Category: economic issues

Outlay

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It seems like only the week before last that I was saying just how good the Sheffield United manager Chris Wilder is. And with Aston Villa promoted to the Premier League this afternoon via the playoffs, this graphic made it on to my twitter feed:

Now, in no way am I saying that £8.6million is not a lot of money, but everything is relative and when you see it relative to how much others have spent (and you note that Leeds and Derby didn’t even get promoted), suddenly it doesn’t seem like that much of a lot of money.

In fact, compare it with the money flying around the top leagues of Europe and it’s less than 10% of a Paul Pogba (hopefully you don’t get the 10% with the mouth or the mood swings), and just 4% of a Neymar.
And that’s all we’ve spent in the last three years.

Wilder is clearly very shrewd when it comes to the transfer market, and very good at getting the best from the players he has. That’s a great skill to have in the lower leagues, but can it translate to buying the right players (here I am assuming that he has the right money to do so) to stay up in the Premier League? Obviously, I hope so. But I’m also a realist:

Just checking now, we’re the hot favourites to be relegated next season (4/6 on), with Norwich (4/5) and Villa (11/10) close behind. Burnley, Brighton, Newcastle and Southampton are considered the most at risk of those who survived this season. Given the recent record of promoted teams, that’s no surprise, but we’ve bucked the odds before and I’m sure we’ll make every effort to do it again.

Come on you Red And White Wizzzzzzards!

Minor manifestos (1)

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Over the next week and a half, I’m going to have a wander through the manifestos of some of the smaller parties fighting the elections in search of the best election promises. I’m not promising a thorough review: I simply don’t have the time or energy for that. But I’m hopeful that I can find some good stuff in amongst all the promises that these guys will never get to break.

Inclusions/exclusions should not be viewed as approval or disapproval of any given institution or party.

Today: A quick look at some highlights from the LAND party manifesto.

Tagline: Reform and Open Up

They say: The LAND PARTY will secure victory through a new democratic LAND revolution and found a South African people’s democratic dictatorship through PEOPLE’S POWER

Some excerpts:

We will make sure that all schools have the resources they need.

Magic Money Tree™

We will reduce the cabinet to a maximum of ten worthy and dedicated ministers. We will abolish irrelevant departments like sport, small business, women and so on.

Ouch. Interestingly, a little later on in the document, there’s a whole 8-point plan under the headline “Advancing the Rights of Women”, but only once they’ve got rid of the “irrelevant” department concerned.

We will not allow prison or juvenile correctional facilities to be an option when dealing with juveniles and youth. They must rather be placed in military schools.

This sounds like the prologue to the A-Team.

LAND PARTY will order a complete strategic review of defence and security. We will asses emerging threats from all potential platforms, including cyber warfare.

Who’s going to do the donkey work on this, though?

We will build police stations out of glass. The people must SEE that the police is working and the police must be held accountable by the people they are serving.

Smashing idea.
Glass police stations, indeed. Given the lack of respect for the current ones made of bricks and mortar, I’d suggest that perspex might have a longer life span.

Look, as with any manifesto, there are probably some good ideas in there (glass police stations is not one of them). But equally, as with any other manifesto, it’s all completely pie-in-the-sky stuff. Until they get that Magic Money Tree™ orchard going, it’s laughably unachievable.

Earning curry

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Because of events earlier in the week, and because of event this evening, I needed to get some exercise in.

Let me explain.

My Medical Insurance gives me money off things like healthy food, sports equipment, gym membership, and vaguely healthy smoothies at the local vaguely healthy smoothie outlet. There are other benefits too, shopping vouchers, cheap flights (although not for 50p), car insurance; the list goes on.

All I have to do to earn these discounts, vouchers and vaguely healthy smoothies is to stay active, and all I have to do to show them that I’m staying active is to use my smartwatch to log my exercise. 10,000 steps a day gets you 100 points, as does a gym visit. A parkrun (just going and doing it, not achieving any specific time) gets you 300 and there are various steps for points depending on how long you can keep it up for (your age-related heart rate, that is).

It’s not a perfect system, but it works. People (generally) stay more active, (generally) stay healthier and – in turn – (generally) cost the medical insurance company less. Symbiotic, innit?

I’m on the top target (for mere mortals) of 900 points a week and that might seem like a breeze – I always get there – but you can only score points for one thing each day. So today, for example, where I have visited the gym (100), done a really hard workout (85% of my maximum age-related heart rate) (300), and done 10,000 steps (100), I’ll “only” score 300 points, even though I separately scored (100 + 300 + 100 =) 500.

This week wasn’t good for scoring points. Saturday was a write-off, Sunday was only very slightly better, and Tuesday’s football remained unrecorded because there was so much blood running down the outside of my arm that it masked the heart rate detector on the back of my watch.

Long story. I lived. Thanks to the Brandulance.

All this means that I have had some hard work to do over the last couple of days before tomorrow’s deadline. Again, I’ll make it, but it’s a reminder of spreading one’s exertions across the week, rather than trying to play catch-up, albeit that it really wasn’t my fault this week.

It’s curry night tonight, and I feel that I am fully deserving of plenty of the good stuff given the hard work I’ve put in over the past 72 hours.

A man in the know speaks

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There’s no doubting that SA is in a bad place at the moment regarding its power supply. Years of corruption, mismanagement and poor maintenance have left us in a deep hole. What I didn’t know was quite how deep.
Fortunately(?), expert Chris Yelland has now filled us all in.
(The hole, however, remains very much unfilled.)

1. SA is out of diesel
2. Pumped storage dams low
3. No power from Mozambique (2 lines down)
4. 5000 MW (8 generator units) down due to boiler tube leaks
5. Three units running but with boiler tube leaks
6. Other unplanned outages

and on point 3:

Both HVDC lines (1420 km, total capacity 1400 MW) from the Cahora Bassa hydro plant between Tsongo substation in Mozambique & Apollo substation in Gauteng are down due to the tropical cyclone. Damaged lines inaccessible, Extent of damage unknown. Time to restore lines unknown.

Oh dear. About as bad as it could get then.

Chris has also come up with a 6 point plan to try to help us climb out of the hole: click here for curated thread, which no-one with any authority will pay any attention to. This attitude is at least some of the reason we’re in this mess already.

Struggling with speed

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Here’s the situation Chez 6000 this morning:

This being South Africa, we don’t have the creature comforts of speedy internet at reasonable prices. Sure, could have speedy internet at extortionate prices, but then we wouldn’t have money for other essentials like food and Castle Milk Stout.

Still, the balance that we have found between internet speed and beer money should result in us getting speeds over twenty times as fast as we’re seeing this morning.

Remember my old adage:

Things go wrong. It’s how you put them right that makes the difference.

Our ISP offers help via live chat, whatsapp, email, phone and social media. But they have been conspicuous by their absence from every single one of these: crickets, rien, dololo, niks.
South African customer service on point, once again.

And thus we are still in the dark about whether this is our problem (well, I mean, clearly it is our problem, but you know what I mean), their problem or some upstream component that has gone awry. Not that it really matters which of these it is because whichever one it might be, the internet isn’t working. Again.

I’m very irritated. Again.