Utopia, you are standing in it!

Destroying coal-fired power plants is all part of the grand wind and solar ‘transition’ and precisely the point of the subsidies to wind and solar which are designed to allow the unreliables to undercut cheap and reliable coal-fired power, thereby driving coal-fired plants out of business. The inevitable consequences include rocketing power prices and rolling blackouts.

The Australian state of New South Wales has just shut Liddell (above) – a perfectly operable coal-fired plant, that once delivered 2,000MW to the grid, around-the-clock, whatever the weather.

Wholesale power prices jumped from $96 to $228 – almost overnight; an 80% increase within a week of the plant’s closure.

The loss of that volume of power to a grid already teetering on the brink of collapse, can only help ensure that result.

Liddell’s planned (yes, ‘planned’) closure was meant to be no big deal.

You see, back in March 2017 then PM, Malcolm…

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Whether it is Posie Parker, hate-speech laws or donations, the East Coast MP is completely out of her depth.   Graham Adams writes –

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Kiritapu Allan was appointed New Zealand’s 51st Minister of Justice on 14 June 2022. Her predecessors — nearly all men — include political heavyweights such as Jack Marshall, Ralph Hanan, Martyn Finlay, Geoffrey Palmer, Doug Graham and Annette King.

Less than a year into her tenure, Allan is looking more and more like a rube who lacks the gravitas and good judgment to hold such an important position in government.

The news that in 2020 she accepted a payment of $1500 and rent subsidies worth $9185 for a campaign office from Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon and his wife but didn’t declare a conflict of interest when she became Minister of Justice was astonishing. Foon’s appointment was made by then Justice Minister Andrew Little in…

Jørgen Peder Steffensen, of Denmark’s Niels Bohr Institute, is one of the most experienced experts in ice core analysis, in both Greenland and Antarctica. In this video he explains a coincidence that has misled those alarmed about the warming recovery since the Little Ice Age.  And if you skip to 2:25, you will see the huge error we have made and the assumptions and extrapolations based on that error.  Transcript below is from closed captions with my bolds and added images. H/T Raymond

What do ice cores tell us about the history of climate change and the present trend? 

This ice is from the Viking age around the year one thousand, also called the medieval warm period. We believe that in Greenland the Medieval Warm Period was about one and a half degrees warmer on average than today

NorthGRIP the Greenland ice core project is being reopened to drill…

(British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher)

A few weeks ago, former President Bill Clinton visited Northern Ireland in commemoration of the 25^th anniversary of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that mostly ended the violence of the period known as “The Troubles” that had prevailed since the 1960s.  Clinton’s administration helped negotiate a multi-party agreement between most of Northern Ireland’s political parties, and the British-Irish Agreement between the British and Irish governments.  To this day the agreements have been held with a minimum of violence, but decades of ill-will between all sides and the January 2020 Brexit Agreement has created a series of obstacles which at times makes the situation tenuous.

For years, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and its splinter groups resorted to violence to achieve an independent republic free of British rule. One of the most violent attacks occurred on October 12, 1984, with an assassination attempt against Prime…

A mob of pretentions Australian wankers has written to King Charles, demanding, among many other things, the following:-

“We expect a formal apology for the systemic racism, oppression and Crown-sponsored attempted genocide of the First Nations peoples of Australia, a call that we see being replicated across many Commonwealth nations,”

In their long, tedious and verbose missive I did not detect even one word of thanks for the immense benefits bestowed by Great Britain upon the barbaric, savage, warlike and often cannibalistic Natives of the world.

Little things like an extra forty years life expectancy, civilising Christian influence, administrative skills, agriculture, modern transport, schools, hospitals, guns and rum.

Funny that……………….

The Natives should count themselves lucky the British arrived before the French.

Hove you noticed everything these dopes talk about is ‘systemic’? I’ll bet they don’t actually know the meaning of the word.

Long bursts of calm weather are no mystery to sailors and kite flyers, but the wind industry apparently never got the memo. Hence the type of indignation expressed when the wind fails to materialize – in its financial statements, Australian outfit, Infigen has repeatedly cursed the Wind Gods for its often-dismal profit results.

