Utopia, you are standing in it!

The years from 1939 to 1945 may well have seen the most profound and concentrated upheaval of humanity since the Black Death. Not since the fourteenth century had so many people been killed or displaced, disturbed, uprooted, or had their lives completely transformed in such a short space of time. The years at the very end of the war, and immediately following it, once more illustrated the old adage that it is quite possible to win the war and lose the peace.

The areas where the war was actually fought lay in ruins. Northern France, the Low Countries, the great sweep of the North German Plain, and a wide swath running all the way to Moscow and Stalingrad lay devastated. In the countryside it was not so bad; targets had been fewer, and there were substantial areas that had been bypassed by the fighting. The farther back in the country…

Could Parliament pass a law that all blue-eyed babies be murdered?  This was the hypothetical question posed by Stephen in the Science of Ethics, quoted by AV Dicey in the Introduction to the Study of The Constitution.  Dicey agreed with the answer that “legislators must go mad before they could pass such a law, and subjects be idiotic before they could submit to it”.

But what if Parliament passed a law that if a blue-eyed baby was murdered, there could be: no civil case against the murderer; no inquest into the circumstances of the death; no prosecution of the murderer; and there could not even be a police investigation? What if Parliament went even further and passed a law that: all current civil cases on this point must cease instantly; all current inquests be stopped; existing prosecutions must be discontinued; and existing investigations must end? Would we likewise agree…

No, this is not a paper on covid rule-breaking by UK ministers.  Instead it analyses the judgment of 20^th December 2021 in Re Napier, on what happens when Northern Ireland ministers refuse to comply with their legal duties.  The particular duty was the duty to participate in meetings of the North-South Ministerial Council (the NSMC).    Given that the Democratic Unionist Party ministers had already been found to be acting unlawfully by failing to participate, what would happen when the case came back before the court, and the court was asked to order them to stop acting unlawfully?

Facts

Part V of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 sets out various duties of the First Minister and deputy First Minister (of Northern Ireland) in relation to meetings of the NSMC. The NSMC essentially provides a venue for discussion of matters where the government of Northern Ireland and the government of…

“Ought we to be drunk every night?” Sebastian asked one morning.
“Yes, I think so.”
“I think so too.”
(Charles and Sebastian as students discuss their drinking habits in Brideshead Revisited)

Brideshead Revisited is probably Evelyn Waugh’s most famous novel, simply because of the huge success of the 1981 ITV dramatisation. Which is ironic, because there’s a strong case for arguing that Brideshead is the least representative of Waugh’s works.

It’s also odd that it’s so popular, considering it amounts to a prolonged description of the destructive effects of alcoholism, the bitterness of adultery and infidelity, and a sustained account of one of the most dysfunctional families in literature.

Brideshead Revisited is divided into five sections: a short prologue (13 pages) and even shorter epilogue (6 pages) and 3 long central parts which each cover a distinct period in the characters’ lives. At 331 pages in the Penguin paperback…

How do you know when a wind developer’s goon is lying to you? His lips are moving.

Riding roughshod over rural communities is just another day at the office for wind power outfits; lies, bullying and deceit are their tools of trade.

When these characters turn up and start spruiking tall tales about wonderful wind and the thousands of jobs that will soon emerge like mushrooms in a forest, it’s not long before community members wake up and move to a war footing.

Peaceful and prosperous rural communities, like Stanley on Tasmania’s north coast, are not prepared to become the wind industry’s next victims.

Adding to their long list of well justified grievances, is the fact that Epuron – the foreign owned outfit with plans to carpet their countryside with Chinese-made wind turbines – has been telling lies about the basis for land use option agreements being dangled in front…

While creating the graph that I used in previous post, I noticed something that I expected for a long time. Remember, my graph was a recreation of this graph showing the sorted daily contribution of solar and wind in the Netherlands:

It shows that the lowest daily production of solar and wind between January 1 and November 16 was measured on November 16. When I was creating my graph depicting the Belgian sorted daily contribution, I found that the lowest production of solar and wind in Belgium over the same period was also November 16. That should not have come as a surprise, Belgium and the Netherlands are neighboring countries.

