Utopia, you are standing in it!

There is an extraordinary column in the Herald this morning, by their excellent Kate MacNamara (complete with nice biblical allusions in the online version headlines, which may be lost on a younger generation of readers) on the travails of the Productivity Commission. If you can get access, and you care at all about economic policy and institutions in this country, you really should read it.

The Productivity Commission was set up a decade or so ago by the previous government. Inspired by the Australian Productivity Commission – which has done some good work over several decades – there were both cynical and genuine motivations behind it. On the cynical side, it was a cheap win for ACT (this was during the 2008 to 2011 term), and it offset the premature termination of the 2025 Taskforce. But on the more serious side, there was a recognition of the long-running New Zealand…

Failure’s an orphan, success has a thousand fathers, but subsidised wind and solar are central to the energy disaster playing out in America, Europe and Australia.

Faced with rocketing power prices and an angry proletariat, the political classes have amped up their deceptive rhetoric, with wild and fantastic claims that the only way to rein in runaway power costs is to add even more chaotically unreliable and heavily subsidised wind and solar power. A little like throwing gasoline on a raging fire.

Not renowned for his grip on reality, or relationship with the truth, America’s President, the hapless Joe Biden has taken the lead in the stakes for America’s annual Pinocchio awards, as Francis Menton explains below.

Biden’s Most Preposterous Lie Is Too Much Even For The Washington Post
Manhattan Contrarian
Francis Menton
3 June 2022

When President Biden talks, there may or may not be any connection between what…

When Edward VII ascended to the throne on January 22, 1901, he continued the imperial tradition laid down by his mother, Queen Victoria, by adopting the title Emperor of India. Three subsequent British monarchs followed in his footsteps.

The first emperor to visit India was George V. For his imperial coronation ceremony at the Delhi Durbar, the Imperial Crown of India was created. The Crown weighs 920 g (2.03 lb) and is set with 6,170 diamonds, 9 emeralds, 4 rubies, and 4 sapphires. At the front is a very fine emerald weighing 32 carats (6.4 g). The king wrote in his diary that it was heavy and uncomfortable to wear: “Rather tired after wearing my crown for 3+1⁄2 hours; it hurt my head, as it is pretty heavy.”

The title “Emperor of India” did not disappear when British India became the Dominion of India (1947–1950) and Dominion of Pakistan (1947–1952)…

We are going through some tough economic times right now: high rates of inflation (generally exceeding wage growth) with the strong possibility of a recession in the near future. In times like this, I think it is useful to also consider the historical perspective. The US economy has gone through challenging times in the past, but the long-run track record is impressive.

Here is one way to show the data. It comes from the Census Bureau, and shows the total money income of households in the US. The data is, of course, adjusted for inflation, and not just with the regular CPI-U: they use the superior CPI-U-RS, which attempts to maintain a consistent methodology for how prices are measured (BLS is constantly improving the CPI, but that sometimes makes historical comparisons challenging). I present the data both as a percent of the total number of households, and the…

On June 22, 1948 King George VI formally gives up the title “Emperor of India”, half a year after Britain actually gave up its rule of India.

In this two part series I will discuss the history of the title of “Emperor/Empress of India” from it’s origin (Part I) to the abolishing of the title (Part II).

In 1858 after the nominal Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was deposed at the conclusion of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the government of the United Kingdom decided to transfer control of British India and its princely states from the mercantile East India Company (EIC) to the Crown, thus marking the beginning of the British Raj.

The EIC was officially dissolved on June 1, 1874, and the British prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, decided to offer Queen Victoria the title “Empress of India” shortly afterwards. Victoria accepted this style on May 1, 1876. The…

This is one of the longest lives at 87 chapters, longer than Sertorius (27), Crassus (33), Cicero (49), Brutus (53), Caesar (69), Cato the Younger (73) or Pompey (80). Dates and other information in square brackets are not in Plutarch but content I’ve added in to make the account more accurate.

Plutarch’s life of Marcus Antonius

(1) Marcus Antonius [83 to 30] came from an undistinguished family. His grandfather was murdered during the purges of Marius in 87 BC. Plutarch tells an anecdote about how, when a friend came asking for money, all his father could give him was a bowl, and that when his wife discovered it was missing she threatened to torture all the slaves to find it until his father confessed to having given it away. (Torture all the slaves? So the references to torturing slaves to  establish something, as jokily referred to in the plays of…

Sellafield nuclear site, UK
Newcleo aims to build new small reactors that can consume spent fuel, although its designs are said to be at an early stage. The report states that ‘The UK has the largest civil plutonium stockpile in the world’. Units could be smaller SMR’s than Rolls-Royce plans to offer, and also sealed ones suitable for ships. Similar types of proposal have happened before, but seem to have fizzled out.
– – –
A nuclear power start-up is seeking to create clean energy out of 140 tonnes of waste plutonium stored in Cumbria as Britain scrambles to wean itself off fossil fuels, says the Daily Telegraph.

Newcleo hopes to use spent fuel deposited in Sellafield in a pioneering reactor design that will rival the small nuclear generators being developed by Rolls-Royce.

The proposals come as Boris Johnson seeks to usher in a nuclear revolution for Britain after…

Intermittent wind and solar are guarantee of rocketing power prices and rocketing power prices are a guarantee of economic destruction.

An energy-hungry world will never satisfy its needs by pinning consumers’ hopes on the weather. But that’s the model that our political betters have been pushing over the last 20 years.

How we landed in a situation where random power rationing and mass blackouts are treated as normal; how regular double-digit increases in power prices are to be expected, is all down to virtue signalling politics.

Our good friends, logic and reason were banished from the energy debate, long ago. Engineers don’t get a look in. Instead the field is now covered by the arts/law grads who became political staffers and then MPs, who apparently know everything there is to know about power generation. Just ask them.

But don’t expect a sensible answer, anytime soon.

Alan Moran provides a timely…

Edward III (November 13, 1312 – June 21, 1377) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from January 1327 until his death in 1377.

Edward was born at Windsor Castle on November 13, 1312, and was often called Edward of Windsor in his early years, before his accession.

Edward was the son of Edward II, King of England and Lord of Ireland and his wife Isabella of France (c. 1295 – August 22, 1358), sometimes described as the She-Wolf of France, was the youngest surviving child and only surviving daughter of King Philippe IV of France and Queen Joan I of Navarre.

The reign of his father, Edward II, was a particularly problematic period of English history. One source of contention was the king’s inactivity, and repeated failure, in the ongoing war with Scotland. Another controversial issue was the king’s exclusive patronage of a small group of royal favourites. The…