Utopia, you are standing in it!

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…

Phurichai Rungcharoenkitkul of BIS in this paper gives an assessment:

This article provides an interim assessment of the macroeconomic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. Estimates suggest a median output loss of about 6.5% in 2020, a gap that is expected to narrow to around 4% of the pre-pandemic trend by the end of 2021. There is however a high dispersion of economic losses across economies, reflecting varying exposures to the pandemic and societies’ responses. High-frequency indicators and epidemiological models provide some insights into the interactions between the evolution of the pandemic and societies’ strategies for combating it, including the role of vaccination. The article draws lessons from experiences thus far and discusses challenges ahead.

In a related voxeu piece, Jean-Charles Bricongne and Baptiste Meunier point to five best policies to fight the pandemic

Greenpeace recently objected to the Philippine government’s recent approval for the country’s farmers to grow genetically modified golden rice. The rice variant will contain enough Vitamin A and beta-carotene that can feed andmnourish starving children in poverty that lack those vital nutrients.

Greenpeace, on the other hand, has long been involved in campaigns to demonize and slander any form of genetically modified foods. Consequently, people starve or even die because of the group’s opposition to GMO foods that give people the food they need to live. This PBS Newshour report from 2014 gives a very good overview of the controversy.

PHOTO CREDIT: Golden rice as compared to white rice. By International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) – https://www.flickr.com/photos/ricephotos/5516789000/in/set-72157626241604366, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14908001

I have seen the following figures at three different places this morning under three different posters and while it is very definitely possible that they all stem from the same source – in fact I know they do because these figures are said to be Labour internal polling – they are well worth further publication. Date of the poll is not known but I think I read somewhere that the main parties poll weekly so they are probably fairly current and later than the last Roy Morgan and Reid polls.

Labour 38

National 31

ACT 13

Green 8

NZ First 4 – Lazarus stirs again.

No mention of any other parties.

The removal of Winston Churchill from the public area of Parliament Buildings and Mallard sounding off about the Hurricanes owner can only help a worthy cause.

I bet the language on the 9th floor is colourful and I cannot…

Eric Hobsbawm (1917 to 2012) was one of Britain’s leading Marxist historians. Of Jewish parentage he spent his boyhood in Vienna and Berlin during the rise of the Nazis. With Hitler’s accession to power in 1933, the family moved to Britain in 1933, although his Wikipedia page is at pains to point out that, because his father was originally from London’s East End, he had always had British citizenship. Hobsbawm excelled at school and went to Cambridge where he joined the communist party in 1936.

Twenty-two when the Second World War broke out, Hobsbawm served in the Royal Engineers and the Army Educational Corps, though he was prevented from serving overseas due to his communist beliefs. In 1947 he got his first job as a lecturer in history at Birkbeck College, University of London, the start of a long and very successful career as a historian, which included stints teaching…

A superb interview of Daron Acemoglu of MIT. He picks 5 books on the subject (4 books and one paper actually).

His first pick is a book called  The Race between Education and Technology By Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz. The books explains how does inequality arise: