Category: in the news

If you thought that today was bad…

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…with its Stage 6 loadshedding and consequent 10 (TEN) hours without power – then you’d be absolutely right. Let’s not allow ourselves to normalise this sort of crap.

But then, if you’re in my zone, you probably don’t want to look at tomorrow, where there’s another ten hours, including the top two worst loadshedding slots.

Argh.

I saw someone the other day wondering when we would all start “posing the awkward question” (their words, not mine) as to why with so little electricity flowing on a daily basis, our bills haven’t dropped at all. Oooh! Tasty stuff, invoking all sorts of conspiracy theories.

Except…

Our bill has dropped loads. I buy the same amount of electricity every month and I usually/often (not sure which is the better word here) have to top it up by the end of the month. November’s lot is still going and we’re on the 7th December! And what’s more, we’ll make it to the 10th with what we’ve still got left (and well beyond, if we stick at Stage 6 for the next few days).

Some disclaimery:

  • Yes, I’d absolutely rather have power 24/7.
  • No, you don’t get completely free pass when the power goes out, because you need to heat water up and cool fridges down when it comes back on.
  • Yes, November is a warmer month, so there’s no heating required (such as we have heating anyway) and the ambient water temperature is warmer, so the same amount of electricity might go further.

    But still, even with those provisos in place, I’m getting at least 33% more than I usually do.

    And you have to take the small wins, because the big defeats are regular, they’re heavy and they’re depressing.

    Anyway, suddenly I have loads to fit in – including some depression – before the next outage at 2pm, so please excuse me.

    This week’s posts summed up

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    Busy afternoon and evening ahead, but here’s a nice, concise round up of a couple of my posts from earlier in the week. Namely this one, and this one.

    Indeed.

    Sadly, the FA seem to have backed down on the One Love armband thing after threats by FIFA, whose corrupt clown boss “felt gay” just a couple of days ago. And that’s brought annoyance from some people in the UK, who have moved really quickly from “the armband thing is a poor show” through “England shouldn’t even be playing” to “Well football is awful and just should be banned anyway”.

    If you thought FIFA were tone deaf…*

    * you’d be right. my point is that so are these pearl clutchers.
    the damage is done. the message has already been sent.
    that it will inevitably fall on deaf ears is not England’s (or any other team’s) fault.

    Will I watch?

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    Yes, I will, as I have previously described. But I can’t say I’m very excited about it.

    I’m well aware of the human rights abuses and general nastiness of the Qatari regime, but my not switching on the TV for Morocco v Croatia isn’t going to make any difference to how that Government feels about homosexuality. And it was abundantly clear from the very start that this was just a massive, corrupt spend on reputation laundering; an attempt which I think has already backfired massively. Realistically, how many people who previously hadn’t considered Qatar as a potential destination for business or pleasure (no, not those sorts of pleasure – naughty!) are now looking at the nation in a more favourable light?

    Exactly.

    It’s all a massive f-up and the only good bit about any of it is the football, so I’ll watch that.
    However – like Musa Okwonga – it will be without my usual enthusiasm:

    After all, a World Cup is something to be celebrated: at its best it is a global event where, for all its excess, society somehow seems to move forward. Witness, for example, the beautifully-curated 2010 tournament in South Africa, which allowed the hosts to take centre stage in hearts and minds across the planet. Or the 2002 World Cup, superbly organised by Japan and South Korea, which saw Brazil win in a style that was true to football’s loftiest aesthetic ideals.

    Sadly, though, the last three World Cups – Brazil, Russia and now Qatar – have in succession managed to perform a sort of asset-stripping of the soul of this competition, tearing away much of its sheen and leaving us with its basic elements: that is to say, a well-run series of games that is available to whoever may be the highest bidder.

    But, yes. I’ll still be watching.

    Although, if I believed in spooky signs from the netherworld, there’s loadshedding right when it’s kicking off. Which could either been seen as a bit of a hint, or could be just because we have loadshedding several times a day, and one (or more) of them was always going to coincide with some of the matches.

    You decide.

    All over for the bluebird?

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    It’s the beginning of the end
    The car went up the hill and disappeared around the bend
    Ask anyone, they’ll tell you that
    It’s these times that it tends
    To start to break in half, to start to fall apart
    Hold on to your heart

    It seems that being a bit of an arse to your staff isn’t the best way to be a boss. I think that this is fairly well understood, but sometimes, people get too detached from reality to remember these sorts of things, and so they persist in their being a bit of an arse to their staff, and things break.

    It’s been a hilarious rollercoaster ride of fanciful allegations (most of which then turned out to be true), and subsequent backtrackery since the Loud Mouth Space Wanker bought Twitter, and immediately tried to change things that didn’t need changing, just to show what power he could wield.

    That’s not to say that some things didn’t need changing. Twitter used to be great, but had more recently become a cesspool of misinformation, insults, hatred and division. Pretty much a metaphor for the rest of the world, but concentrated into one small app, so that the nastiness could really be amplified.

    When Musk took it over, the only people smiling about it were the right-wing, anti-vax Trump fans. And that was a pretty good indication of where it was heading. But that was just on the surface. Beneath the crusty exterior, Elon was… well… being an arse to his staff. But apparently, there’s only so much boss arsery that staff are willing to take:

    Who knew? Well, even I did: just check out the first sentence of this post.

    So, is this the end for Twitter? To be honest, I’d been using it less and less over the past few years. But I’ll still miss it.
    Maybe it’s for the best, given the direction it was clearly about to take. Of course, Musk doesn’t think so, but the replies to his tweet are exactly the reason that I’ll miss Twitter so much when it chooses (or I choose) to give up completely.

    There are still many, many interesting, erudite, important, humorous and entertaining people on the app, and still plenty of useful information, from valid local and international sources, and it’s sad that those informal bonds and communities seem likely to die the death now.

    Everyone is bailing (see Titanic and Old Testament references above) for other places, and yes, I am there (see the link at the top of the sidebar), but I’m really not sure I’m ready to start over with the 13+ years of building things up again. Maybe.

    Still, if all else fails, this place will always* be here.

    * T&Cs apply

    That a-ha Article

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    First of all, please let me say a big thank you to all the 6000 miles… readers who took the time to send me that BBC article about a-ha’s role in popularising electric vehicles in Norway. It’s this sort of reader engagement that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, and I really am very grateful.

    I’m also clearly sending out some very specific vibes on here though, because I received links to this article no fewer than eleven times, on three different platforms, and from four different continents, all within a couple of hours of it being published.

    Amazing.

    Had I heard this story before? Well, yes, but only recently: in this thread on twitter early last year.

    And yes, seemingly because of the efforts of Morten et al., it seems that Norway – who made all their money from invading Scotland in the 9th Century dirty oil – are now well ahead of the curve when it comes to electric cars:

    In the first half of 2022, 78% of new car sales in Norway were pure electric.
    The country intends to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2025 which is five years ahead of the UK.

    and:

    Add to that the fact that almost 99% of Norway’s electricity comes from renewable sources (and that climate change will make it wetter and windier there, ironically meaning more opportunities for hydroelectric and wind power), and it’s actually a very green picture for a nation which exported 114million cubic metres of oil in 2022 (and will increase that by 15% next year).

    Merely moving climate change elsewhere won’t help anyone. Except apparently, as noted above, Norway.

    But I suppose that I’m being a little cynical. This isn’t really greenwashing: Norway is actually giving other nations a great example to follow when it comes to electric vehicles.

    And it was all thanks to a-ha.

    [Did you manage to get the “The Sun Always Shines On EV” pun in? – Ed.]