Apologies for late posting, but herewith latest Weekend Argus column, as submitted. -- AD
HERE at the Mahogany Ridge we tend to punch above our weight when it comes to making sense of the world around us. A couple of jars, say, and there we all are, experts on current affairs and well-seasoned, if not entirely credible commentators on matters of state.
Even so, it did take us a while to finally grasp the logic behind the decision by the Treasury to turn down the popular proposal for a zero-rating of valued added tax on books.
This week, the chief director for tax policy, Cecil Morden, stated that a zero-rating would only benefit book suppliers and middle and upper classes -- and not the poor.
As Morden blithely told the standing committee on finance in Parliament: “Many analysts have demonstrated that in absolute monetary terms the middle and higher income earners benefit more from zero-rating than the poor. One would hope most of the benefit will be passed on to the consumer. In reality it won’t happen.”
This is really muddled thinking. One on hand, it will benefit only the middle and upper classes, and on the other, “in reality” it won’t? Come now, which is it? It can’t be both, can it?
Confusing as it may be, this is not a new line from government. When he was finance minister, Trevor Manuel, was forever saying much the same thing, and often with some churlishness. Appeals to do away with duties on books were usually swept aside with snide braying about those who live in “the leafy suburbs” -- this being the Manuel take on the old adage that nothing succeeds like address.
I am not aware if people like Manuel and Morden actually buy books, but I happen to do so, and on a regular basis. In fact, I bought two on Thursday evening. Now, and unless I’m getting this hopelessly wrong, I rather suspect that I would have paid less for these books if they were exempt from VAT.
Perhaps these analysts that Morden spoke of could now explain why being charged less for books would not be of some benefit to me, the consumer.
In the meantime, here at the Ridge, we believe we have worked out why the poor won’t benefit from zero-rated books. It’s because they don’t buy books. They can’t afford them. They have no money. That’s why they’re poor.
Okay, that’s one reason. There are others -- chief among them being that most South Africans are aliterate. We can read, but we see no point in doing so. Who knows why -- maybe it was apartheid, maybe it came afterwards -- but we are not a nation that places great importance on a culture of reading, of books and of intelligence. This, of course, is of enormous advantage to government. A doofus electorate is one that invariably never fails the ruling party. And, call me a conspiracy theorist, but given the woeful condition of our education system, I suspect that the authorities are actively engaged in preserving the status quo.
That said, it should be noted that, thankfully, we are at least not complete morons. We know, for example, that no good can come from plans by petrochemical giants Royal Dutch Shell, Bundu Oil and Falcon Oil to explore the Karoo for shale gas.
And here I think we cannot protest too loudly about the controversial hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, technique that will be used in that exploration should Mineral Resources minister Susan Shabangu give these companies the go-ahead.
Simply put, fracking first tears apart the earth -- and then poisons it. Think of it as countrycide. Shell’s application alone covers some 90 000 square kilometres. That’s nearly half the Karoo, Bundu and Falcon’s applications cover another 110 000 square kilometres. That’s about the other half.
That’s a lot of territory to frack up -- and make no mistake, if fracking’s miserable record in the United States is anything to go by, fracked up is putting it mildly.
Given the environmental devastation wrought by the search for fossil fuels, it still astounds me why we don’t just opt for nuclear energy instead. It seems far more safer.
I know that’s not quite fashionable, given the hysteria surrounding the Fukushima nuclear accident, but some common sense is needed here.
What happened in Japan was catastrophic. The country faces an epic struggle as it copes with the aftermath of a record earthquake and a massive tsunami. Whole towns have vanished. More than 13000 people are feared dead.
But, judging by some news reports, the gravest threat the country faced was a reactor meltdown which, in fact, has not yet happened.
And because of this we question the safety of nuclear power everywhere? Silly us. We should read more.
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
A Famous Grouse: March 19
Latest Weekend Argus column. As submitted for publication. -- AD
IT was with no small surprise here at the Mahogany Ridge that we noted that the UN Security Council had finally voted to authorise a no-fly zone over Libya and approved a resolution permitting “all necessary measures” to protect civilians from Muammar Gaddafi’s soldiers.
“All necessary measures”, by the way, is bureaucratese for “brute arse-whipping military action” -- something the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, hinted at when he told a congressional hearing in Washington: “Let’s just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defences.”
For those beleaguered rebels in Benghazi, digging in to prepare themselves for Bother Leader Daffy’s much-vaunted “moment of truth”, the security council’s vote was all very in-the-nick-of-time stuff, and there has been much in the way of celebrating in the streets of the eastern Libyan port as a result.
But nowhere, I’d imagine, was the relief more immensely tangible than at Nkandla and, indeed, in the the corridors of Luthuli House.
The no-fly zone ruling means that next week’s high-level African Union mission impossible to Tripoli to somehow sweet-talk Daffy into stop laying waste to those who want to see an end to his rule will, alas and sorry for that, now have to be called off.
Quite how the members of that mission -- which included President Jacob Zuma and his counterparts from Mauritania, Mali, Congo and Uganda -- ever supposed they’d be able to convince an utter nutter like Daffy to do the right thing is perhaps a little beyond our ken.
Naturally, being the top chops on their own patches of turf they are a little dysfunctional themselves, and perhaps one characteristic of their own base urges to power is the delusion they are capable of miracle work.
Here at the Ridge we thought it far more likely that Zuma and his fellow presidents would somehow wind up as Daffy’s hostages.
You could imagine them all held against their will, far from their families and many loved ones, and the unbearable torture they’d have to endure, forced to recline on big cushions in a luxurious tent somewhere in the perfumed desert night with sloe-eyed beauties popping dates into their mouths as they watch an endless stream of Daffy’s henchbabes performing the dance of the seven veils.
But we digress.
