Ed

@olivierglinec @rorysutherland Paste the url into archive.ph - an easy way to jump paywalls.

@rorysutherland Holy shit! Why does The Spectator stubbornly refuse to sell me this copy of the newspaper and absolutely wants to sell me a subscription?

My latest Wiki Man spectator.co.uk/article/a-chal…

@WOOLWORTHS_SA I'm frustrated by the frequency that your Florida Glen and Mountainview branches have system outages and can't take card payments. It has happened at least 6 times this year between the two stores. I'm surprised there is no backup (apart from Spa case).

"An assault across many fronts.” Loren Landau, a professor of migration and development at Oxford University, on the message the Trump administration is sending by granting some white South Africans refugee status in the US.

Trump’s championing of Afrikaner grievances sparks backlash in South Africa on.ft.com/43RuJqC

@theCIPC @BizPortalGovZa Hello, CIPC, Thankyou for shouting at Me and not being patient while I asked for help navigating your system. Do you train your operators in customer service TO BE RUDE. Because shouting is an utter #fail PING @wendyknowler

The CIPC offers different platforms to cater for different customer types. If you are South African & are registering a company for yourself, we recommend you use @BizPortalGovZa Completely paperless & all registrations are processed within 24 hours. bizportal.gov.za

@fesshole Do this the whole time on speaker though.

Whilst cooking a specific meal or dish associated with a country, e.g. Italian, I will listen to that countries music on my headphones while I cook and eat it. Makes my day a bit more exciting and it feels like I'm a posh chef or I'm on holiday and eating in a fancy restaurant.

@Leon_Schreib I hope you will clear me from your backlog early in 2025. Two years and waiting for my Visa.

The year 2024 was a historic one for #TeamHomeAffairs as we introduced major reform to attract tourism and skills to create jobs, embraced technology to enhance security, cleared longstanding backlogs, and built the foundation for digital transformation in 2025 and beyond! 🇿🇦

@dalerobb @Leon_Schreib I’m in the same situation. Can’t get hold of anyone at DHA or get an email reply for my PRP application.

@Leon_Schreib My wife is still waiting for here Permanent residence since September 2023 and besides your offials contacting and asking for bribes to finalise it there is no movement on it. Emails to your office to report it and request assistance have just been ignored.

One of the first things I did after my appointment as Home Affairs Minister was to visit our visa backlog team, with the message that we want a Christmas without the decade-old backlog hanging over us. Today, Deputy Minister Nzuza and I went back to celebrate this team for their incredible work - with all of us dressed in Christmas outfits! Within a matter of months, we have processed an incredible 261 845 applications and will hit 94% backlog eradication by year end - with only mopping up and appeals remaining. In fact, our team is working so fast that we are struggling to keep up with printing and issuing outcomes. This has been a year of inspiring progress at Home Affairs. Next year, we will take the lessons learnt from this project and the foundation we’ve laid to fully digitalise and automate our processes, and take service delivery to new heights. We love our country and we are proud of the contribution we are making as one team, with one dream. South Africa, this is your #TeamHomeAffairs under the GNU in action! 🇿🇦🎄

@Markus29034482 @Leon_Schreib Correct. I have a two year old PRP application outstanding and can’t get through by phone. And emails remain unanswered.

@Leon_Schreib 94% does not sound legit, seeing how many people I know who are still waiting. I'm also still waiting on my appeal application, I submitted almost 3 years ago, and so do several other people I know. It's especially frustrating due to unlawful, made up rejections I got before.

Get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk. CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

@Leon_Schreib can we have an update on how clearing the backlog is going. Will you meet your target?

@TheRealClementM When Franco was exiled in the Canary Islands my grandfather had the dubious pleasure of playing golf with Franco.

@fesshole Yeah, we used to explode bangers in cow shit too. The splatter was never that bad and it’s cow shit not dog shit - that would be bad.

We used to plant bangers in wet cowshit, light them and then run in circles jumping over until they went off. I always trimmed the fuse, then ensured Steve went third. Sorry to Steve's mum. Them trousers were rank.

@Cthulhucachoo @JennMForster Last week I changed my will and when I die the Gift of the Givers get everything.

As it turns out, Gift of the Givers have responded to South African Zionist's blood libel that they're terrorists. Zionists are ignoring this response bc like I said, they forgot we aren't in Israel where they can lie with impunity. They better hope he drops it or they're fucked.

@BrandDNA And you in the future.

@tomatom You’re obviously stuck in the past my friend.

Apparently it’s November. How on earth did that happen?

@LibertarianZA I moved from the UK to Australia and now to SA. Best move I made.

Life in South Africa will make sense and you will feel a lot less anxious if you accept and understand that there is no real government nor real state institutions here. At the top level, there is a gang of thieves and conmen masquerading as government. They don’t really care what happens below them apart from whether they can garner favor or money for placing anyone who provide these into key positions. The performance of various state organs is of no interest to them as long as nothing happens to jeopardize their position. Everything is consequently mostly performative. That means that there is, for example, no real justice department, but there are a lot of people acting as if there is, and who merely act out a role in it. There is no real police department, no real military, electricity utility, postal service, rail system, etc etc. There is instead a body of people pretending to be those things in exchange for patronage that they obtained via a number of channels that had nothing to do with capability or merit. Interspersed in these organizations are a few unwitting fools who actually think they exist to do the jobs and may even be qualified to do them but because they don’t understand that the majority of the people in their organizations are play acting, they’re permanently frustrated and bewildered at the state of affairs. We are basically an anarchy interspersed with pockets of functionality running on past momentum and a dwindling handful of competent individuals pissing in the wind.

@TheRealClementM There is a spousal 11.6 Visa that allows a foreigner to establish a self employed business. All you need is to set up a company and register with SARs. There is no investment requirement. It is the Visa I have applied for though I won't be opening a spare shop.