaw is that the third part of the triangle being humans who are not genetically modified to be resistant to glyphosate poison (similar to the weeds and insects that it kills off). 

If you think that just about all maize, wheat and soya grown in SA is sprayed with glyphosate, you can think how much is ingested by the population. 

Just google the following :

link between glyphosate and cancer

link between glyphosate and gluten intolerance

link between glyphosate and celiac disease

link between glyphosate and lymphoma

etc etc.

Edited July 11, 20196 yr by DeepBass9

3 minutes ago, Bobster said:

The packaging proudly proclaims that there are no GM ingredients.

well, my carcinogenic toast - yes i love it overdone, nice and crispy - seems to be without gm's 🤣, and quite frankly with all the butter, meat, fruit and what have you we import from weird places like the ukraine [chernobyl!!!], china, south america and israel - who knows and who really cares??? is not sugar and most carbohydrates the bigger enemy to our bodily welfare... and even if we eat all that 'bad' stuff, we will NOT be here within 80 [far less for me] years and we do not seem to be concerned about our eternal welfare 🙄

you get two kind of labels these days,

one states "made in china"

the other states "not made in china"

and in small print on the last one 'made in china' 

Wheat is GM, and fun fact: To get the wheat to all die at the same time so it dries quicker and more evenly, it is sprayed with glyphosate. Yum!

7 minutes ago, DeepBass9 said:

GM is not necessarily the problem.

In the GM debate, this is one place where I find myself agreeing with Richard Dawkins. Which is a rare occasion, as I normally find the man insufferable (along with several others who have never heard of logical positivism and why it failed).

He explains quite rightly, to Prince Charles too I think, that as humans we have been messing with nature for literally centuries, making things better for ourselves. Brocolli and Bananas just being two of the things that would not exist in their present form if we didn't mess with them.

I also tend to think of something Chesterton said, that there is no such thing as getting back to nature, since there is no such thing as departing from it. It's like a slightly intoxicated old man standing up from his kitchen table stating firmly that he really ought to be getting home. In the end, all of it is nature. There is no such thing as inorganic produce, in the end everything that goes into it is (or once was) organic, and all of it is completely natural.

So the entire natural debate seems silly to me.

That does not however mean that everything is healthy. Snake venom is completely organic and natural, but it will kill you.

In other words, the idea that we ought to produce/farm in harmony with nature is WIDER than many people think, and at the same time the NARROW idea many people have is probably going to kill us in the long run.

By that logic, everything is a 'natural product of the earth'. Even arsenic and uranium.

1 minute ago, DeepBass9 said:

By that logic, everything is a 'natural product of the earth'. Even arsenic and uranium.

Correct. And that is unhelpful, right? Which is kind-of my point. The current debate is often vague.

Now of course someone might say to me: Oh come on plonkie, you know what we mean! You know, like when you asked your English teacher if you can go to the rest room and she mockingly replied: I don't know, CAN you? You probably rolled your eyes at her... at least when she wasn't looking!

So yeah, I do get what people are on about. We sort of have to understand what we mean by nature, harmony, and why it is good.

I personally tend to agree that hitting some biological material with radiation and see if you can produce a beneficial mutation, or splicing bug DNA into a plant to get resistance... you're  probably shouldn't be doing such things unless you know EXACTLY what you're doing. Conversely, I don't see a problem with the proper use of glyphosate. It is not systemic, has a relatively short half-life, and is a fairly simply arguably natural compound... 🙂

 

9 minutes ago, plonkster said:

Conversely, I don't see a problem with the proper use of glyphosate. It is not systemic, has a relatively short half-life, and is a fairly simply arguably natural compound... 🙂

Don't read too widely on that subject then, as your hair might stand on end when you realise how bad the stuff is. If it is so good, then why is Bayer being fined $2 billion? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-glyphosate-lawsuit/california-jury-hits-bayer-with-2-billion-award-in-roundup-cancer-trial-idUSKCN1SJ29F

In terms of sustainability, how can poisoning everything apart from your crop plant possibly be sustainable? Ever wonder where the bees have gone?

5 minutes ago, DeepBass9 said:

your hair might stand on end

Of course I am often wrong too. Ask my wife 🙂

When I find out that I am wrong, I adapt my position. I'm pretty certain that the overzealous use of Roundup on stuff we eat might possibly be a problem, but not completely convinced. I'm not at all convinced that using it as a topical weed killer in my own garden is a problem, even if my neighbour thinks so.

Edit: And even if Roundup does turn out to be bad, this is not evidence that natural (for some value of natural) farming is better, for the aforementioned reasons. A victory in banning one bad substance does not entail that all others are bad too. You need separate evidence for each.

Edited July 11, 20196 yr by plonkster

14 minutes ago, plonkster said:

There is no such thing as inorganic produce, in the end everything that goes into it is (or once was) organic, and all of it is completely natural.

there is newspeak at its best, i mean organic and inorganic; the term loved by the populus is organic, whereby they denote 'natural' and 'good for health' - not so in chemistry. many a 'organic' substance is pure poison to humans. i agree that produce is organic, but as to what goes into it could include inorganic stuff [like sulfur] - so would not that make the produce inorganic?

in any case nature has been cursed by God, and mankind tries to save it? what a laugh... and what about the 'natural' process of cell mutation in humans, for every generation we have about 100 more mutations than the previous one, if it were not for redundancy [having more than one of most kind like kidney and lung lobes] we would really be in dire straits...

but now we are into much more than eskom woes 🙄

25 minutes ago, plonkster said:

unless you know EXACTLY what you're doing

therein the problem, the vast majority of so-called scientists [which include the at stages totally illogical dawkins] EXPERIMENT - ie, they don't really have a clue - they may have a grant - but a clue???