Utopia, you are standing in it!

Daily power rationing is the inevitable product of the ‘inevitable’ transition to an all wind and sun powered future.

When the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in wind and solar power can’t be bought, at any price.

So, even at first glance, the perceived logic of supplying consumers with electricity from nothing but wholly weather-dependent wind power and wholly sunshine-dependent solar power lacks any connection with reality.

Sure, when wind and solar output entirely collapse electricity will be available. But it will come from expensive to run fast start-up gas and diesel plants. And you’ll be forced to pay a staggering price to get it.

The rollout of mandatory smart meters is part of the package: when wind and solar power output hits the floor the grid manager is able to drive the price you’ll pay through the roof.

None of this, of course, troubles the filthy rich, who…

Spain is more economically backwards than most nations in Western Europe. As a public finance economist, my gut instinct is to blame bad fiscal policy.

And there’s certainly plenty of evidence for that view. After all, taxes drive a huge wedge between pre-tax income and post-tax consumption. So there is not much incentive to be a productive member of society.

But it’s important to remember that fiscal policy is just one of the ways politicians can hurt an economy.

In an article for the Foundation for Economic Education, Michael Peterson explains how labor law is stifling job creation in the Spanish economy.

Spain doesn’t suffer from a labor shortage like in the United States, but something much worse—a sclerotic labor market marked by…Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) that constrains employers from hiring and firing workers. …These figures help explain the high unemployment rates observed in Spain over the past three…

Scales of Justice
[image credit: Wikipedia]
Climate lawfare draws a blank again. Exactly as the verdict says, such claims “invite the Court to venture beyond its sphere of competence.”
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The High Court has refused a renewed application from Plan B and three UK students for permission to apply for judicial review of the UK Government’s alleged failures to meet its climate change commitments, says Freshfields BD, noting the “insuperable problem” of trying to establish that such failures also violated the Claimants’ human rights.

Nature of the complaint

In this latest challenge, the Claimants called for a declaration that the Government’s alleged failures to take effective measures to meet their climate change commitments under the Paris Agreement and the Climate Change Act 2008 were in breach of the Human Rights Act 1998.

They also sought a mandatory order that the Government urgently implements a framework to meet…

Putin’s murderous assault on the people of Ukraine is a threat to peace and security worldwide. But someone also has to worry about the impact on the UK economy. The fallout should prompt a rethink of the response to the cost of living crisis and the tax hikes planned for April.

The catastrophe in Ukraine is potentially a game changer here, for two reasons. First, and most obviously, the increase in uncertainty adds to the downside risks to the recovery, particularly via the impact on energy prices.

This is still highly speculative. The prices of crude oil and natural gas soared after the invasion, but then fell back. Traders have been reassured that Western sanctions are targeting Russian banks and individuals, not energy suppliers.

In the meantime, the EU is continuing to buy large amounts of oil and gas from Russia – and the flow through Ukraine has actually increased…

This is the title to a paper in Historical Methodsthat I believe should convince you of two things. The first, and this applies to scholars in economic history, is that the journal Historical Methods is a highly interesting one. It tends to publish new and original work by economists, historians, sociologists and anthropologists who are well-versed in statistical analysis and data construction. The articles that get published there often offer a chance to discover solutions to longstanding problems through both interactions of different fields and the creation of new data.

The second is that it is becoming increasingly harder to hold the view that the industrial revolution was “a wash”. I described elsewhere this view of the industrial revolution as a wash as believing one or more of the following claims: “living standards did not increase for the poor; only the rich got richer; the cities were dirty…

At the NZ Economics Forum on Friday, Oliver Hartwich delivered a frank assessment of central agencies.

He asked why Treasury, the lead economic advisor to the government, is advertising senior economic analysis positions that require “good relationship skills” and “comfort working at pace” but not economics. He notes the Reserve Bank is giving senior appointments to people without relevant skills. Members of the Monetary Policy Committee must have no current or future research in monetary policy to avoid conflicts of interest. Oliver calls this ludicrous.

He asks what Treasury’s Living Standards Framework can do that cost-benefit analysis cannot. He calls the LSF a distraction. He wants rigour.

Oliver also calls out the Chair of the Productivity Commission for almost apologising for his organisation’s mission.

