The BBC Sounds app has closed for me and the other people living outside the UK. I’m sure that you could slip in the back door via a VPN, but the BBC are (allegedly) rather good at spotting those things and not allowing them to work.
The signs of trouble were there this morning when I was in the gym, as the app glitched onto Radio 4 Xtra, and gave me a bit of Steptoe & Son while also still playing Hit by The Sugarcubes on 6Music:
Sample lyrics:
I’ve been hit, with your charm. How could you do this to me? You dirty old man!
But mixed messages aside, just a couple of hours later, it really was gone:
Ironically, when I clicked through onto that new app, I found that Radio 4 was about to broadcast this show: 6. The Only Friend That Mattered.
Ouch. Way to rub it in, guys…
But don’t worry. Hakuna matata. Nem panikus.
There’s still a perfectly legal, perfectly straightforward route to listen live to your favourite BBC radio stations – including 6Music, wherever you are in the world: here are the details.
Let me save you some time: here’s the direct link for the 6Music feed through your internet browser. And it’s working for me. Three dots in the top corner, save as shortcut to your home screen, Bob are your uncle. The logo even looks the same.
Sadly, there is no obvious route to listening on catch-up or for downloading shows for those of us outside the UK. Aside from trial and error with a VPN. And (allegedly again), that can often be rather hit and miss and somewhat tedious. Or so I’m told, etc etc.
I’ve also just tested whether I can still get 6Music on my smart speaker (IYKYK) and yes, even right down here in the far bottom corner of Africa, that’s still working fine. Whether that will continue (I actually don’t know from where it plays it, it just plays it), I just don’t know. Time will tell.
This hasn’t been a clean break: some of the links from the new feed pages don’t work, although the actual feeds are fine. If the site thinks you’re in the UK, it tries to take you to the app, but then the app doesn’t work. There are clearly some issues that need to be ironed out, and whether that will affect our ability to continue to listen from overseas remains to be seen.
Maybe both, depending upon your list of preferences for your luxury holiday? Weirdo.
But I get it – people’s opinions differ.
They are an essential for the tourist economies of the ports that they visit, including here in Cape Town:
The cruise industry contributed R1.32 billion to the Western Cape economy during the 2023-24 season, up from R1.2 billion the previous season, despite a slight drop in ship calls.
Cruise passengers, vessels, and crew generated R1.5 billion in expenditure, supporting 1,965 jobs across sectors like retail, hospitality, and tourism services.
With the new cruise season underway, Cape Town and the Western Cape is set to enhance its role in the global cruise market, driving continued economic growth and job creation in the region.
In this economy, you simply can’t ignore the positive effect of that much money and that many jobs. But there is also no doubting that cruise ships aren’t particularly nice if you’re near them, not on them.
Visually, for a start. Ironically ruining the vistas of the places that they are visiting so that passengers can see the vistas:
The poet and filmmaker Odveig Klyve has lived for several decades in Stavanger, on the west coast of Norway. The city encircles its harbour, on hillsides that slope down to the seafront. It has been a site of international commerce for hundreds of years, Klyve said, first for herring fishing, then international shipping, then the oil industry. “It has always been a city linked to the sea and what the sea can give,” she told me recently. In the short film “View,” Klyve also shows what a maritime enterprise can take away.
It’s 4 minutes of simple shots and sounds. Well worth your time:
It really is like someone building a 15 storey block of apartments right on your heritage doorstep. No planning permission required. Horrific.
But it’s not just the views which are compromised. PLENTY of research shows us that cruise ships are one of the worst forms of transport for creating air pollution. And when they end up on your doorstep – as they do in Stavanger and Cape Town – they are particularly bad for the local air quality.
Air quality measurements taken last week when cruise ships – such as NCL’s Norwegian Star – visited Cobh, in Ireland’s Cork Harbour, show air pollution levels up to more than 250 times higher than safe levels recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Air pollution caused by cruise ships during the hotelling phase in ports represents a significant source of emissions. The hotelling phase refers to the period during which ships remain docked and keep their main and auxiliary engines running to supply power to onboard systems. Numerous studies have shown that this practice significantly contributes to emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur oxides (SOx), particulate matter (PM), and carbon dioxide (CO2), degrading air quality in port areas and surrounding urban zones.
The emissions from cruise ships were increasing the annual concentration of NO2 in the port area by up to 31% at ground level, and 86% 50 m above the ground in comparison to the urban background level. The short-term impact of cruise ships was more pronounced with local exceedances of the hourly European limit value for NO2. Increasing cruise ship activity in Copenhagen port leads to air quality deterioration on short time scales with implications for human health.
Toxic air pollutants from cruise ships around ports are higher than pre-pandemic levels, leaving Europe’s port cities choking in air pollution, a new Transport & Environment study shows. Despite the introduction of the UN shipping body’s sulphur cap in 2020, last year Europe’s 218 cruise ships emitted as much sulphur oxides (SOx) as 1 billion cars. However, at the port of Venice air pollutants from cruise ships fell 80% following the city’s ban on large cruise ships.
These chemicals aren’t invisible pollutants, but they aren’t quite as obvious as some ships’ toxic fumes, and so they will often be overlooked, except for by scientists and by those with health issues which are acutely exacerbated by nasty pollutants.
I’ve lived in a couple of big tourist cities in my life, and I’ve watched as the tourists’ levels of consideration for the places they visit have dropped over the years, as a general lack of respect has taken over, and society has rapidly devolved into the cesspool that we see every day online: full of narcissists.
