This pdf suggests that our, I’m writing from England in the United Kingdom of the British Isles, aid package to India is decreasing by quite a lot. In the year 2018 they are given £98 million (Guardian) and this year are due to get £46million.
After their government (Modi, I believe) has spent so much money building a statue when many in his country are without the essentials in life it leaves a sour taste in one’s mouth. You either need the money or you don’t to be frank.
Building statues twice the size of the Statue of Liberty, in a place where people would not generally see them, smacks of someone who does not know how to budget. So, all governments waste something but this guy is a completely different scale. As you can see.
This piece is not about knocking India. Like I say Indians are beautiful. They are suffering from terribly high death toll from covid19 and my heart breaks for how the mismanagement of the basics in their country will have led to the extra deaths. Plus we all saw on social media how the police were enforcing the most severe lockdown seen on the globe…
The main reason for the statue was and is UNITY. Now that the monster is built we should at least talk about it. For me, it is hardly a good looking statue but that could be because I’m not Indian. I’d love to know what others think, especially Indian’s if there are any out there who read this and speak English please drop me a comment or message me privately.
The thing about corruption is that everyone and anyone could be capable.
Those at the highest level ought to scrutinized as they have access to grants and funding. This story goes beyond South Africa with the involvement of the Gupta brothers with their vast international alliances and properties in Britain, United Arab Emerits, Dubai, India and America.
Personally, the Gupta Brothers namely Ajay, Atul, Rajesh and their patronage for rewards in political policy does need further scrutiny. Not just for the South African tax payers but there is a possibility the fraud could be connected to other countries across the world. Atul Gupta alone is reportedly worth $800 million.
Politically motivated killings are on the increase in South Africa, opposition candidates have their lives threatened when they try to stand against corruption.
This from Wiki.
In 2017 it was discovered that BritishPR companyBell Pottinger, acting on behalf of Gupta-owned Oakbay Investments, had deliberately manipulated and inflamed racial tensions, stirred up racial hatred, and made accusations of “white monopoly capital“,[17] using a large number of fake Twitter and other accounts online, as part of a campaign portraying Oakbay and those connected to it as victims, apparently intended to deflect corruption claims.[22][23] Bell Pottinger subsequently collapsed in the wake of the scandal.[24]
It’s amazing what some people will do to stop themselves from being caught!!!
Let’s hope Zuma, Gupta brothers and this fraud is investigated thoroughly. I wish the South African judiciary service the very best of luck with these slippery men and women.
Today’s rant will be about electricity. These energy companies are just taking the biscuit.
Once upon a time Britain had a green, sustainable power supply. The industrious 1800’s were a time when manufacturers built their mills next to a river and used the power of the water to do the work which was needed via watermills. People and trades made use of the winds too, as there were plenty of windmills…some people lived and worked in these buildings.
from Construction of Transmission and Distribution lines Berlin 2010
Nowadays our electric supply is more complicated and less in our control. Last week, I received a letter from my electric supply company asking me again to get a smart metre fitted so I could see how much electric I was wasting.
Now hang on a frigging minute. I believe the constant nagging at end users of energy is both highly hypocritical and fast becoming demoralising.
Ohms Law dictates that V = I R
Voltage is equal to the current multiplied by the resistance
We are constantly bombarded with energy cutting ideas because ‘energy supply’ costs have gone up, or so my supplier tells me. Yet the energy lost by delivering via overhead cables which are not sheaved is far worse than you or I could waste in a year, one could argue, a life time.
Cables which are not sheaved have more resistance, as there is more air for them to react with. Power lost through that reaction along the cable is proportional to the distance of the length of the cable it’s travelling along.
The electric supply companies produce 32,000 volts to deliver 240 volts to our homes.
Let me put this into a perspective you can relate to:
Imagine that your water company is supplying 32,000 litres through leaky pipes for your home which needs 240 litres.
Now I’d call this waste, there is no need (nowadays) to produce so much electricity to begin because it could be delivered more efficiently – this is in the company’s control.
We are all taught at school that pylons are dangerous and not to fly kites near them etc. The reason being is that the electric is running along the wires without any protection – it isn’t ‘sheaved’. As the wires are beyond the reach of most of us, it is deemed safe to be located above domestic homes and in our streets.
When I say the cable is not sheaved, I’m saying it has no protection. It doesn’t have the same rubber or plastic casing on that you would see on your wires at home. The casing which we see in all our wires stops the electric escaping so it’s safe for us to touch.
When you plug in your TV, 240 volts travels from the street supply to your house supply to your TV through the wire. The plastic sheaving on your wires stops any electricity from leaking away from the metal conductor inside. There is no loss of electric. Electric is moved from one place to another by conductors. This is usually copper in your household cable wires protected by a type of poly plastic.
As electric travels from one place to another very easily it is only necessary to provide it with means to travel. Anyone who has had an electric shock or even felt a static charge from an object, or a person will tell you that there was no effort involved. Electric is quite capable of jumping across air too…see lightening strikes.
The current wires between the pylons that we have running across United Kingdom are known dangers because they have conducting cable that is not sheaved. It is not the same cable which is fitted for underground high voltage cable. Underground high voltage cable has many protective cases as it should.
diagram of sheaving on high voltage underground cable
In other words, the current pylons that we have running across UK leak electric because they have no protection but as they are high it’s a managed risk. People are not going to get electrocuted. However, no one discusses the amount of electric wasted or lost through these open cables.
The electric companies send such a vast amount of electric down the wires purely because of the amount being lost due to the uninsulated cables. This is a fact. Not all the electric ‘disappears’ (via heat dissipation) and the huge amount that remains is transformed down up and down to supply industry and then on to supply homes.
In order to step down the supply to deliver a safe amount to the street, massive transformers are used to bring it to the standard 230-240 volts for homes. Now, this is the point where all the electric left which hasn’t been lost during the journey is essentially transformed down into an electric supply we can use. The amount of that energy which is lost is proportional to the distance it has travelled.
Graphic of different types of Heavy Voltage transformers used to step electric up and down.
After electric gets supplied to my home my supply company then wants to know how I use it. I’d like them to explain to me why they are happy with 24,760 volts that they lose when supplying 240 volts to my home.
Sheaving these cables would really help all of us as it would mean not having to produce such huge amounts of electric to begin with. This would in turn help the renewable energies meet the supply and stop energy companies switching back to very bad energy sources such as nuclear power.
simple graphic stolen from google which shows how the nation grid works in United Kingdom – it is different for other countries
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