There is a tidy symmetry to the prospect of the Libyan air force being destroyed, or rendered incapable of being used against the rebels in Benghazi.
This, after all, is the year in which we mark the 100th anniversary of the world’s first aerial bombardment of a civilian population -- an atrocity that coincidentally took place in Libya, which was then part of the Ottaman empire.
Italy, with imperial ambitions of its own, had invaded the country in October 1911 and, retaliating to local resistance, an aircraft from its fledgling air force was dispatched to drop bombs on Arab tribesmen at oases outside Tripoli shortly afterwards, thus opening a whole new dimension to modern warfare.
Which brings me, conveniently, to another atrocity -- this time closer to home. Exactly what is this drivel we’re hearing that the disasters from the massive earthquake and the subsequent tsunamis in Japan are all part of some karmic come-uppance -- because of the way they fish?
As I was told, one evening at the Ridge, “It’s the revenge of the tuna and the whales and the parrot fish.”
It’s of course nothing of the sort. But why do some of us believe that is the case? Are we that screwed up, that insensitive to the suffering of others?
There’s a fluffy sentimentality out there, and there are people, usually those who eat cheeseburgers and still believe in the magic of Disney, who can comfortably rank certain species -- dolphins, for example -- as being more important than others, like humans. What do these people feel for the rights of the tapeworm, I wonder?
On a related, and perhaps more serious matter, events at Japan’s Fukushima power station have reawakened the fear over nuclear energy, a fear which can be traced all the way back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Unsurprisingly, Eskom officials have had to reassure nervous parliamentarians that our Koeberg plant has been designed to withstand both earthquakes and tsunamis.
Maybe. But here’s something to ponder. Imagine the worst-case scenario at Fukushima. There’s a complete meltdown with adverse weather conditions and wind blowing radiation over Japan’s most populated areas. Is there a problem? This is what the UK’s chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, told the British embassy in Tokyo: “The answer is unequivocally no.”
Does he know something we don’t?
IT was with no small surprise here at the Mahogany Ridge that we noted that the UN Security Council had finally voted to authorise a no-fly zone over Libya and approved a resolution permitting “all necessary measures” to protect civilians from Muammar Gaddafi’s soldiers.
“All necessary measures”, by the way, is bureaucratese for “brute arse-whipping military action” -- something the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, hinted at when he told a congressional hearing in Washington: “Let’s just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defences.”
For those beleaguered rebels in Benghazi, digging in to prepare themselves for Bother Leader Daffy’s much-vaunted “moment of truth”, the security council’s vote was all very in-the-nick-of-time stuff, and there has been much in the way of celebrating in the streets of the eastern Libyan port as a result.
But nowhere, I’d imagine, was the relief more immensely tangible than at Nkandla and, indeed, in the the corridors of Luthuli House.
The no-fly zone ruling means that next week’s high-level African Union mission impossible to Tripoli to somehow sweet-talk Daffy into stop laying waste to those who want to see an end to his rule will, alas and sorry for that, now have to be called off.
Quite how the members of that mission -- which included President Jacob Zuma and his counterparts from Mauritania, Mali, Congo and Uganda -- ever supposed they’d be able to convince an utter nutter like Daffy to do the right thing is perhaps a little beyond our ken.
Naturally, being the top chops on their own patches of turf they are a little dysfunctional themselves, and perhaps one characteristic of their own base urges to power is the delusion they are capable of miracle work.
Here at the Ridge we thought it far more likely that Zuma and his fellow presidents would somehow wind up as Daffy’s hostages.
You could imagine them all held against their will, far from their families and many loved ones, and the unbearable torture they’d have to endure, forced to recline on big cushions in a luxurious tent somewhere in the perfumed desert night with sloe-eyed beauties popping dates into their mouths as they watch an endless stream of Daffy’s henchbabes performing the dance of the seven veils.
But we digress.
There is a tidy symmetry to the prospect of the Libyan air force being destroyed, or rendered incapable of being used against the rebels in Benghazi.
This, after all, is the year in which we mark the 100th anniversary of the world’s first aerial bombardment of a civilian population -- an atrocity that coincidentally took place in Libya, which was then part of the Ottaman empire.
Italy, with imperial ambitions of its own, had invaded the country in October 1911 and, retaliating to local resistance, an aircraft from its fledgling air force was dispatched to drop bombs on Arab tribesmen at oases outside Tripoli shortly afterwards, thus opening a whole new dimension to modern warfare.
Which brings me, conveniently, to another atrocity -- this time closer to home. Exactly what is this drivel we’re hearing that the disasters from the massive earthquake and the subsequent tsunamis in Japan are all part of some karmic come-uppance -- because of the way they fish?
As I was told, one evening at the Ridge, “It’s the revenge of the tuna and the whales and the parrot fish.”
It’s of course nothing of the sort. But why do some of us believe that is the case? Are we that screwed up, that insensitive to the suffering of others?
There’s a fluffy sentimentality out there, and there are people, usually those who eat cheeseburgers and still believe in the magic of Disney, who can comfortably rank certain species -- dolphins, for example -- as being more important than others, like humans. What do these people feel for the rights of the tapeworm, I wonder?
On a related, and perhaps more serious matter, events at Japan’s Fukushima power station have reawakened the fear over nuclear energy, a fear which can be traced all the way back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Unsurprisingly, Eskom officials have had to reassure nervous parliamentarians that our Koeberg plant has been designed to withstand both earthquakes and tsunamis.
Maybe. But here’s something to ponder. Imagine the worst-case scenario at Fukushima. There’s a complete meltdown with adverse weather conditions and wind blowing radiation over Japan’s most populated areas. Is there a problem? This is what the UK’s chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, told the British embassy in Tokyo: “The answer is unequivocally no.”
Does he know something we don’t?
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