Utopia, you are standing in it!

There was a thoughtful short piece in the BNZ’s weekly commentary yesterday on economic prospects for the next few years.  Perhaps there are others around that I missed – I only heard of this one when my son drew this report of it to my attention

BNZ’s head of research Stephen Toplis is warning that economic activity won’t return to pre-crisis levels till some time in 2023, while unemployment might not get back below 5% before 2025.

I gulped. I hadn’t quite thought about it in those specific terms.  But as I did, I realised it probably wasn’t an implausible story (as Toplis notes in his piece, and as everyone must, precise numbers/forecasts have little meaning at present; the issue is more about broad orders of magnitude and the nature of the supporting story).

Toplis’s own short-term story seemed, if anything, insufficiently bleak, although he may just have been making…

This post has been updated to include a discussion of what is a “vulnerable person” (31 March 2020 7:50am)

On Sunday evening the Prime Minister announced further restrictions on social gatherings, limiting them to two persons, or to the members of a household. It was up to the individual states and territories whether or not these restrictions would be merely advisory, or whether they would be made mandatory by government regulation. At a press conference on Monday morning, the Premier of NSW announced that these restrictions would be mandatory in NSW from midnight tonight.

The NSW Government Gazette has just (ie at around 11pm) published the Public Health (COVID-19 Restrictions on Gathering and Movement) Order 2020, the effect of which is described below.

Definitions

Firstly, some important definitions:

• household means any persons living together in the same place of residence.
• indoor space means an area, room or other premises…

A fearful Britain hunkers down to face the foreign invader. An eloquent Prime Minister sets out to rally the nation with stirring speeches. Parliament is presented with an emergency bill to monitor and restrict the people the like of which it has never seen before.

For 2020, read 1940.

Most of us may not have experienced it, but this feels like wartime. The threats that Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Boris Johnson faced may be entirely different, but there are intriguing comparisons to make in the new legislation that now governs our everyday lives. In May 1940 it was the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, now it is the Coronavirus Act, which received Royal Assent only last Wednesday.

‘A Bill to make provision in connection with coronavirus – and for connected purposes’. It is the second part of that description that worries civil libertarians. Of course the bill’s sponsor, Health Secretary…

The pandemic experience shows us how greatly a real emergency differs from an imaginary one.  His article at The Hill is The coronavirus pandemic versus the climate change emergency.  Excerpts in italics with my bold and images.

Today’s coronavirus pandemic puts into some perspective the climate emergency, which has been running for nigh on 32 years. The climate emergency was first announced in June 1988. “Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war,” the Toronto climate conference declared that month.

One way of assessing the reliability of a body of science with major policy implications is whether the experts in the field are prone to over-predicting the severity of the problem. Take smoking: In 1953, Richard Doll, one of the pioneer epidemiologists in discovering the link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer, predicted

‘In politics one should be guided by the calculation of forces.’ (Stalin at Potsdam)

Alliance is a thorough, insightful and gripping account of the wartime meetings between ‘the Big Three’ Allied leaders – Roosevelt and Churchill and Stalin – which determined the course of the Second World War and set the stage for the Cold War which followed it.

In actual fact the three leaders in question only met face to face on two occasions:

1. Tehran 28 November-1 December 1943
2. Yalta, 4-11 February 1945

The third great power conference, Potsdam July 1945, took place after Roosevelt’s death (12 April 1945) and with his successor, former vice-president Harry Truman

There were quite a few meetings between just Roosevelt and Churchill:

1. Placentia Bay, Canada – 8 to 11 August 1941 – resulting in the Atlantic Charter
2. First Washington Conference (codename: Arcadia), Washington DC, 22 December 1941 – 14 January 1942
3. Second Washington Conference…

On Friday, the credit rating agency Fitch downgraded the UK’s sovereign credit rating one notch, citing worries about the economy and a jump in government debt. Bond investors at least are shrugging this off. But the announcement has revived long-standing concerns about the role of rating agencies during crises, and whether they actually make things worse. Here’s my take.

It is important to understand first that, despite some hyperbolic headlines, Fitch’s announcement is unlikely to have any significant impact on the UK’s cost of borrowing. There is nothing surprising in the agency’s statement that might tell investors anything new about the prospects for the UK economy or public finances. What’s more, the UK’s revised rating is still comfortably within the most valued category of ‘investment grade’.

Nor is the UK being singled out. It is highly likely that other countries will be downgraded further too, continuing a trend in…

As we have noted on several occasions of late, BBC audiences have not seen any reporting on the topic of the cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in combating the outbreak of Coronavirus in the region. The UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process recently commented on that topic:

Coronavirus testing kits being delivered to the Gaza Strip. Photo credit: COGAT

“In a statement released on Friday, the coordination and cooperation established between Israel and Palestine, with regard to tackling COVID-19, was described as “excellent”. 