The industry has started calling a hitherto well-known meteorological phenomenon a “wind drought”. As if there’s some basis to expect that the wind will blow around-the-clock, at a constant 11m/s – the ideal rate at which wind turbines operate.

Rafe Champion has been tracking these so-called “wind droughts” and their consequences for our power supply for some time. Here he is again.

The endless wind drought crippling renewables
Spectator Australia
Rafe Champion
23 April 2023

The spectre of power failure is haunting Europe as Britain and Germany demonstrate that modern societies can’t run on wind and solar…

During my early years in public policy, back in the late 1980s, I repeatedly crossed swords with people who argued that Washington should have more power over the economy so that the United States could compete with Japan, which supposedly was an economic juggernaut because of “industrial policy” directed by wise and far-sighted bureaucrats at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.

Given Japan’s subsequent multi-decade slump, it certainly seems like I was right to warn against giving American politicians the power to pick winners and losers.

But not everybody learned from that experience. In the words of Yogi Berra, “It’s deja vu all over again,” only this time we’re supposed to be terrified because the Chinese government wants to subsidize and promote certain industries as part of “Made in China 2025”.

At the risk of understatement, I’m not scared.

Yes, China has enjoyed some impressive growth since…

“This morning I have officially notified the Speaker that I have resigned from the New Zealand Labour Party and have joined Te Pati Maori, effective immediately … and as Ikaroa Rāwhiti sitting MP I intend to be seated with Te Pati Maori when we return to Parliament”

That declaration from Meka Whaitiri can be clearly heard in an audio recording included in a Stuff report.

At least, we think it can be clearly heard.

You won’t be alone if you get the impression from those words that Meka Whaitiri…

• (a) has resigned from the Labour Party; and
• (b) joined the Maori Party.

The mainstream media got the same impression –

The Human Rights Commission (HRC) is charged with upholding all New Zealanders’ human rights. Fundamental rights include free speech, non-discrimination, and equality before the law.

However, the HRC has declined to take action against racist acts hostile to non-Māori. It did not defend effectively Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s free speech rights in New Zealand. Rather than focusing on its core legal obligations the HRC has now set as a strategic priority the elimination of racism from New Zealand. It believes this will require race-based constitutional change.

This change is along the lines set out in the 2019 He Puapua document. This argues for Māori governance of things Māori (rangatiratanga), Crown governance of its own affairs (kāwanatanga), and a joint sphere to deliberate upon matters of mutual concern (the relational sphere).

He Puapua denies that the Treaty of Waitangi/Tiriti o Waitangi transferred sovereignty/kāwanatanga to the Crown. In a footnote (p.28) it states incorrectly…

Coronations may be performed for a person other than the reigning monarch. In 1170, Henry the Young King, heir apparent to the throne, was crowned as a second king of England, subordinate to his father Henry II; such coronations were common practice in mediaeval France and Germany, but this is only one of two instances of its kind in England (the other being that of Ecgfrith of Mercia in 796, crowned whilst his father, Offa of Mercia, was still alive).

More commonly, a king’s wife is crowned as queen consort. If the king is already married at the time of his coronation, a joint coronation of both king and queen may be performed. The first such coronation was of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1154; seventeen such coronations have been performed, including that of the join sovereigns King William III and Queen Mary II.

I did some research…

Buzz from the Beehive

The Government has further strengthened and clarified counter-terrorism laws, particularly around high-risk individuals, to make our communities safer, Justice Minister Kiri Allan said in a press statement after the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill 2023 passed its third reading in Parliament “with strong support across the House”.

But the Greens did not support the bill and Allan’s press statement is somewhat vague in explaining how the laws have been strengthened and clarified.

Among other things, the new law amends an arrangement in the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 which enables the Prime Minister to designate a terrorist entity (either an individual or a group) if the Prime Minister believes on reasonable grounds that the entity has carried out, or participated in, a terrorist act.

A Prime Minister who has been politically ambushed while overseas by a Minister declaring her intention to stand as a…