Utopia, you are standing in it!

Introduction

I have chronicled several examples of scholarly inconsistency between how some academics cover and write about Harper versus Trudeau, The four most notable examples come down to the following: tactical prorogation, contempt of parliament, the caretaker convention and the appointment of Supreme Court Justices just before the writ, and, finally, on calling snap elections when the House of Commons has not first withdrawn its confidence from the government. I documented last year how the same scholars who launched incessant vituperations over Harper’s tactical prorogations in 2008 and 2009 remained silent or became far more measured and reasonable in response to Trudeau’s tactical prorogation in 2020. Some of the disparity in the coverage of Trudeau’s prorogation versus Harper’s and the House of Commons declaring the Trudeau government in contempt of parliament in 2021 versus the House of Commons declaring the Harper government in contempt of parliament in 2011 undoubtedly does…

Although climate scientists keep telling that defects in their “hockey stick” proxy reconstructions don’t matter – that it doesn’t matter whether they use data upside down, that it doesn’t matter if they cherry pick individual series depending on whether they go up in the 20th century, that it doesn’t matter if they discard series that don’t go the “right” way (“hide the decline”), that it doesn’t matter if they used contaminated data or stripbark bristlecones, that such errors don’t matter because the hockey stick itself doesn’t matter – the IPCC remains addicted to hockey sticks: lo and behold, Figure 1a of its newly minted Summary for Policy-makers contains what else – a hockey stick diagram. If you thought Michael Mann’s hockey stick was bad, imagine a woke hockey stick by woke climate scientists. As the climate scientists say, it’s even worse that we thought.

Curiously, this leading diagram of the…

Don Fairbrother: one of the victors.

No one has to suffer endless sleepless nights caused by wind turbines without redress or compensation. It’s the law.

On that score, a group of farmers has turned the tables on the wind farm operator who has been driving them mad since March 2015. Back then, Japan’s Mitsui and Co speared 52, 2 MW Senvion MM92 turbines into Victoria’s Bald Hills generating a cacophony of thumping, grinding soul destroying low-frequency noise.

The farmers surrounding the Bald Hills in Victoria’s Gippsland have been driven mad by wind turbine noise.

But they didn’t take it lying down.

Instead, they lawyered up. Engaging the feisty and tenacious Dominica Tannock.

Starting in April 2016, Dominica went after the South Gippsland Shire Council which, under the Victorian Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 has responsibility for investigating nuisance complaints and a statutory obligation to remedy all such complaints…

Ben Pile writes at Spiked Climate policy, not climate change, poses the biggest risk to our daily lives.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Firstly, Ben provides evidence for a reasonable person to conclude the weather and climate is doing nothing out of the ordinary.  Drawing on this year’s UK State of the Climate report:

But how significant are these changes really? Take, for example, the claim that the UK’s temperatures have increased. Leaving aside the possibility that land-use change thanks to the UK’s economic development might influence temperatures, the report offers this chart depicting 140 years of anomalies in UK and global annual temperatures:

Though the chart clearly shows that UK temperatures have risen, there is substantial year-to-year variability – far greater in the UK than for the world as a whole – that might make us wonder how impactful this extra warmth really is.

The point is…

Oozing sarcasm, I’ve asked whether Germany, Nigeria, Mexico, and Argentina are libertarian paradises.

But, according to this satirical video that I first shared ten years ago, there’s a real libertarian paradise in Somalia.

I will admit this is a very clever video. The cholera comment at the end was especially amusing (reminded me of the Ron Paul breakfast cereal).

Indeed, the video was one of the first selections for my libertarian humor page.

But is it true that Somalia is actually some sort of free-market paradise?

Have the warlords turned the Horn of Africa to a new version of what Hong Kong used to be?

That’s one of the implications of a recent report in the New York Times.

Authored by Jeffrey Gettleman, it paints a picture of a society that – if nothing else – is very resistant to taxes and organized…

Administration

After 1066, William did not attempt to integrate his separate domains into one unified realm or Kingdom with one set of laws. His seal from after 1066, of which six impressions still survive, was made for him after he conquered England and stressed his role as king, while separately mentioning his role as Duke. When in Normandy, William acknowledged that he owed fealty to the King of the Franks, but in England no such acknowledgment was made – further evidence that the various parts of William’s lands were considered separate.

The administrative machinery of Normandy, England, and Maine continued to exist separate from the other lands, with each one retaining its own forms. For example, England continued the use of writs, which were not known on the continent. Also, the charters and documents produced for the government in Normandy differed in formulas from those produced in England.

In common…

After the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 Louis XVI eventually became a constitutional monarch. However, Louis’s conservatism and belief in the divine right of kings made that possibility that a Constitutional Monarchy in France would be successful, less and less a possibility.

Louis XVI, King of France & Navarre

The other monarchies of Europe looked with concern upon the developments in France, and considered whether they should intervene, either in support of Louis XVI or to take advantage of the chaos in France. The key figure was Marie-Antoinette’s brother, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. Initially, he had looked on the Revolution with equanimity. However, he became more and more disturbed as it became more and more radical. Despite this, he still hoped to avoid war.

Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor

Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia

In the summer of 1792 Emperor Leopold II and King…

I took this photo in June 2013 when I visited Government House in Victoria. The grounds host an array of beautiful gardens, which Victoria’s mild oceanic climate sustains year round.

The Vote in the Legislative Assembly

At around 5:30 Pacific Daylight Time on 29 June 2017, the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia carried New Democratic Party leader John Horgan’s motion of non-confidence and thereby defeated the Clark Ministry, by a vote of 44 New Democratic and Green MLAs to 42 Liberal MLAs.[1]

2  Mr. Horgan to move in amendment, seconded by Ms. Furstenau —

Be it resolved that the motion “We, Her Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia in Session assembled, beg leave to thank Your Honour for the gracious Speech which Your Honour has addressed to us at the opening of the present Session,” be amended by adding the following:

“but Her Honour’s present…

For the last eight years or so, I have stated in numerous blog posts, presentations at conferences, my thesis, and several journal articles the basic precepts of the established constitutional position of the governors and prime ministers under Responsible Government. Namely, governors can only reject a premier’s constitutional advice under exceptional circumstances precisely because of the exceptional consequences that this exercise of discretion causes: that the prime minister whose advice the governor rejected must resign or be dismissed from office, and that the governor must then appoint a new ministry which can take responsibility for the dismissal of its predecessor and command the confidence of the elected assembly.

Contrary to what the reactions of most academics and journalists in the late 2000s and early 2010s would suggest, this viewpoint…

Not cool: never reliable & hopeless in icy winter weather.

A changing climate’s said to justify massive subsidies to wind turbines and solar panels, but they’re as useless in frigid weather as they are when the mercury soars.

The northern hemisphere turns on bitter winters – getting wind turbines and solar panels to turn on in the midst of one, is another matter.

Last nothern winter, freezing Germans, desperate for coal-fired power, were forced to have a good, hard think about their obsession with ‘green’ energy.

During the first half of 2021, Germany’s wind power output plummeted by more than 20%, whereas its coal-fired power generators pumped up their output by a whopping 38% over the same period. [Note to Ed: you could probably point out that one hinges on the weather, and the other doesn’t].

Freezing Americans have already had a taste of their wind and…

While the PM and her team were setting out their programme to reconnect us with the rest of the world, Amazon was advising the government of its plans to pull the plug  – both from our film-making facilities and from the government’s generous subsidies.

And whereas yesterday’s “Latest from the Beehive” posts included two speeches and a press statement on (eventually) the reopening of our borders, today’s posts include news of the Government’s response to Amazon’s withdrawal.

Amazon’s decision was reported more than 12 hours ago by The Guardian (which wasn’t necessarily the first to break the news).

Amazon has made the surprise decision to move production of its $1bn-plus Lord of the Rings series from New Zealand to the UK, rejecting tens of millions of dollars in incentives to shoot the TV show in the same location as the blockbuster films.

And:

The government was informed of Amazon’s decision…

By Paul Homewood

Statistician Dr. Matt Briggs on IPCC report: “You can never be fired for being wrong in the right direction. The Experts making statements about how dire the climate is have been wrong for decades, and they are still wrong in their sparkling new IPCC Climate Assessment Report 6 released Monday. Now, as then, they warn that “extremes” are on their way. They haven’t got here yet, but they’re coming. They’re always coming.” … Or they have got here, but you need to have the kind of specialized training mentioned above to recognize them.

The difference between AR6, and ARs 1-5, is not so much in the kind of errors made, for these haven’t changed at all, but in the certainty expressed in them. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that somebody did a “Find & Replace” of every instance of “very likely” in AR5 and changed…

My opening remarks to the Environment Committee this morning on the Natural and Built Environments bill, which will replace the RMA:

Any planning system must allow trade-offs between competing outcomes.

Property rights confront owners with some but not all of these trade-offs.

The reforms should be based on understanding which trade-offs the planning system needs to solve, who is best placed to make decisions, and how.

This bill proposes the Minister for the Environment can decide everything using regulation.

This is not a credible approach. With the best will, the Minister cannot deliver a framework which makes sense of so much complexity. Decisions should be devolved to the lowest level, and with checks and balances, which regulation does not do.

The main goal of these reforms should be to improve housing affordability. The RMA has substantially contributed to the housing crisis. Quite simply, the new system must make it easier…