Repair (Heal) Your World

South Africans: Please vote tomorrow. If you don't vote, you have no say in this country. You cannot complain. You voted for the winner! If 10 people vote and 4 people vote for party A and 3 people vote for party B, then party A wins with 57% of the vote! But not 57% of the possible voters. If 2 people who hadn't voted had voted for party B, party B would have won with 55% of the vote. Please vote on the 7th May 2014. It is your duty as a voter to not be apathetic on this particular day and to CHOOSE. None of the parties is perfect. They all have good points and bad points. Choose the one that you think will help to make South Africa more democratic, and less lopsided. Lopsided ships sink.

David Lipschitz Discussing Energy http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSGT47wNRf_MDcplBNHLZE7N3L-rMxyMl

Actually it's not true. But see  http://www.wired.com/business/2014/03/car-dealers-fear-teslas-plan-end-oil-changes-forever What's the difference?

No electricity for several hours or longer could lead to no water (water is pumped using electricity) and no petrol and diesel (petrol and diesel are pumped using electricity and are made using electricity). This will lead to hunger. Then violence. Isn't it about time that people took responsibility for their own electricity, water, food, sewerage provision, just like our grandparents used to do? My grandmother lived in Bantry Bay when it wasn't so expensive as today. She collected rain water. She had a septic tank and French drain for sewerage. She had hardly any waste because nappies and all that kind of stuff was recycled. And she had hardly any plugs in the house. Things got done. Cheaply. And she had time for holidays and all that kind of thing. Then along came the government and said they could do all these things for her cheaper. And they did for about 40 years, and then once they had us all by the short and curlies, the government became a business, the biggest of t...

Yesterday an 8 year old domestic servant's child died in a friend of a friend's pool. She couldn't swim. Only the domestic servant and her child were in the house. Who is responsible for this accident? The pool? The child? The mother? The owners of the house? The Government? Legislation? Who? As far as we know, the domestic worker is blaming the home owner, but even if the pool had a fence, the child would have been tall enough to open the special hook on the gate. We have a swimming pool. Our pool is surrounded by walls. When we have guests we ensure that someone is watching the pool at all times. Or we keep the house gates locked and we keep everyone inside. As it is our house gates are locked most of the time, so no one can get to our pool unless they climb over a wall. We don't have a net. And even if we did, the child could get tangled in it and still drown, whilst the parent fumbles around trying to untangle the kid from the net. So much easier to just dive ...

South Africa has a number of problems, which are starting to flood and overwhelm the tax payer. President Zuma, in his state of the nation address proudly said that there are 15 million employed people and 16 million people getting grants. Some people say a family needs R30,000 per month just to survive. Perhaps because 70% of our taxes, ie rates, taxes, electricity, water, transport, etc, prices are going to grants, and funding such as free electricity, free rates, free transport, free housing, etc. Under this regime, people get a free house and then say its to small!! If only jobs could be created, South Africans would be so much better off and we would all feel much better off. But how to stop this flood? 1) Eskom can only supply about 30% of South Africa's current electricity demand. So many companies have to move elsewhere to get electricity. Hence the reason why our top 40 companies are doing so well, but the SA economy is doing so badly. Almost all the top 40 are slowly mo...

We put money away for a rainy day. We have insurance to cover us if something gets stolen or if our house burns down or if our property is damaged. We have pension plans. So from these things that we do, we can see that we think about the future and we prepare for it. However, we are really only between 2 and 4 days away from catastrophe at any time! So why are we planning for events in perhaps 30 years time, but not being prepared for events tomorrow? So what can possibly go wrong in the next few days which should concern us? Our electricity supply is becoming more and more precarious. Eskom should be able to supply 42 GW of electricity but on a regular basis it can only supply only around 30 GW. The grid infrastructure is overloaded which puts a large burden on transformers which are reaching end of life in half of their usual life, ie 12 years life instead of 25 years life. Our grid itself is behind with maintenance and many of our power stations are alr...