Richard Bougard

Husband, Father, Christian & Trader reflecting on God, reading, books, economics & markets. Opinions my own

[Richie Floyd @richiejfloyd]

I wish we lived in a world where I didn't feel constantly compelled to post this video, but until then here's Tony Benn speaking on war with clarity and moral conviction that you won't see from the evil people running the world today

[I ❤️ Cape Town ~ I Stand with Russia🇷🇺 MAGA @Lolita721611021]

🇿🇦 SONA 2026: THIS IS NOT A GOOD STORY, UNLESS YOU BELIEVE IN THE TOOTH FAIRY ‼️

By Paul Hattingh - 13 February 2026

Last night the country was told it is stronger.
Growth is back.
Stability is visible.
Momentum is building.
The tone was confident. The delivery assured.
But when confidence outruns arithmetic, something is wrong.
This was not a speech about transformation.
It was a speech about narrative control.

🔴 1.3 PERCENT IS NOT GROWTH. IT IS STALLING.
GDP for 2025 sits around 1.3 percent.
Forecast for 2026 is 1.4 percent.
South Africa needs 3 to 5 percent sustained growth to meaningfully reduce unemployment.
Unemployment stands at 31.9 percent.
Expanded unemployment exceeds 42 percent.
Youth unemployment is about 60 percent.
Population growth ranges between 1.1 and 1.3 percent.
If your economy grows at roughly the same pace as your population, per capita income does not rise.
South Africa’s real per capita income remains below 2010 levels.
Calling this acceleration is not optimism.
It is misdirection.

🔴 PRIMARY SURPLUS IS A TECHNICAL TRICK
Two primary surpluses were highlighted.
Primary surplus excludes debt servicing.
Debt servicing remains one of the fastest growing expenditures in the budget.
You can claim discipline while interest payments consume billions.
You can announce stability while borrowing still funds the state.
That is not fiscal strength.
That is controlled pressure.

🔴 2.5 MILLION “OPPORTUNITIES” IS NOT JOB CREATION
The Presidential Employment Stimulus reportedly created 2.5 million opportunities.
Most are temporary and state funded.
They are not private sector expansion.
They are not structural labour absorption.
At 1 percent growth, the economy does not generate permanent jobs at scale.
When temporary placements are framed as recovery, the public is being led toward a conclusion the numbers do not support.

🔴 WATER: 47 PERCENT LOST
R156 billion over three years was announced for water infrastructure.
National non revenue water remains near 47 percent.
Nearly half of treated water disappears through leaks, theft and inefficiency.
If half the system leaks, the problem is structural.
Committees do not repair infrastructure.
New agencies do not fix municipal incompetence.
Money allocated is not money delivered.
🔴 MUNICIPAL COLLAPSE IS REAL
More than 250 municipalities are in severe financial distress.
Parts of Johannesburg, the wealthiest city in Africa, experience water instability.
Infrastructure decay continues across local government.
The same political structure governs most provinces and municipalities.
To speak as though collapse exists in isolation is misleading.
You cannot separate renewal from responsibility.

🔴 ESKOM STABILITY IS NOT REFORM
Load shedding has reduced.
Eskom’s debt remains enormous.
Maintenance backlogs remain.
Tariffs remain high.
Improvement from crisis is not structural reform.
Framing relief as victory confuses survival with transformation.

🔴 FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE
The outbreak was not contained early.
It spread to eight provinces.
It became one of the largest agricultural crises in recent years.
Farmers carry the loss.
Export markets absorb the uncertainty.
Acknowledging a crisis is not the same as solving it.

🔴 FOREIGN POLICY HAS CONSEQUENCES
The United States boycotted the 2025 G20 in Johannesburg.
South Africa was excluded from a major 2026 summit.
Congressional review of trade ties continues.
There was silence on Iran while human rights rhetoric was emphasised.
Israel’s senior diplomat was expelled.
Foreign policy positioning shapes investor confidence.
When diplomatic friction increases, capital hesitates.
Narrative cannot override risk pricing.

🔴 POLICY CONTINUITY WITHOUT ACCELERATION
Existing empowerment frameworks were reaffirmed.
After more than a decade of sub 2 percent growth, repeating the same economic architecture without reform raises serious questions.
When outcomes stagnate, policy must evolve.
Doubling down without acceleration signals rigidity, not courage.

🔴 THE CORE ISSUE
This was not a speech built on false numbers.
The numbers cited exist.
The issue is framing.
Selective emphasis creates an impression of progress that the broader data does not confirm.
Growth without per capita improvement.
Surplus without debt relief.
Opportunities without permanent jobs.
Committees without execution.
That is not outright deception.
But it is narrative management.
And when a nation confuses narrative for recovery, decline becomes normalized.
The danger is not collapse.
The danger is getting used to mediocrity and calling it renewal.

If arithmetic matters more than applause, share this.

[Rare 🇺🇸 @RareImagery]

How true this is

[Richard Bougard @RichardBougard]

One self refuting statement after another and the astounding foolish confidence that people will but it.

[Basil the Great @BasilTheGreat]

🚨LAUGHS AND JEERS AT EU PRESIDENT AS SHE REVEALS NEW 'MINISTRY OF TRUTH'

The EU Democracy Shield it is claimed will be used to fight disinformation online

In reality it will be used as a weapon to SILENCE opponents and push EU Propaganda

They will monitor and arrest dissidents, removing all free speech.

I will never regret voting to leave the EU

[Richard Bougard @RichardBougard]

The hypocrisy is staggering…

[Ben Scallan 🇮🇪 @Ben_Scallan]

Flashback to Jimmy Kimmel laughing about Donald Trump being banned from all social media platforms, and joking about conservative apps being taken offline:

"All over the internet, [conservatives] are screaming about being silenced. They won't be silent about being silenced."

[Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11]

Mrs. Erika Kirk Addresses The Nation After Her Husband’s Assassination

@TPUSA @MrsErikaKirk

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Now do you understand how much the legacy (fka mainstream) media lies simply by ignoring a subject?

Choice of narrative is their primary form of deception.

[Alan Warner @AlanJonWarner]

Powerful message!

But I take one exception, if we lose this battle, we will not be the ones writing the history. We will be erased without anyone ever knowing we existed.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

🎯

[Richard Bougard @RichardBougard]

@FatEmperor Excellent content. Klaus Schwab’s “Covid -The Great Reset” published on 9 July 2020 also speaks to the premeditation. To publish a book so quickly 11 weeks after the world went into lockdown is a huge red flag.

[Richard Bougard @RichardBougard]

A clarion call to discerning decent…

[Aus Integrity @QBCCIntegrity]

The truth too horrific to admit…

[Richard Bougard @RichardBougard]

More relevant than ever before #1984

[Today in History @TodayinHistory]

Today in 1949, George Orwell published one of the most chilling books I’ve ever read, 1984.

A literary masterpiece, 1984 exposes tactics of suppression that feel all too familiar in our world today.

Here are ten truths Orwell urged us to confront to ward off Big Brother 🧵👇🏼

[Nick Hudson @NickHudsonCT]

I can already see that this one is being heavily shadow-banned. So it’s truthful, and impactful, if you get to see it.

[Johnny Midnight ⚡️ @its_The_Dr]

Stupid People think they are smart.

[Nick Hudson @NickHudsonCT]

See how the propagandists try to cast Ramaphosa, a man overflowing with racial hatred and hellbent on making life impossible for white people in South Africa, as the victim. 🧵

[Camus @newstart_2024]

Very powerful testimony by Bret Weinstein

"Thank you, senator Johnson. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we must zoom out if we are to understand the pattern that we are gathered here to explore because the pattern is larger than federal health agencies and the COVID cartel. If we do zoom out and ask what are they hiding, the answer becomes as obvious as it is disturbing. They are hiding everything. It will be jarring for many to hear a scientist speak with such certainty."

"It should be jarring. We are trained to present ideas with caution as hypotheses in need of a test. But in this case, I have tested the idea, and I am as certain of it as I am of anything. We are being systematically blinded. It is the only explanation I have encountered that will not only describe the present, but also in my experience predicts the future with all but perfect accuracy."

"The pattern is a simple one. You can see it clearly and test it yourself. Every single institution dedicated to public truth seeking is under simultaneous attack. They are all in a state of collapse. Every body of experts fails utterly."

"Individual experts who resist or worse in an attempt to return their institutions to sanity, they find themselves coerced into submission. If they won't buckle, they are marginalized or forced out. Those outside of the institutions who either seek truth alone or who build new institutions with a truth seeking mission face merciless attacks on both their integrity and expertise, often by the very institutions whose mission they refuse to abandon."

"There is a saying in military circles, once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action. I have no doubt that given an hour, the people on this panel could point to a hundred examples of the pattern I have just described while finding even a handful of exceptions would pose a significant challenge."

"We are left in a fool's paradise. Our research universities spend huge sums of public money to reach preordained conclusions. Professors teach only lessons that are consistent with wisdom students have picked up on TikTok even when those lessons contradict the foundational principles of their disciplines."

"Once proud newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post only report important stories after they have become common knowledge. Morticians must now raise the alarm over patterns missed by medical examiners."

"The CDC has become an excellent guide to protecting your health, but only for people who realize you should do the opposite of whatever it advises. The courts, the last holdout in this ongoing inversion of reality, are now regularly used as a coercive weapon of elites against those who threaten them.

We have literally witnessed the Department of Homeland Security attempt to set up a truth ministry and declare accurate critique of government as a kind of terrorism. To my fellow patriots in the West, the pattern is unmistakable. I cannot tell you with any certainty who they are or what they hope to accomplish, but I can tell you that we are being systematically denied the tools of enlightenment and the rights guaranteed in our constitution."

"We, those who remain dedicated to the values of the West, must fight this battle courageously, and we must win. For if we do not stem the tide, the result will be a dark age that differs from prior dark ages only in the power and sophistication of the coercive instruments wielded by those who will rule us."

[👉M-Û-R-Č-H👈 @TheEXECUTlONER_]

I wish I could share this a million times. Listen to what this gentleman so eloquently states.

“If you are wondering why the society you have lived in all your life feels as if it is being pulled from under you like a rug, it’s because while you weren’t paying attention your wholesome values were quietly reclassified as ugly prejudices and now you are the problem.”

Listen to what he says. Everything we stand for, grew up on, is under attack and our values and beliefs are being thrown at us and now we are being called the problem.

He says it so eloquently and he is 100% correct. There is a war being waged on us, on our values, on our morals.

[Commentary Trump Daily Posts @TrumpDailyPosts]

How could we be expected to go to South Africa for the very important G20 Meeting when Land Confiscation and Genocide is the primary topic of conversation? They are taking the land of white Farmers, and then killing them and their families. The Media refuses to report on this. The United States has held back all contributions to South Africa. Is this where we want to be for the G20? I don’t think so!

From Donald Trump Truth Social 04/11/25 07:45 PM

[Richard Bougard @RichardBougard]

The economic downside to PRISA’s new security regulations is devastating. This is big.

[Gideon Joubert @Paratus2014]

PSIRA regulations: now is the time for action, not despondency.

[Richard Bougard @RichardBougard]

Radical candour.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Starlink is not allowed to operate in South Africa, because I’m not black