Utopia, you are standing in it!

The only way for communities to beat wind power outfits is to get organised and fight, like fury. Knowing the tricks of your opponent’s subsidy-fuelled trade helps, too. Which is the very reason for this site. The first insight to grasp is the wind industry is not there to help you; it’s there to destroy you, your home, your family, your community.

Rural communities are sick and tired of being treated as wind industry roadkill, and that includes the nomadic Sami – who graze and herd reindeer across northern Europe’s frozen tundra, ranging across the north of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula.

The fact that chaotically intermittent wind power can’t be delivered as and when power consumers need it means the wanton destruction of pristine wilderness, bucolic landscapes, rural communities, and millions of birds and bats (including plenty of species on the brink of extinction) is pretty hard…

This week, we have seen the departure of a disgraced, self-serving petulant bully who left executive office with one last closing salvo of bitter recrimination and disavowal of personal responsibility for having created a toxic, dysfunctional workplace that showed absurdly high levels of turnover and waves of mass resignations.

And we also witnessed President Trump leaving the White House one last time.

Julie Payette marked her tenure as Governor General of Canada by oscillating between long bouts of lassitude punctuated by periods of immense controversy and heightened media scrutiny. Payette melted down Rideau Hall into a toxic workplace, systematically drove out the most experienced staff, and reduced those who remained to quotidian bouts of tears of frustration.

One of the most dynamic queens in 16th century Europe who spent most of her youth in a country that was not her homeland, but was fighting for the right to rule England. Her name was Mary Queen of Scots, the cousin of Queen Elizabeth I. Many know of her tragic tale, but there was a man who was behind the scenes trying to guide Scotland to a brighter future. He was not married to Mary Queen of Scots, but he was influential in her life and choosing who she might marry and who she would end up divorcing. He was a politician and a religious reformer whose decisions would alter history dramatically. His name was William Maitland and he served as Mary’s secretary. He is always mentioned as a footnote in history, until now. Robert Stedall’s latest biography, “Mary Queen of Scots’ Secretary: William Maitland- Politician, Reformer, and Conspirator”…

Sinking of the Linda Blanche out of Liverpool by Willy Stöwer

But by August 1916, when the greater part of the High Seas Fleet was ready fix sea again, nothing had occurred on either side that made a decisive battle more likely to take place. This was confirmed when, with a somewhat hollow show of bravado, Scheer ventured to demonstrate to the world that ‘the enemy must be on the watch for attacks by our Fleet’. On 19 August the High Seas Fleet with eighteen dreadnoughts and its only two serviceable battle-cruisers came out with the intention of effecting the aborted pre-Jutland raid on Sunderland in association with U-boat traps.

Again, Room 40 did not let down Jellicoe who was again at sea to meet Scheer before he had left harbour himself, this time well covered by scouting Zeppelins. The two Fleets were never in serious risk of making contact…

To anyone who accepts Britain’s parliamentary sovereignty, Brexit should not make sense. How could a nation committed to parliamentary rule find itself bound by a consultative referendum’s result? And after the majority of Parliament had repeatedly opposed Brexit!  

In “From Earl Grey to Boris Johnson: Brexit and the Anglo-American Constitutional Model,” I reveal that Brexit does not shatter longstanding grand British constitutional traditions and violate parliamentary sovereignty, because Britain has, in fact, been operating under a popular sovereignty model since 1832. This model requires the People’s, and not just Parliament’s, consent as prerequisite for constitutional change. It demonstrates that Brexit is an organic outcome of Britain’s historical commitment to the People’s will.

Before 1832, the Lords indirectly controlled the House of Commons’ composition. They opposed the Great Reform Act’s adoption to preserve this control but lost the battle. From that point on, British constitutional history splits into three…

Corporation tax hikes are apparently back on the agenda for the March Budget, with the Financial Timessuggesting that the Chancellor believes it would be fair to ask businesses for more after taxpayer support during pandemic. This argument might score a few points with focus groups and play well on social media, but it is still poor economics.

For a start, there is no immediate need for tax rises of any kind. The UK economy has held up better than expected over the last few months and the early rollout of the Covid vaccines should contribute to a strong recovery from the third nationwide lockdown. This in turn will do far more good for the public finances than any fiddling with tax rates.

Government borrowing will fall sharply as the economy rebounds. In the meantime, the increase in debt is cheap and easy to finance, and the financial markets…

Among the most charitable observers of English history, Henry VI has been judged a gentle and pious king who was sadly unfit for the kingship of England, however even a cursory reading of history shows Henry to be nothing other than a failure: a feeble-minded simpleton and a weakling who was physically incapable of carrying out even the most elementary duties of his station. He was certainly not a great military leader like his father, Henry V, and his legacy was forever stained by the loss of English imperial lands in France. Henry’s reign was also egregiously marred by widespread popular unrest and growing factionalism at his court, all of which culminated in the destructive civil war later known as “The War of the Roses.”

Henry was a deeply pious man; well-educated, gentle, and infirm. He was tall, slender, and something of a religious scholar -he founded Eton College and…

In 2011, Erica Chenowethand Maria Stephanpublished a groundbreaking study on civil resistance, Why Civil Resistance Works, the strategic logic of nonviolent conflict.While the prevailing view is that the most effective means of waging political struggle entails violence, they found that civil resistance campaigns were more than twice as successful in achieving their objectives than violent campaigns. They examined 323 nonviolent and violent campaigns between 1900-2006, involving more than 1,000 people, and that related to a country’s secession, overthrow of a dictatorship or removal of a foreign occupation. They also explore four case studies: Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories.

Another interesting outcome of their study is that the governments of countries where the peaceful resistance took place were far more likely to become or remain stable democracies afterward. The book won several prizes including the 2012 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for best book published in…

Is Germany about to revoke or modify its provision on “overhang” seats? Evidently there has been a Constitutional Court finding today against the current practice, ((I vaguely recall someone might have mentioned this case in another thread here.)) and there is now a debate about how to respond.

All I know at this point is a not-very-detailed story from The Montreal Gazette that Rob Richie of The Center for Voting and Democracy sent me. (Thanks, Rob!) Here are some excerpts, with the usual journalese about “complex” electoral systems.

Germany’s highest court declared the country’s complex electoral law unconstitutional Wednesday and ordered for it to be overhauled before the next general election…

The current voting system was passed only last year by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition in an attempt to satisfy previous criticism by the Federal constitutional Court.

…the constitutional court again criticized that parties which win more seats than…

According to the latest official data, the UK has seen a much larger fall in GDP during the pandemic than almost any country in Europe. The worst hit economies are actually Greece and Spain. But the UK appears to have suffered much more than France, Germany, Italy, or Sweden. This needs some explaining.

Let’s deal first with differences in how GDP is measured – and especially the impact of the pandemic on the output of the public sector. I first blogged about this back in August and David Smith was kind enough to quote me at the time. Mike Haynes was also one of the first to explore these issues and continues to do excellent work here. More recently, Ed Conway has picked up on this too.

In short, UK statisticians have put a lot more effort into estimating how much activity actually took place in sectors such as public…