That November 16 date was not the only date that appeared in that original graph. Besides November 16 (lowest production) there are also July 29 (highest production) and August 2 (in between). That made me wonder whether those two other…

In the abstract, the ‘inevitable transition’ to an all wind and sun-powered future is easy, the kicker comes when reality bites; the sun sets and calm weather sets in.

The Greeks, like the Germans, have been talking long and loud about killing off every last one of their coal-fired power plants, denigrating them as “dirty”, evil polluting monsters. All the while promising that sunshine and breezes will readily fill the void.

Like the Germans, Greeks have found that all the cheap talk about wind and solar replacing coal, is just that.

In the first part of 2021, German wind power output plummeted by more than 20%, while at the same time Germany’s coal-fired power generators increased output by a whopping 38%. This is in a country where coal-fired power is meant to be as dead as the dodo.

The writing was on the wall when Germany mandated the shutdown of…

Returning from the Third Crusade, bad weather forced King Richard I of England’s ship to put in at Corfu, in the lands of Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelos, who objected to Richard’s annexation of Cyprus, formerly Byzantine territory. Disguised as a Knight Templar, Richard sailed from Corfu with four attendants, but his ship was wrecked near Aquileia, forcing Richard and his party into a dangerous land route through central Europe.

On his way to the territory of his brother-in-law Heinrich XII the Lion, Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, Richard was captured December 20, 1192 near Vienna by Leopold V, Duke of Austria, (member of the House of Babenberg) who accused Richard of arranging the murder of his cousin Conrad of Montferrat. Moreover, Richard had personally offended Leopold by casting down his standard from the walls of Acre.

Tomb of Richard I the Lion Heart, King of England

Leopold kept Richard…

Hardly anyone in Britain is talking about wind power as a serious generation source, anymore. Total collapses in wind power output that lasted for days and even weeks, starting back in September, put paid to that kind of loose chatter.

Instead, Brits appear to have been struck with the stark realisation that their power generation capacity is all sizzle and no steak. Which, with another bitter winter ahead, is a matter of deadly concern.

Over reliance on wind power and the massive subsidies thrown in its direction, has led to a steady decline in reliable generation capacity, made evident by the Big Calm. Repeated and lengthy wind power failures have led to fast talk from Boris Johnson about getting nuclear power generation back on the books. However, as Andrew Montford details below, thanks to civil service red tape and typical Sir Humphrey-like bureaucratic bungling, it will be years before Britain…

Introduction

Australia and the UK signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on December 17, 2021 (an in principle agreement had been announced in June 2021). This FTA will drastically reduce tariffs on a number of Australian exports to the UK and reduce duties on a number of British commodities to Australia. Significantly, it will also make it easier for both Australian and British workers to work in each other’s countries under the working holiday scheme (WHS).

According to estimates of the British government, the FTA could increase trade between the United Kingdom and Australia by approximately $19 billion “in the long run” while the UK’s GDP may increase by about $4.2 billion by 2035.

There are some important provisions which could benefit workers from both countries. Firstly, in an important step, both countries have increased the working holiday visa’s eligible age to 35. What is especially significant is that there is…

As international criticism mounts, Auckland University’s Vice-Chancellor pledges a symposium next year to debate the role of Māori knowledge in science education. Graham Adams suggests a public apology to the seven professors would show this is more than a PR exercise.  

Reading the statement last week by Dawn Freshwater announcing a symposium to be held next year to debate the relationship between mātauranga Māori and science, it was hard not to feel at least a little sceptical about her new-found enthusiasm for free speech.

After all, in late July the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Auckland effectively hung seven professors from her own university out to dry soon after their letter “In Defence of Science” was published in the Listener.

The professors’ 300-word letter was written in response to plans to include mātauranga Māori in the school science curriculum and to give it equal standing with “Western/Pakeha epistemologies” —…