It is not a question of whether the next Global Financial Crisis will occur, says Oliver, but when. To get through the coming storms, our…

Americans fight – which is the only way to beat Big Wind and Big Solar when they’re threatening anyone’s backyard.

Over the last few years, American communities have banded together, got organised and lawyered up. The result is an enviable string of victories by which pro-community and pro-reliable energy groups have defeated the crony capitalists and subsidy seeking carpetbaggers hoping to use their victims’ taxes to help them destroy the fabric of American rural life.

Increasing opposition to having their landscape carpeted in 600-700 foot high wind turbines and endless seas of solar panels was inevitable.

If you only subscribe to the ‘renewables will save us’ mob however, you’d believe that all is well and there is no limit to the number of these things or solar panels that the American heartland will take. Well, that’s the propaganda from RE GHQ, anyway.

Robert Bryce has been following the backlash against…

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin
736 pages
Alfred A. Knopf
Published: April 2005

“American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin was published in 2005 and earned the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Bird is a journalist and author who has written several books including a recent biography of Jimmy Carter. Sherwin was a professor of history until his death in 2021.

Fascinated by the atomic age and nuclear proliferation, Sherwin began working on this book in the late 1970s…and eventually asked Bird for assistance bringing the project to fruition. Built on a foundation of extraordinary research, the authors combed through thousands of once-classified documents, conducted more than 100 interviews and reconstructed seemingly contradictory historical threads in order to fully understand how Oppenheimer’s story unfolded.

The resulting 591-page…

Sam Houston
by James L. Haley
544 pages
University of Oklahoma Press
Published: April 2002

James Haley’s 2002 biography “Sam Houston” examines the life of a fascinating figure in early Texas-American history. Haley is the author of 14 books, including both fiction and non-fiction. Among his recent publications are a history of Hawaii and a biography of Jack London.

Readers familiar with Texas history (or America’s westward expansion more generally) are likely to recognize Sam Houston (1793-1863). He left home as a teen to live with a tribe of Cherokee Indians – for three years. Later he managed Texas’s war for independence, was President of the Republic of Texas, served as a U.S. Senator and, finally, was elected governor.

His personal life was no less exciting. He was thrice married and his final bride – 26 years his junior – bore him eight children. If Houston himself…

Al Gore springs to mind when it comes to woke billionaires determined to wreck your living standards, while improving their very own.

But there are plenty of other well-connected rent-seekers around the globe with similar insidious ambitions.

As Australia blunders its way towards another Federal Election in May, a gaggle of particularly slimy crony capitalists have emerged, ready willing and able to steal your money and use it to destroy your way of life.

Whether it’s subsidies for overpriced all-electric vehicles – that will struggle to carry you between Australia’s capital cities without being forced to stop for an overnight recharge – or ensuring even more endless subsidies for wind turbines, solar panels and mega-batteries, these man-bunned corporate hipsters know a good scam, when they see one.

Characters like Mike Cannon-Brookes (pictured above), who wouldn’t know the difference between a megawatt and Megadeth, have weighed into Australia’s renewables-driven pricing and…

Today, I am pleased to welcome Carol McGrath to the blog to discuss Tudor hygiene as part of the Sex and Sexuality in Tudor England blog tour. I would like to thank Carol McGrath and Pen and Sword Books for allowing me to be part of this tour.

Did Tudors smell whiffy? Did they care about personal hygiene? It may surprise you that the Tudors cared about cleanliness despite the fact many did not bathe regularly. Henry VIII frequently took baths and had a new bathhouse constructed at Hampton Court for his personal use and a steam bath at Richmond Palace. This new bath was made of wood but lined with a linen sheet to protect his posterior from catching splinters. It was a marvellous feat of Tudor engineering and allowed water to flow into it from a tap fed by a lead pipe bringing water from a spring over…

Princess Alice of Battenberg (February 25, 1885 – December 5, 1969) was the mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II.

Alice was born in the Tapestry Room at Windsor Castle in Berkshire in the presence of her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. She was the eldest child of Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine.

Her mother was the eldest daughter of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, Queen Victoria’s second daughter. Her father was the eldest son of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine through his morganatic marriage to Countess Julia Hauke, who was created Princess of Battenberg in 1858 by Ludwig III, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine.

Alice’s three younger siblings, Louise, George, and Louis, later became Queen of Sweden, Marquess of Milford Haven…