Utopia, you are standing in it!

Parliamentary scrutiny is essential to checking and legitimising government decisions. But the coronavirus crisis, during which government has been granted unprecedented powers, creates obvious challenges for parliament. Ruth Fox and Meg Russell argue that parliamentary change during the crisis must follow three core principles: first, parliament should go virtual insofar as possible; second, it should adapt its procedures accordingly, prioritising the most critical business; third, decisions about these changes should be open and consultative — to avoid the risk of a government power grab — should be strictly time-limited, and be kept under regular review.

Parliament has an essential role as the guardian of our democracy. But the coronavirus pandemic poses a huge and unprecedented challenge: how can parliamentarians conduct their core constitutional duties of holding the government to account, assenting to finance, passing legislation, and representing their constituents, when we are all required to adopt rigorous social distancing and…

Bottom line: It is normal for the US government to develop its own disease testing under CDC. Experts in CDC are typically very good at it. But in the case of coronavirus, the US government developed a flawed test, creating lengthy delays in testing and in parallel left obstacles in place that would have shortened the delay. Meanwhile, U.S. government officials have repeatedly misled the public and policy makers. In total, more than 8 weeks were lost due to policy failure. This post explains and documents this remarkable policy failure.

The Treasury this morning released a report to the Minister of Finance offering several scenarios for how the economy might develop over the next few years.  Before getting into the substance, there are a few points worth noting:

• these are not forecasts, but are best seen as conditional projections (mostly on unchanged macro policy –  fiscal and monetary –  and then various different assumptions about the extent of the (a) the policy restrictions, and (b) the state of the world economy,
• note that “unchanged fiscal policy” here includes the fact that the current wage subsidy scheme expires in June (in fact, much of what will be paid has already been paid, since it is a lump-sum scheme from government to firms),
• two of the scenarios allow for some fairly significant additional government spending,
• none of the scenarios seems to explore different assumptions about the how the private sector responds (all…

Ross McKitrick has an engaging presentation of the Hockey Stick Debate presented on April 4, 2005. Here is the abstract:

The hockey stick debate is about two things. At a technical level it concerns a well-known study that characterized the state of the Earth’s climate over the past thousand years and seemed to prove a recent and unprecedented global warming. I will explain how the study got the results it did, examine some key flaws in the methodology and explain why the conclusions are unsupported by the data. At the political level the emerging debate is about whether the enormous international trust that has been placed in the IPCC was betrayed. The hockey stick story reveals that the IPCC allowed a deeply flawed study to dominate the Third Assessment Report, which suggests the possibility of bias in the Report-writing process. In view of the massive global influence of IPCC Reports…

The Great Surge, Steven Radelet, 2015

The proportion of countries living in extreme poverty has fallen from 42% in 1993 to juts 17% in 2011. The opening of China accounts for a large share of the change, but  the fall also affects dozens of countries in every region of the world (sample of 109 developing countries with population greater than 1 million is considered)

People in developing countries have incomes today that are nearly double those of their parents 2 decades ago.

People born in developing countries live 1/3 longer than they did 20 years ago.

In 1980, only half of the girls enrolled and completed primary education. Today 4 out 5 are.

In 1983, 17 countries had democracies. By 2013 the number had tripled to 56.Violence decline sharply. Since 1980, incidence of civil war in developing countries has been cut by half. Battle deaths in war have…

Every era has them, the operators, the scoundrels, the opportunists. Turbulence breeds these people. One of history`s most interesting operators was Talleyrand, who through a combination of political savvy, advantageous connections, unscrupulousness, intelligence, and being in the right place at the right time, held positions of authority in the ancien regime, Revolutionary government, the Napoleonic government, and the Bourbon Restoration. Eventually, he became so good that he made people believe that France could not be governed without him.

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was born to an aristocratic family in Paris in 1754. He was born with a congenital leg ailment, which prohibited him from entering the army, so he entered the priesthood. Not the priesthood priesthood with all that celibacy and poverty and everything, but the aristocratic priesthood with good food and congenial ladies. He would eventually, through family connections become the agent-general of the Clergy, the political representative of…

Last Sunday, the Queen spoke to the nation in a rare televised address. The speech was widely praised, and several other European monarchs have made similar attempts to connect with the public. Bob Morris and Robert Hazell argue that her intervention demonstrates the value of an apolitical head of state that remains compatible with modern democracy. 

The British Queen’s address to the nation on Sunday, April 5 evoked huge interest, respect and widespread appreciation. Nearly 24 million people in the UK watched her deliver the four-minute speech, which paid tribute to National Health Service and other key workers, thanked people for following government rules to stay at home and promised ‘we’ll meet again’.

Her words were greeted with almost universal praise from politicians, press and the public alike. But what made it so special? Who advises the Queen on such occasions? And what does it tell us about the monarchy…

There’s nothing like wind power when it comes to delivering grid chaos. It’s all about the weather, really.

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, what’s depicted above and below speaks volumes about just how pathetic is the ‘performance’ of Australia’s wind power fleet. Spread from Far North Queensland, across the ranges of NSW, all over Victoria, Northern Tasmania and across South Australia its 6,960 MW of capacity routinely delivers just a trickle of that.

Depicted above – courtesy of Aneroid Energy – is the output delivered by Australian wind power outfits to the Eastern Grid, so far this month.

Collapses of over 3,000 MW or more that occur over the space of a couple of hours are routine, as are rapid surges of equal magnitude, which make the grid manager’s life a living hell, and provide the perfect set up for power market price gouging by the owners of…

On April 11, 1689 William III and Mary II were crowned as joint sovereigns of England, Scotland and Ireland, the only time in British history when two sovereigns sat upon these thrones.

Generally when a Queen Regnant mounts the British throne her husband will not share her royal title. Elizabeth I never married and the husbands of sovereign queens Anne, Victoria and the current reigning monarch, Elizabeth II, were never made King Consorts. Although Scotland is different where Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was made King Consort of Scotland upon his marriage to Queen Mary I of Scotland.

Mary I, Queen of England and Ireland

However, twice in English history the husbands of a reigning Queen Regnant were granted the title “King of England” but there were differences. One was a full sovereign and the other was a consort. Ironically these were the spouses of Queen Mary I of England and…

See the French and Czech translations

When a train crashes, authorities are on the scene to determine the cause. The COVID-19 coronavirus is fast becoming a global train wreck and unless we quickly assess the the mistakes leading up to this tragedy, more trains will pile into the station.

The longer the Risk-Monger gets in the tooth, the more global mass panic events he has witnessed. Every crisis is a learning opportunity and as I had written in mid February, COVID-19, the Wuhan-originated coronavirus, has created a rich pedagogic environment. Lessons are, unsurprisingly, being learnt the hard way with more mistakes sending the public health situation deeper into disaster. Worse, as our communications methods move from an expert-based model to a bottom-up citizen-based community model, our friends on social media become our main source of information.

The authorities in the West responsible for managing public health risks were made aware…

The UK government’s daily coronavirus briefing on Friday drew more attention to a question that has already been troubling many people: could the wider economic and health impacts of the fight against Covid-19 actually do more harm than the virus itself?

My view, for what it’s worth, is that it is right to err on the side of keeping the lockdown in place for longer. But it is also obviously right to have a serious and open debate about these issues – and very unhelpful to continue to vilify anybody who dares to raise them.

There are two main reasons for thinking that the lockdown could be counter-productive. The first is the impact that the collapse in economic activity might have on the nation’s health, although there may be some benefits here as well as costs (as I will explain later).

The second and perhaps more immediate concern is that…