More and more, the cities and sites that they come to are seen as places that are privileged to have them visit, rather than a privilege to visit. And while I’m not specifically blaming the actual tourists for this cruise ship pollution, if they don’t really care about the way that they behave while they’re here, they’re certainly not going to give a toss about the huge amounts of sulphur dioxide that is being chucked out by their transport.
After all, as long as it’s perfect for their visit, that’s all that matters. No matter how they got here: plane, ship or… actually, those are pretty much the only two options for Cape Town.
So yes, we need the cruise liners and their visitors and their money. Just at what cost?
Ag, let’s get the rubbish out of the way. We’re back home (that’s ok, not rubbish), but we’ve brought some crappy virus with us. To be expected perhaps, sharing a car for several (or more) hours with several (or more) people. It’s nothing serious, just one of those things that makes you feel crap for a while and then goes away. But yes, it does make you feel crap for a while, and yes, that’s rubbish.
The rest of the trip was pretty cool, though. I played a lot of taxi and let the kids (ha!) get on with their own thing. And I think that suited all of us quite well. But we still did spend some time together, enjoying the fresh air and the wildlife that the Agulhas National Park has to offer. Yesterday was an odd weather day with occasional gorgeous light, and a pretty sunset:
We headed out to Brandfontein, on a mini self-drive Cape safari. And we saw quite a bit for a winter outing… From the classic Ostrich (after which Struisbaai was allegedly named) in that weird late morning light:
A bit of Grey Rhebok action later on:
Not forgetting a springing bok, but not a Springbok (although we did see some of them too) – this is a Steenbok:
And one should never miss a shot of an African Black Oystercatcher passing by over a huge Atlantic swell:
Thankfully, these guys are fairly ubiquitous along the Agulhas coast, but there are three times fewer of them left in the wild than the White Rhino, (and about seven times fewer than the Blue Crane). It’s strange that we don’t hear about the plight of our birds as much as our mammals. To me, at least.
There will be a battle going on in my upper respiratory tract tonight. Tomorrow morning, I expect to be either 100% or completely broken. Leaning towards to latter, hoping for the former.
It might be a bit of an old-fashioned attitude, but if you are going to have national symbols, then surely how you choose to look after them is something of a measure of just how much pride you have in your country?
The King Protea is our national flower: it’s bold, it’s admired and revered. The Springbok is our national animal: known for its agility and speed, synonymous with SA’s rugby wins. The Blue Crane is our national bird: we’re killing it off.
Blue Crane numbers have decreased by between 27% and 49% in the last fifteen years: the patchy data available being indicative of just how little we actually care about what’s happening to these beautiful birds. And perhaps the more worrying aspects of this rapid decline are: a) the fact that it is likely multi-factorial – with some of those factors being beyond our immediate control, and b) the fact that over 60% of the remaining Blue Crane population is found in one single, small area – other Overberg wheat belt. Lose that population and really is game over.
As a result, the Blue Crane’s official conservation status has recently been officially changed to reflect this deterioration from Near Threatened to Vulnerable in the newly published Regional Red Data Book of Birds 2025. Vulnerable reflects a higher category of threat – just below Endangered and Critically Endangered status on the Red List. This means that without significant conservation efforts, these species are likely to become endangered in the near future and face a high risk of extinction in the wild in the medium term.
As mentioned above, there are many reasons suggested as to why we are still losing Blue Cranes in this way. Aside from the problems attributed to climate change – a lack of rainfall (I know, I know) is a key driver for nest failure, and things are only going to get hotter and drier in the Western Cape – farming practices and power lines are also terrible news for Blue Crane numbers.
And while some mitigation has happened over the last decade, we’ve also chosen to build wind farms throughout the Overberg, with seemingly no thought for the Blue Crane. The turbines themselves are known for being dangerous to birds, and the additional transmission lines right through the most sensitive habitat areas of our national bird obviously increase the risks.
Collision with power lines remains the main threat to Blue Cranes, and ongoing mitigation is necessary, especially as new power lines are added to connect renewable energy to the grid. This is particularly a threat in the Renewable Energy Development Zones of the Overberg and Karoo.
Thankfully, there is now precedent for blocking construction of wind farms, but with South Africa’s ongoing issues with a stable electricity supply (and the disgusting pollution up North), there are many proponents for the expansion of wind power, as well. And the best places for those farms as far as wind goes, is right through Blue Crane habitats.
The fact that the Blue Cranes nest in wheat fields means that they are susceptible to danger from agricultural practices, such as mechanical implements (ploughing, harvesting), and the use of chemicals – targeted against rodents and other pests like geese.
Research has shown that Blue Crane breeding success in the Overberg has halved since the last published study 30 years ago. Pairs of Cranes now raise on average just 0.55 fledglings. You don’t need a maths qualification to see that those numbers will never sustain the population – especially with additional pressures such as power lines and the like.
There is some good news, some glimmers of hope. Some farmers are displaying some of that apparently missing national pride, and acting as custodians for the Blue Cranes. Special Management Areas like the Nuwejaars Wetlands are connecting like-minded agricultural properties together, establishing safe areas and natural habitat for our wildlife, while still enabling famers to make a decent living.
But these sort of schemes are still a drop in the ocean, both in terms of area, and in terms of reducing the overall, numerous and external threats to the Blue Crane. And unless something – and no, I really don’t know what – is done to prevent this ongoing, dramatic crash in numbers, then in the very near future, we – like Mauritius – are going to have to choose a new national bird.
OK. Not always, but in the case of the current heatwave across the UK, big steps have been made – by Science – in working out from where the problem originated.
Honestly, who knew?
No such problems here. We haven’t seen the massive star for quite a while (although tomorrow promises to be quite nice, if a little chilly).
We’ll just have to keep going with the warming effects of fermented juice of local vineyard crops – as discovered by scientists.
