Utopia, you are standing in it!

In yesterday’s presidential election in Colombia, the top two candidates were from the extremes of the political spectrum. Leading the pack is Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla of the M-19 (which demobilized about thirty years ago and has been a political party, or component of various alliances, since). He won 40.3% of the vote. In second place is Rodolfo Hernández, with 28.2%. He is an outsider–having had only municipal political experience in a medium-sized city¹–and presents as Colombia’s Trump/Bolsonaro/Bukele. Or worse, as he is on record saying he admires Hitler.

Regular readers of this blog or followers of my published research will know I have always been skeptical of two-round majority election of presidents. And this Colombian runoff pairing is a perfect demonstration of why–sometimes reducing choices to two means a choice between two brands of poison. Consider the third-place candidate: Federico Gutiérrez, who finished just under five…

The Times recently (11 May 2022) reported that the Attorney General, Suella Braverman, had received, and given, legal advice to the effect that proposed government action in relation to the Northern Ireland Protocol was compatible with international law.  As I write, we have still not seen details of either the proposals or the legal arguments on which the government intends to rely.  What is going on?

First, it is unusual and unsatisfactory that the existence of this legal advice has been leaked. For one thing, unless the leak was authorised by the Attorney General herself, it looks like a breach of the Ministerial Code, paragraph 2.13 of which says:

The fact that the Law Officers [that is, the Attorney General, Solicitor General and Advocate General for Scotland] have advised or have not advised and the content of their advice must not be disclosed outside Government without their authority.

Note…

May 29, 1630 & 1660. On this date in 1630 the future Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland is born. On this date in 1660 Charles II enters London on the Restoration of the British monarchy.

Charles II was the eldest surviving child of King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland and Henrietta Maria de Bourbon of France, the daughter of King Henri IV of France and Navarre and Marie de Medici.

Charles II had set out for England from Scheveningen, arrived in Dover on 25 May 1660 and reached London on 29 May, his 30th birthday and he was received in London to public acclaim.

Although Charles and Parliament granted amnesty to nearly all of Cromwell’s supporters in the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, 50 people were specifically excluded. In the end nine of the regicides were executed: they were hanged, drawn and quartered, whereas others…

Bumpy road ahead?[image credit: RWE]
Possibly the longest running climate ‘lawfare’ case ever. Sometimes the duration of a case is itself a large part of the desired effect, whatever the outcome. Lawyers win as usual.
– – –
German judges and experts have arrived at the edge of a melting glacier high up in the Peruvian Andes to examine a complaint made by a local farmer who accuses energy giant RWE of threatening his home by contributing to global warming, says Digital Journal.

The visit by the nine-member delegation to the region is the latest stage in a case the plaintiffs hope will set a new worldwide precedent.

Leading the demand for “climate justice” is 41-year-old Peruvian farmer Saul Luciano Lliuya, who lives in the mountains close to the city of Huaraz.

He has filed suit against the German firm RWE, saying its greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for…

With the “Top Gun” sequel firmly (Hah!) set for release on May 27, it occurred to me that I should at least re-familiarize myself with this icon of ’80s “High Concept” cinema. And then it occurred to me that I’ve never actually seen it, start to finish.

I was reviewing films for a newspaper when it came out, and I’m guessing the fellow I shared those duties with drew this assignment. It’s not like I didn’t try to watch it, once or thrice. I’d get 5-20 minutes in while channel surfing, mutter “Why people ever liked this is beyond me” and move on.

“Top Gun” is Reagan Era American jingoism at its glossiest, something worth remembering when watching it. A common criticism of this film of-its-time/at-that-time was that it was a “recruiting film.”

Reagan’s gone, the Navy moved on from the ruinously expensive to maintain,/Achilles Heeled F-14 Tomcat, and Hollywood…

Tom Cruise’s biggest opening weekend ever proves that there was pent up demand for that “Top Gun” sequel, no matter how much time has passed or how middling the first movie was.

Tuesday and Thursday previews rolled into Friday has “Maverick” at almost $52 million heading into Sat. showings.

Paramount is saying it’ll do $123 or so Fri-thru-Sunday, and Memorial Day Monday will take it over $150.

But what about “Bob’s Burgers,” you say, animation but not necessarily for kids? A $5.7 million Friday points to a $19 million holiday weekend for Twentieth Century pictures.

“Doctor Strange” had a middling $4-5 million Friday and won’t hit $20 this weekend. Finally.

“The Lost City” added another $1.9 to finally clear the $100 million mark. Maybe Sandy Bullock needs to team up with TC.

Figures from Exhibitor Relations — ercboxoffice.com.

The renewable energy cult reckons “coal is dead”, but the market says otherwise.

Thermal coal prices are off the charts, with record demand driving record prices: Australian thermal coal prices recently hit $US$400 ($548 a tonne), with prices still on the rise.

The crowd that tells us that we’re only a heartbeat away from an all wind and sun powered future have been telling all who care to listen that investing in fossil fuel producers, in particular coal-miners, borders on insanity; with lots of talk about “stranded assets”, the prices of which will plummet, to never recover.

Well, that’s the cult’s mantra, anyway.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Terence Corcoran explains that, in an energy hungry world, fossil fuel producers are a very safe bet, indeed.

Which energy assets will be stranded?
Financial Post
Terence Corcoran
4 May 2022

Oilprice.com covered the latest energy trends Monday with a report that U.S…

When finance professors publish papers claiming to find inefficiencies in asset markets, my initial reaction is skepticism. The odds are stacked against them to start since asset markets are mostly efficient. Then even if the inefficiency they found is real, shouldn’t they keep that fact to themselves and get rich trading on it?

But listening to a recent interview with Edward Thorp, I realized I shouldn’t entirely discount the possibility that someone would publish a real inefficiency, even a tradeable one. After all, Myron Scholes and Fischer Black did just that when they published the Black-Scholes model in the Journal of Political Economy. This made them famous on Wall Street and in econ/finance academia, and won Scholes the 1997 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.

Thorp explained that he had come up with a similar model years earlier, but instead of publishing it, he started a hedge fund and…

The current system of recruiting and employing MPs’ staff is not one you would design if you were starting from scratch, but before considering an overhaul, it is useful to ask how we got here. In this blogpost Rebecca McKee, who is currently running a project on MPs’ staff,examines the evolution of MPs’ staffing arrangements, providing some context to the current arrangements so we can understand how best to reform them.

Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has called for a Speaker’s Conference to consider a major overhaul of workplace practices in the House of Commons. Under our current system, it is MPs – not the Commons – who recruit and employ their staff, within a framework of regulations set out by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA).While the devolved legislatures and many other countries have similar arrangements, New Zealand stands out as an example where MPs engage staff employed…

During her record-breaking 70 years of service, Queen Elizabeth II has become no stranger to parliamentary traditions like the State Opening of Parliament, and next weekend her milestone as the first British Monarch to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee will be celebrated with four days of festivities. But Her Majesty the Queen’s predecessor as a female monarch, Queen Victoria, also witnessed many ceremonies during her own long reign.

Here Dr Kathryn Rix, Assistant Editor of our Commons 1832-1868 project and voice behind the VictCommons twitter page, explores Queen Victoria’s approach to parliamentary ceremony…

On 17 July 1837, less than a month after becoming Britain’s first reigning queen in over a century, Queen Victoria visited Westminster to prorogue Parliament. She had been persuaded by the Whig ministry to perform this duty in person, rather than delegating it to commissioners. The presence of the youthful new monarch generated widespread…