Category: annoying people

What’s the plan here?

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South Africa is once again demonstrating its neutrality over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This comes just a few days after it was revealed that SA had been following a non-partisan approach by supplying arms and ammunition to Russia.

Now we’ve sent the head of the SANDF (the SA armed forces) to Russia to “visit educational institutions of the ground forces and enterprises of the military-industrial complex” there and “further increase cooperation between ground forces in various fields”.

Thank goodness we’re not taking sides here.

It’s not like we can afford to be doing this. The Rand is tanking already because of loadshedding and the arms shipments row. To add fuel to the fire right now seems both deliberately provocative and deliberately stupid.

South African bilateral trade with Russia amounts to around $1.3 billion. In comparison, bilateral trade with the UK is $10.1 billion, the US is around $17 billion and the EU over $30 billion. To risk all of that for Vlad’s pocket change means that there’s clearly something else happening behind the scenes. Is that something SA owes Russia? Or is it something the Ramaphosa owes Putin?
Because we can talk all day long about how much we abhor the colonial West and and all that they stand for, but that talk is cheap when we are still doing 50x more trade with them each year than we are with Mother Russia. And that’s a lot of money we simply can’t afford to lose.

Maybe the idea is to just run what’s left of the country into the ground before they get voted out at the next election. Or maybe this is actually an election strategy: a vote winner. The anti-imperialists will go for it, of course, but it remains to be seen how the incoming hyper-inflation will attract any normal person to vote for the ANC.

So… what is the plan here? Because I’m equally mystified and concerned.

Ok, fair enough

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I spotted this clip on the internet earlier today, and I really like it.

I guess it appeals to me especially today because it’s Tuesday, which means it’s football day. And whether it’s watching United or playing against whomever, like anyone who’s into sport, I can get pretty riled up and opinionated – even to the point of irrationality.

A moment here to remind you that it’s absolutely fine to be irrational as long as you know that you are being irrational.

That said, I’m at an age now where I don’t get dragged into arguments on the football pitch anymore. That’s not to say that I don’t get too irritated by lazy referees or those who make up rules while we’re playing. But I’ll have my say and then I’ll get on with it. Not much point in carrying on – we’re there to play footy, not to debate just how poor the refereeing is.

Save that for the beers afterwards.

The same with watching football. I can clearly see when something is wrong, and I get annoyed by it, but there’s always the realisation that I can’t do anything about it.

I might seeth quietly for a while, but that will be all.

Usually, anyway.

And if I’m not right, then I’ll admit it. Just like this bloke.

Because in the heat of the moment, referees do get things wrong. But then, often, so do players.
I love the sudden understanding when he watches the replay.

Ok. Fair enough. Good call.

Oops.

What a day

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Bit of a weird one, actually. A public holiday in the UK, but a normal working day here. Such is the South African appetite for taking time off, that this usually only happens once a year. And now it’s happening twice this month. Madness!

This extra Coronation celebration meant that United’s last game of the season began just after I’d got the kids home from school, and ended just before I had to get the boy to Dodgeball. And I had to fit a meal and painting a wall into the intervening period.

Too much to do in too little time, hence the mad dash to the usual spot in my dark car park.

And yet things started so well.

Having not really slept at all last night, I decided that the best way to try and get the day going was a 7½ km run. And that went well, with much speed despite the many metres of ascent included. The day continued on a positive note as I finally found some gas, which has been in short supply in Cape Town of late.

What a morning!

But then I got marooned in a very dark Pick n Pay when their generator ran out of diesel, and all the tills died. This is unusual. Normally, everything else dies, but their means of taking your money somehow survives. So this was a big one.

Once the power was restored (which took a good while), we all discovered that their POS (you can choose which abbreviation that is; either works) devices take fourteen minutes to reboot. Some shoppers threw their toys and abandoned their trollies mid-aisle. I decided to be courteous and respectful, allowing the anger to pass me by, not least because I needed to take some food home for dinner, and I wasn’t about to risk going round the shop again.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well. United won, and celebrated in style:

And the boy made it to Dodgeball on time.

I’m going to sleep so well tonight.

20 months later…

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Around 20 months on from mid September 2021 – whose events surely none of us could ever forget – how incredible is it that we are all still here?

Of course, we’ll likely never get over the memories of the cars parked sideways in the middle of the street, the screaming people in the grocery stores (oh God, the old guy wailing in the pickle aisle at Checkers) or the family members shooting each other.

Absolutely awful.

On the more positive side of things, it is always nice to have these sort of screenshots so that we can see who accurately predicted those horrendous times.

And who didn’t.

Done with Wrexham

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Well done Wrexham on promotion to League Two from the National League.

Promotion is great. I know.

What’s less good is the weird wall-to-wall media coverage of your promotion. Because, let’s face it, while it’s big for you – you can only beat who is put in front of you – I’m no way belittling it when I say that it’s not actually that big a deal for the rest of the world.

Stockport County and Sutton United didn’t have the national broadcaster sharing live images of their promotion parades when they achieved similar feats in recent years. But then they didn’t have a genial, Hollywood film star as their co-owner, did they? And that’s the difficult bit for Wrexham fans to accept: it’s really not about their rather mediocre team. No-one actually cares about the football. It’s all about Ryan Reynolds.

And I’m sure he’s a lovely guy, and the work he’s done at money he’s put into the club is amazing. But they’ve won the National League, not the Champions League. One wonders how far down the fawning media would be prepared to go, had he taken over an even lower league club. Would we still have cameras there for each and every game if he’d plumped for Walton and Hersham in the Isthmian League Division One South Central, for example?

Sadly, probably.

I thought that I was alone in feeling this way about Wrexham. I thought that maybe I was seeing more about them because we have recent history when we knocked them out of the FA Cup earlier this year in those rather bad tempered fourth round games. Maybe Google looked at all the Wrexham references on the Sheffield United pages that I was reading and thought I needed to see more. (I really didn’t.)

But apparently, not:

And it seems that they feel the same way that I do about all this:

There are some quotes on the link above from people who feel differently, but they’re from Wrexham fans, (one of whom even uses the word “bandwagon”), and who wouldn’t want to enjoy seeing pictures all over the press of their team celebrating?

I don’t think that English football (yes, I know they’re Welsh, but…) needs that sort of celebrity nonsense. Save it for the MLS and the Saudi Leagues. And make our football leagues all about the football rather than the non-footballing personalities in the backroom.

I do understand that this isn’t going away any time soon, although I obviously wish it would.
But if you – like me – thought that you were the only person feeling this way about the inordinate number of undeserved column inches and TV news pixels being devoted to Wrexham Ryan, well, you’re really not.