Utopia, you are standing in it!

Next week MPs debate the government’s bill to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. One argument frequently deployed for scrapping the Act is that it generated gridlock over Brexit. But, Meg Russell argues, no clear counterfactual to support this claim has ever been presented. In fact, when considering the possible scenarios, it seems likely that the situation would have been made worse, not better, had the Prime Minister retained an untrammelled prerogative power to dissolve parliament in 2017–19.

Next week MPs debate the remaining stages of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill, which seeks to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA). It proposes to reinstate the pre-FTPA position, whereby the Prime Minister would effectively control general election timing using prerogative power. A key argument deployed by those seeking repeal of the FTPA is that it helped to cause the Brexit deadlock of 2019: that the FTPA, as…

Taxi Driver (1976) Director: Martin Scorsese

“You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Well, then who the hell else are you talking – You talking to me? Well, I’m the only one here.“

★★★★☆

In a depraved, morally ambiguous, post-Vietnam War New York City we are introduced to Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a veteran suffering from PTSD. He is isolated, lonely, empty, likely racist, and an insomniac -he visits porn shops and takes a job driving a taxi. We see him perhaps akin to a Holden Caulfield-esque character. Everywhere he goes in a busy world of urban decay he is surrounded by people but fundamentally he is alone. An odd mix of passengers ride in his taxi, including Director Martin Scorsese himself, who plays a vengeful husband planning to kill his wife. Travis also meets a charismatic politician named Senator Palantine, and…

How the Irish Saved Civilization was a bestselling book in the mid-1990s.

Today, we’re going to consider an updated version, focusing on whether Ireland can save the world economy from Joe Biden’s plan for a global tax cartel.

This should be a slam-dunk issue. Ireland transformed itself from “The Sick Man of Europe” to the “Celtic Tiger” in part by adopting a 12.5 percent corporate tax rate.

How much of a tiger? Look at this data comparing per-capita gross domestic product in Ireland and France.

For what it’s worth, the Maddison data on gross domestic product makes Ireland look richer than it actually is (a result driven by largely by all the corporate activity).

So I also used World Bank data on gross national income to create a chart that tells a similar story, but with numbers that presumably are a closer match to actual economic conditions.

The bottom…

The news that the number of people working on zero-hours contracts has risen to a new record high has prompted fresh calls for a ban. If you’re employed on one of these contracts and like it, tough. How on earth did we come to this?

To recap, a ‘zero-hours contract’ is simply a form of employment that does not guarantee a certain amount of work every week. Casual labour is of course nothing new, and at least part of the longer-term growth in the number of people saying they are on ‘zero-hours contracts’ probably reflects increased familiarity with the new term.

This flexibility is good for employers because it allows them to match supply to fluctuating demand, especially in sectors such as health and social work, education, hospitality, or delivery driving, where demand can be erratic.

However, this flexibility is also welcomed by many employees. People do not have…

By the time of Emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305), the idea that the Roman Empire had grown so large that it would be better managed by two co-ruling emperors, rather than one, had become established. After various divisions were made throughout the 4th century, the empire was firmly and permanently divided into a western and eastern sphere of imperial administration from the death of emperor Theodosius I (r. 379–395) in 395 onwards.

Though modern historians typically use the terms Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire to describe the new political situation, the Romans themselves never considered the empire to have been formally divided, still viewing it as a single unit, although most often having two rulers rather than one. Over the course of the 5th century, the western empire experienced a period of catastrophic decline. Not only were many of the rulers in the west generally lacking in competence, but…

Image credit: autocarbrands.com

Climate lawfare is bound to get more popular if it’s seen that courts are willing to believe IPCC theories of how the global climate works. But that smacks of presumption of guilt, with carbon dioxide as the offender, surely?
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German environmental groups on Friday announced a legal offensive against car giants Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW to force them to reduce emissions faster, emboldened by recent court victories in favour of climate protection, reports Phys.org.

Greenpeace Germany and Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) said they have sent a claim letter to the three carmakers asking them to commit to more ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions, including ending production of fossil-fuel cars by 2030.

If they do not respond to the letter in the coming weeks and halt their “illegal behaviour”, the NGOs said they are ready to file lawsuits in court.

The best discussion comes from Josh Blackman’s article at Newsweek The Supreme Court Could Not ‘Block’ Texas’ Fetal Heartbeat Law | Opinion. Josh Blackman is a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston and the co-author of An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know. He explains why the ruling is more about overinflated expectations of judicial authority than about the issue of abortion itself.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in a challenge to S.B. 8, Texas’ new abortion law. This unique statute empowers private citizens to sue those who perform or facilitate abortions. President Biden ripped the 5-4 decision, charging that the conservative justices followed “procedural complexities” “rather than use its supreme authority to ensure justice.”

© Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images A person walks on the steps of the U.S…

It won’t be quite like September, 2005, back when the virtual orchard was just a sapling, but somewhat like that September sixteen years ago featured several interesting elections, this month also looks great for election watchers.

In September, 2005, we had elections in three major examples of mixed-member systems: Japan, New Zealand, and Germany. (As I look back, I see I wrote several times about Afghanistan’s election that month; I am guessing there will no longer be a need for new Afghanistan elections plantings. I also see lost of posts about a hurricane disaster in New Orleans. Some things do recur, though fortunately in this case not on as horrific a scale, though bad enough.)

In September, 2021, we have the California recall. I don’t have anything at the moment to say about that beyond what I’ve already said. We have Germany, again, with its general election on…

Working for King Leopold, 1879 to 1885

The biggest blot on Stanley’s reputation is that he devoted the longest single part of his working life to working for King Leopold II of Belgium helping to map out and establish the core infrastructure for what would become the notorious Congo Free State. This was the enormous area, corresponding to the modern Democratic Republic of Congo, which Leopold managed to get assigned to his own personal rule at the Congress of Berlin in 1885. Leopold posed as a great philanthropist, a promoter of civilisation and Christianity and doughty abolisher of the widespread Arab slave trade which Stanley and all the other explorers had discovered.

It took until the late 1890s for news to leak out of the atrocities Belgian soldiers and overseers were committing on the native population, which slowly brewed up into an international scandal, which led Leopold to hand over…