Category: annoying people

A day early

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I had promised my dad, who’s over for a couple of weeks visiting his grandkids and grandbeagle, some traditional South African loadshedding, but we all thought that it would kick in tomorrow, when everyone goes back to work and the demand for electricity we can’t provide goes up.

Not the case, as at 10pm yesterday evening, Eskom announced a night of Stage 2, ostensibly in order to top up their diesel and repump their water. This didn’t directly affect us, thanks to a friendly schedule, but then we woke this morning to a 24 hour extension, meaning no coffee for me, and no early morning Scalectrix for the beagle.

Understandably, we’re both pretty annoyed right now.

I’m also wondering what the immediate reason is for today’s loadshedding, given that the diesel and the water were sorted overnight. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the week. Or for the rest of the year.

 

Sky Spiders

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We really enjoyed the New Year fireworks on Struisbaai beach. There are some fun sponges out there who would like to see a complete ban (and sadly, it seems that they’re getting their way bit by bit), but such is the draw of this 2 hour free-for-all, I’m hopeful that the Struisbaai display may yet live to see in several more New Years.

I accept that there are dangers. The Suiderstrand fire seems likely to have been lit by a braai though, so are you going to try and ban them too? This annual festival is approved by the relevant Fire Services, who would much rather have all the fireworks in one place where they can monitor them and step in if needs be, than all over the Southern Tip.

“Outlaw people using distress flares!”, “Prevent another Betty’s Bay from happening!!” cry the outraged masses, conveniently forgetting that the Betty’s Bay fire  – terrible though it was – was… er… actually started by someone launching a distress flare illegally.

This is SA. The law doesn’t stop people.

And so concentrating them all together right next to a fire engine actually seems like a very good idea.

I’ll sort some photos when I have some more time and inclination, but this one summed up the evening for at least one of the kids.

On the left, an exploding rocket- and then the eight stages of its disintegration in the south east wind. From sharp, defined edges, bones and legs, through to the barely recognisable, diffuse remains on the right.

A quick scan suggests that there are a lot of (handheld, nighttime) fireworks shots on the camera, of which at least one or two are probably worth sharing. But like I said: still in holiday mode here.

Deal with it. 🙂

This is not what I signed up for

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It’s Christmas. The festive season. Holiday time.
Call it what you want, but down here in Cape Town, we also call it SUMMER.

However, the weather this SUMMER has not been very SUMMERy. Rain on and off over the last week, temperatures peaking in the low 20s, cool winds blowing in off the Atlantic and making us all miserable.

This is not what I signed up for.

I signed up for SUMMER where I could be outside in the sun. Playing in the pool, lounging on a…  on a… lounger. Not running across car parks trying to stay dry. Not wearing LONG TROUSERS. IN DECEMBER.

It’s annoying other people too. Like the staff at Pick n Pay Liquor in Constantia Village, who were feeling anything but festive this morning. Opening ten minutes late, snapping at customers who knocked on the door pointing out it was after 9 o’clock. My breakfast plans were rapidly becoming brunch.
Seriously, rarely have I seen a group of individuals give less of a toss about anything. Everything was too much trouble.
And it was grey and raining. Coincidence? Well, yes, possibly, because they might well be like that all the time.

But anyway – back to my main point, which is that SUMMER hasn’t arrived in Cape Town yet. Will it ever arrive? After all, we went through a few years when winter never turned up.

I’ll make the best of it, of course. I mean, what choice do we have? But I’d much rather be at risk of sunburn than of hypothermia.

And so I googled the weather for the next seven days. And… well… I mean… just look at the state of this:

EIGHTEEN on Christmas Day? I’m going to have to wrap my kids up in  swaddling cloths. SEVENTEEN on Boxing Day? No wonder the shepherds want to come in from the fields: it’s pissing down out there.

And don’t tell me that it would be colder in the UK. Of course it would. It’s meant to be. It’s WINTER and it’s all evocative and romantic, innit?

This is not what I signed up for and I am understandably very unhappy.

Mo’ money, mo’ corruption

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Let’s preface this with a couple of statements setting out my stall, shall we?

I’m not one of those people that believes that I shouldn’t have to pay tax. I recognise that tax is necessary in order for this country to function and for services to be delivered to me and everyone else.

That said, I’m well aware that this country would function much better, and that more services could be delivered to more people if a percentage of that tax money was not going straight into the back pockets of corrupt individuals across the various sectors of government in SA.

The problem is that the consequent shortfall in revenue is dealt with in three main ways: borrowing more money, cutting back services, and thinking up more and more ways to tax the population.

None of these are good things.

What should be happening is that corruption should be being eradicated. But that’s not happening and that’s why I was even more annoyed to hear that the next thing to be taxed is my Adobe subscription.

South Africa has imposed a tax on e-services, which includes software subscriptions.

So that’s an extra 15% on my Lightroom and Photoshop – a subscription that is already more expensive because it’s priced in USD, and the exchange rate has disintegrated to utter crap because of the way that this country is being run.

“Cancel your subscription then,” I hear you exclaim, conveniently ignoring the issues that I am trying to raise here. And hey, I could, but then I wouldn’t be able to work, and I would pay a whole lot less tax.
That wouldn’t be good for the overall fiscus, but it would be better for me.

I wouldn’t be able to eat either though. And if I died, I wouldn’t be able to pay any tax at all (once my meagre estate had been divvied up, that is), so in the medium and long term, no-one benefits.

Least of all me.

Never mind that taxing of “e-services” is a massive own goal, effectively limiting access to literally thousands of services for those least able to afford them.

Look, I can afford this, but of course, I’d rather not be paying it. It limits my income, and I will have to pass on these costs to my employers when I next bill them. And they’ll pass that on to their customers, so the ordinary guy in the street loses out in the end.

I don’t have a choice about paying though – it’s imposed by computers way before the actual subscription gets to me. I also don’t have a choice about how it gets spent – or pilfered – and that irritates the hell out of me.