Category: in the news

Sunshine, Moonlight, Good Times, Cape Town Taxi Strike

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As I mentioned yesterday, the Cape Town taxi strike has been – and continues to be – hugely disruptive to the whole city. At the supermarket this morning, staff numbers were low, service was even slower than usual, and there were several (or more) empty shelves.

These are genuine effects of the taxi strike, and that’s annoying for all concerned: for the people who want to work, for the people who want to shop. But for every incident of someone being honestly inconvenienced by the recent (ongoing) events, there’s another of someone using them to excuse something otherwise indefensible.

“I think I might need an extension on my maths homework because of the taxi strike.”
“The maths homework I set last week, before the strike began?”
“Yes, but there was always the danger that it might begin, and that has actually proved to be the case.”

“Sorry, I can’t do that spreadsheet for you this week. The taxi strike, you know?”
“But don’t you work from home? In London?”
“Yes, it’s had surprisingly wide-ranging effects.”

“We’re going to sell Sander Berge.”
“What? Our rangy, Rolls-Royce Norwegian midfielder? But why on earth would you want to do that?”
“Wish we didn’t have to, but it’s collateral damage from the Cape Town taxi strike. Very unfortunate.”

The taxi strike is due to end on Thursday morning, when the guys who have been shooting guns at people, stoning cars and burning out buses choose to risk the lives of civilians in a different way: by driving minibus taxis again.

But the effects and pseudo-effects will run on for a good while yet.

Strike One

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Of course, the intended effect of a strike or any other industrial action is to demonstrate the value of the service that industry provides, simply by withdrawing it. And there’s no question that the taxi industry in Cape Town (and South Africa) provides a very valuable service.

However, if you then have to resort to intimidation and violence to prevent people from circumnavigating your withdrawn service, then that does rather undermine the message that your service is irreplaceable.

And not allowing individuals to make their own decisions about how they choose to get around has implications far beyond the apparently spurious reasons for calling the strike in the first place.

But it’s all become a power game now, and the taxi bosses don’t care that hundreds of thousands of breadwinners aren’t able to get to work, get paid and put food on the family table. They’re happy to overlook the fact that kids can’t get to school with exams just a couple of months away. They have no qualms about healthcare facilities for the most vulnerable being closed. And they might pass lip service about “peaceful protest” in open letters, but the fact is that they are more than happy to sit on their thrones while their underlings fight each other and everyone else.

If it’s a battle for hearts and minds – which so many of these disputes seems to come down to in the end – you’d think that maybe they’ve lost this one. But with the alternatives too sparse and too risky to use, it’s not like it won’t just be business as usual anyway when the strike ends (allegedly) on Thursday.

Goodbye internet

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Another Daily Mail exclusive (remember this?).

December 5th 2000:

Yep. The problem with writing bullshit is that when the bullshit that you’ve written turns out to be bullshit, people can go back and read it, and see just how wrong you were.

And lets face it, this one was spectacularly incorrect.

Using the… er… internet, I discovered that James Chapman now heads up a PR Agency (motto: “Build. Protect. Repair.”) in Westminster (of course he does), alongside James Henderson, who used to be CEO of Bell Pottinger until 2017.

As you will read:

Until September 2017, James was the CEO of Bell Pottinger, where he developed the agency into an integrated multi discipline communications business offering financial, corporate, litigation, crisis, regulatory, political, brand, digital, and personal reputation advice.

In 2016, Bell Pottinger had revenues of £35 million, 8 offices globally and over 250 employees.

And in September 2017, Bell Pottinger went bankrupt.
This after years of dodgy dealings, aiding state capture activities and stoking racial hatred in South Africa.

Surprisingly, his fawning blurb seems to have omitted this last bit. Weird.

Do Solar Panels work in hot weather?

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It pains me to have to post stuff like this.
It’s just simple common sense. Of course they do.

And yet…

This is quite clearly BS, and if you need to be told that it’s BS, you probably also need to seek professional help.

Yes, the UK switched on a coal-fired power station a few weeks ago.
No, it wasn’t because solar panels stopped working.

…liberal-minded news outlets like The Guardian blamed maintenance at nuclear plants in Scotland and inter-tie maintenance on an undersea cable from Norway.

And much as I’m no fan of the Guardian, oddly on this occasion, it turns out that they were far more likely to be correct than those making the assertion that it got too warm for PV panels to work properly.

They’re built to function from -40C to +85C. Performance does fall when temperatures go above 25C, but only by 0.34 per cent for every additional degree. That’s pretty marginal stuff, according to Solar Energy UK. Even at close to boiling point, power output would only be around 20 per cent lower it says, other factors being equal.

“It’s not actually a big deal. High temperatures only marginally affect the overall output of solar power – it’s a secondary effect” says the UK’s leading technical expert on the technology, Alastair Buckley, Professor of Organic Electronics at the University of Sheffield.

Yet another example of someone who read something on Facebook believing that they now hold the same expertise as someone who has been studying the subject for their whole academic career.

It got up to a whole 30C, which is hot for the UK in June, but isn’t really hot when you compare it to the rest of the world. If this temperature had really wiped out the UK’s solar energy production, then basically, no country within a band 50 degrees north to 50 degrees south would be able to utilise solar panels.

Add in the countries north and south of there that can’t use solar because there isn’t enough sun (a genuine concern in placed like Svalbard) and suddenly that’s basically the whole world.

So why would any columnist try to paint this clearly incorrect picture, seemingly in a bid to discredit renewable energy?

Well, I guess it depends on the columnist:

Shaun Polczer is the Business Reporter for the Western Standard, based in Calgary. Formerly, a business reporter for the Calgary Herald, he has also held senior positions at the Daily Oil Bulletin, and the London Petroleum Economist.

Oh.

Sadly, the comments beneath his piece (I’m not giving him any extra traffic by linking to it), tend to suggest that the ability to think rationally and critically might also have been knocked out by the heatwave.

Next week: Why do ice skates not work in the cold?

Sheffield Tribune

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I was nodded in this direction on the advice of The Guru. And he’s done a good job (again).

It’s The Sheffield Tribune.

A disproportionate amount of my UK readers are from in or around the Sheffield area, so maybe this is of more use that you think.

Welcome to The Tribune – Sheffield’s new independent quality newspaper, delivered via email.

We publish thoughtful, in-depth stories about the region’s politics, business, culture, history and local people. Plus our free Monday Briefings keep you informed about all the Sheffield stories you need to know, plus lots of great recommendations for things to do and read.

The Tribune is a brand new venture, started in 2021 by local journalist Dan Hayes to provide a totally different kind of local journalism — one that doesn’t chase cheap clicks and doesn’t cover stories in horrible ads. Instead of pumping out dozens of stories every day, we pick a handful of topics each week and look into them properly, giving you the insight and context you need to understand what is really going on.

Yes. To compare the reading experience with the ad-filled pages of the Sheffield Star:

there’s a story in there somewhere…

…and it is chalk and cheese. And it does seem that there are some high quality stories there too. Interesting, quirky, informative stories.

Like Southern people discovering how great The North is. Who knew?

We all knew.

Anyway, if you’re interested, give it a go on that link above. There are many different paid subscriptions available, but maybe give the free stuff a go first and see how you get on.