Utopia, you are standing in it!

*Editors’ note: This post is part of a series on ‘The Human Rights Act After 22 Years’, following the SLS Annual Seminar held in November 2022. You can read the first post in the series here.

Rising like an arguably rather dark phoenix from the ashes, the Bill of Rights Bill now appears back on the legislative agenda. Yet again, the repeal of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) seems somewhat inevitable, unless cabinet will once again implode in turmoil. In this light, the potential of the common law to provide a system of rights protection of similar vigour to that of the HRA has rightly gained much attention. The previous debate has largely focused on the content and development of common law rights and the structural potentials of the common law constitution. In contrast, this post will shed some light on what Mark Elliottdescribed as the rigour of…

Once again, well-fed cynical Western elites are berating developing countries about their energy use, hoping to prevent them from using the very sources that drove the Industrial Revolution and dragged millions of Europeans out of agrarian poverty, two centuries ago.

Pontificating windbags are railing against the prospect of real development in the poorer parts of the planet,  like the over-stuffed, Malthusian misanthrope, Antonio Guterres – pictured in full flight above.

Much to their annoyance, the ‘end is nigh, unless we all plump for insanely expensive and chaotically intermittent wind and solar’ rhetoric, is wearing a little thin south of the Sahara.

African leaders are pushing back and presenting an intractable obstacle to global elites keen to deprive them of the ability to use their own natural resources to power their people and drive economic growth and prosperity.

Tilak Doshi reports on how Africans are waking up to the grand wind…

Stardate: 5029.5 (2268)
Original Air Date: October 11, 1968
Writer: Edward J. Lakso
Director: Marvin Chomsky

“Hail, hail, fire and snow.
Call the angel we will go.
Far away, for to see.
Friendly Angel, come to me.”

Responding to a distress call from the science colony on Triacus, Kirk, Spock, and Bones beam down to the surface of the planet to investigate, but they shockingly find a piles of lifeless bodies. One man, Professor Starnes (Craig Huxley) staggers forward and then promptly dies –“he’s dead, captain.” The crew determines this must have been the site of a mass suicide. Then, a cohort of playful children emerge from a nearby cave, seemingly unaffected by the corpses all around them. They give no signs of grief. Perhaps they are suffering from depression, shock, lacunar amnesia, or an invasive bacteria of sorts.

The crew buries the bodies from the Starnes…

Stardate: 4729.4 (2268)
Original Air Date: March 8, 1968
Writer: D. C. Fontana/Laurence N. Wolfe
Director: John Meredyth Lucas

“We’re all sorry for the other guy when he loses his job to a machine. When it comes to your job, that’s different. And it always will be different.”

The Enterprise has been inexplicably ordered to a remote space station where most of the crew has been ordered to a secure holding facility. What is going on? Kirk demands an explanation from Starfleet and so Commodore Enwright (voiced by James Doohan) decides to send another Starfleet Commodore aboard the Enterprise to explain the situation. Commodore Robert “Bob” Wesley (Barry Russo) arrives and says that the Enterprise is scheduled to be “the fox in the hunt” for a series of covert war games. The purpose is to test the strength and viability of a new “ultimate computer”…

Stardate: 5431.4 (2268)
Original Air Date: September 20, 1968
Writer: Lee Cronin (Gene L. Coon)
Director: Marc Daniels

“What have you done with Spock’s brain?”

At last, we arrive at the infamous season three opener which many fans regard as the worst episode in the whole series! A strange object is rapidly moving through space toward the enterprise via ion propulsion at a high velocity. Scotty marvels at its beauty –it even has its own internal atmosphere. Suddenly, a female humanoid lifeform appears on the bridge. She pushes a button attached to her wrist which essentially renders all lifeforms on the Enterprise unconscious –we later learn her name is Kara (Marj Dusay).

When the crew awaken, they find that Spock is missing. He is later found in sickbay on a table. Is he dead? No, he is “worse than dead” –his brain missing! Thanks to his Vulcan autonomic…

Stardate: 4842.6 (2268)
Original Air Date: October 4, 1968
Writer: Margaret Armen
Director: Jud Taylor

“I am Kirok!!”

Kirk, Spock, and Bones beam down to an idyllic planet rife with pine trees, a lake, honeysuckle, and orange blossoms –it appears to be exactly akin to earth only half a galaxy away. Suddenly, the crewmen spot a strange object composed of alloy and featuring a complex language scribed upon it. Who could have constructed such an obelisk? This planet known as Amerind (only in the script, not in the episode), has primitive tribes who seem to live peacefully alongside the banks of the water. The tribes carry a mixture of “Navajo, Mohican, and Delaware” characteristics. However, we soon learn that a massive asteroid is en route to destroy this planet, and the Enterprise crew have only thirty minutes on the surface before needing to depart and hopefully…

If it looks and sounds like a deranged cult, it probably is. The latest wheeze is pretending that functional, civil societies can live without coal, oil and gas. It’s perfect nonsense, to be sure, and symptomatic of an uneducated cohort who haven’t the faintest idea about what makes their safe and utterly privileged little lives possible.

This is a class of resentful, miserable misanthropes who live by an edict that fossil fuels are an unadulterated evil to be driven back to the earthly depths where they shall remain. None of which applies to their own selfish energy needs. Think pontificating actors, wannabe princesses and their royal beaus lecturing us about our energy use, as they traverse every inch of the globe in their private jets.

Amongst this brand of New-Age Puritan, ranting about oil, coal and gas, is all the rage. Sanctimony and outrage have overtaken logic and reason.

Theodore…

One of NZ’s leading economists Cameron Bagrie told the TV3 AM show on Tuesday the increase in wages in NZ is a “success” but we are getting to a point of too much success.

His warning came as the Dominion-Post reported what it called “an avalanche” of fair pay applications are expected to be made over the next few months as unions gather momentum to launch bids for better pay for workers under the new fair pay agreement law.

Fair pay agreements set out specific conditions and deals betweenworkers and employersin an industry or occupation, with the regime for establishing them coming into effect next month.

They can be triggered by support from 1000 workers or 10% of a workforce. The fair pay legislation stemmed from a major plank in the Labour Party’s election policy.

So how will that “avalanche” fit with what the Reserve Bank is trying…

Pretty soon, the notion of having affordable power available on demand will be ancient history. Never before in the course of human existence have so few done so much damage to so many. Electricity prices are spiralling out of control in any place attempting to run on sunshine and breezes, power rationing (aka ‘demand management’) is routine and, with delusional dunderheads driving energy policy in Australia, we’ve only just begun.

As Eric Worrall describes it, Australians can look forward to a very dark and very dismal future. One where the weather dictates whether or not you and yours will be sitting freezing or boiling in the dark.

The Australian Government Vision for Our Renewable Future
Watts Up With That?
Eric Worall
16 October 2022

The government has provided a risible $224 million budget for batteries to stabilise a 33GW grid which is expected to be 82% renewable by 2030.

Record…

With the news that the Prince of Wales has COVID, I’ve been asked about who might step in for the Queen if she were to fall ill as well. Under section 6(1) of the Regency Act 1937, the Sovereign can delegate their functions to Counsellors of State in the event of illness or some other indisposition. Section 6(2) of the Act states that the Counsellors must be the Sovereign’s spouse and the four individuals who are next in line for the throne and are capable of serving as a regent.[1]

Since the Duke of Edinburgh is dead and the Duke of Cambridge’s children are too young to serve, this means the Counsellors would be Prince Charles, Prince William, the Duke of Sussex, and the Duke of York. But Prince Charles is self-isolating, Prince William is out of the country, Prince Harry lives in the US, and Prince Andrew…