Utopia, you are standing in it!

In this post I argue, with reference to Privacy International, that the nature of legislation as a speech act entails that the tension between parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law is not as profound as is often thought.

In Privacy International the Supreme Court was tasked with interpreting s.67(8) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which provides:

Except to such extent as the Secretary of State may by order otherwise provide, determinations, awards, orders and other decisions of the Tribunal (including decisions as to whether they have jurisdiction) shall not be subject to appeal or be liable to be questioned in any court.

My aim here is not to argue in favour of a particular interpretation of s.67(8), but rather to explore some of the ‘meta-issues’ thrown up by Privacy International, specifically concerning legislative intention and parliamentary sovereignty. I shall stress a point that…

Commenting on the New Zealand approach to coronavirus Aussie Prime Minister Morrison told Britain’s Financial Times, “This is not seen to be in our view a wise trade-off in how we manage the two crises we are facing: the economic one and, of course, the health one.”

Now it was established in previous two posts that the Hornsdale Power Reserve did surprisingly little to avert a frequency drop caused by a 560 MW capacity loss (contrary to what was suggested in the RenewEconomy article), the focus of this post will be on how the message was brought. Knowing how little the battery actually did, then how on earth could Giles Parkinson paint it as if something extraordinary had happened? This post will explain how this is done.

Let’s start with the title:

Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units after Loy Yang trips

The proverb is “Generals are always fighting the last war,” and its origin is uncertain. One possibility is a quote from Winston Churchill: “It is a joke in Britain to say that the War Office is always preparing for the last war.” 1948 Winston S. Churchill _The Second World War_ I (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985) 426:

Konrad Lorenz demonstrated how imprinting works upon animal behavior, while military historians have reported how powerfully human social animals are influenced by the past and instilled lessons from others.

Austria – 20th century. Animal behaviourist Konrad Lorenz and mallard goslings

Which brings me to these reflections about the current WuHanFlu outbreak. The chart at the top summarizes our received epidemiological wisdom about the danger of viruses according to the dimensions of deadliness and contagiousness. As the diagram shows, extremely deadly viruses tend to kill their hosts too quickly to be transmitted widely. Conversely, a…

Economist Bryan Caplan debated another socialist recently on capitalism vs. socialism. He posted his opening statement here. In that blog post he linked to his previous debates on socialism and I noticed he debated Elizabeth Bruenig two years ago. That name is familiar to me (or actually not that familiar because she got married and changed her last name) because years ago I engaged her in a debate in the comments section of her blog (if I recall correctly). Unfortunately, she blocked me ¯_(ツ)_/¯. She was coming at socialism from a Christian perspective and it lead me to write this blog post: Was Jesus A Socialist?

It didn’t take them long. The climate cult has hijacked the COVID-19 crisis, demanding more subsidies for wind and solar. Apparently, more windmills and solar panels will operate like some kind of collective vaccine against the coronavirus.

Never mind that the worst affected COVID-19 victims need to be admitted to ICUs and hooked up to ventilators, which require electricity delivered 24 x 7, irrespective of the weather and time of day.

Hiding behind the pasty faced weather-worriers are a band of cynical and opportunistic renewable energy rent seekers who have turned night into day, with demands for more taxpayer support for already heavily subsidised and forever chaotically intermittent wind and solar.

‘Audacity’ doesn’t really cover it, as Alan Moran reports below.

Green Snouts Sniff a COVID Windfall
Quadrant
Alan Moran
16 April 2020

The Pope, deprived of the counsel of Cardinal Pell, the Church’s most astute voice, foolishly called coronavirus…

Lost Viking ‘highway’ revealed by melting ice | Nat Geo

 “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know,
it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”
– Mark Twain

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H/t @WEschenbach

THE post title is obviously a parody. However, it happens to be a factual one, albeit politically incorrect.

OUR very ‘warm’ friends at National Geographic have inadvertently proven the Medieval Warm Period that existed a mere ~1000 years ago. An inconvenient period known as a “climate optimum” that ClimateChange™️ and National Geographic have spent so much currency, propaganda and magazine paper, ‘denying’.

Climate Change Myths: Sorting Fact from Fiction | Nat Geo

Climate Change Myths: Sorting Fact from Fiction | Nat Geo

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*Nat Geo has deleted the “continue reading this myth” link. So, you will have to imagine what they would have gone on to say. Not hard…