The Israeli and Palestinian authorities are continuing to coordinate their responses closely and constructively, the statement said, which is a major factor in the level of disease containment achieved so far. […]

Since the beginning of the crisis, Israel has allowed the entry of critical supplies and equipment into Gaza: examples of critical supplies include swabs for collection of samples and other…

Australia’s suicidal energy policies of the product of a squad of rent-seekers masquerading as energy ‘experts’. These sanctimonious windbags all carry PhD’s in spending other people’s money, and all graduated from the University of Endless Subsidies.

The Federal Government has to share its responsibility for the debacle; it started it, after all.

But, every time the Liberal/National Coalition attempts to bring energy policy back from the brink, in chime the ‘experts’ with their brand of self-serving wisdom. Hammering the government whenever it exhibits the temerity to support meaningful electricity generation. And filling the void with endless waffle and propaganda about how Australia is a heartbeat away from an all wind and sun powered future.

Alan Moran picks up the thread below.

Revealed: the Deep Green State
Spectator Australia
Alan Moran
24 March 2020

A story in the Guardian has demonstrated the impotence of government against the Deep State — Deep…

Lately, Trump’s behavior relative to the pandemic has not only not been Presidential, but positively puerile. He’s trying to deny New York the ventilators it needs, he’s dissing CEOs, and—what really irks me—he’s threatening to punish states whose governors don’t toady to him. What kind of leadership is that? And yet we know that his approval rating has risen to about 50%—the highest since he’s been elected.

That “bump” depressed me, making me worry that he’ll be reelected—and shame on our country if, after four years of his insanity, they allow it to continue—but Jon Chait at New York Magazine feels otherwise. The title of his piece says it all, but click the screenshot to read.

Chait thinks the bump is temporary because all leaders get a bounce when there’s a national crisis. Further, Trump’s Bump is much smaller than those enjoyed by other leaders, including Boorish Johnson, Emmanuel Macron…

Supermarkets and some publishers are favoured by the government’s imposition of severe restrictions on what we can do and from whom we can buy during the Covid-19 lock-down.

But one consumer watchdog is challenging the legality of an edict by Commerce Minister Kris Faafoi which favours supermarkets while Act leader David Seymour is questioning the pricing consequences of the business ban that has closed bakeries, butcheries and green grocers.

The Freedom of Speech Coalition meanwhile is threatening to launch an urgent judicial review of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage decision to deem non-daily newspapers and publications an unessential service for the purposes of the Covid-19 Level-4 nationwide shutdown.

Even while the government is hearing of price gouging by supermarkets, however, it is considering allowing those businesses to open on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Whether the Easter Trading Laws are amended to allow this will depend on whether they…

The Economist is the latest British media outlet to mislead on the coronavirus-relate healthcare crisis in Gaza.  Their March 26th article (“Gaza, already under siege, imposes lockdown”), published in their print edition, included the following:

An outbreak would be catastrophic. Gaza is one of the world’s most densely populated places. The health-care system, shattered by the long blockade, would be unable to cope. Even in normal times, basic items like antibiotics are often in short supply.

However, the medicine shortage in Gaza has nothing whatsoever to do with the the Israeli blockade – a fact we proved in a previous post which included a definitive statement from COGAT that there are NO restrictions on medicine and medical equipment.

In fact, even the NY Times has acknowledged – after communication with CAMERA – that “the import of medicine [to Gaza] is not restricted.” 

The shortage has more to do with…

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been refusing plenty of applications for marks containing curse words on the dubious ground that they are too commonplace to serve as trademarks. Ever. As I explained in my last post, these applications include SHUT THE FUCK UP legal services, KEEP FUCKING GOING jewelry, and YOU’RE AWESOME KEEP THAT SHIT UP dinnerware and oven mitts.

After that shocking exposé, we’ve earned a sweary tour through those scandalous marks that have made it onto the federal register. Applying to register these before the Supreme Court eliminated the ban in 2019 would have been a complete waste of time and money. But they have now officially penetrated the federal database. I’m not including the multiple asterisked-for-your-protection marks now on the register, though those too wouldn’t have made it through during the heyday of the scandalousness ban.

Let’s start with the shitstorm.

One for the ‘planet on fire’ crowd to ponder, as the long solar minimum continues.
– – –
Cold temperatures and a strong polar vortex allowed chemicals to gnaw away at the protective ozone layer in the north, says The GWPF.

A vast ozone hole — likely the biggest on record in the north — has opened in the skies above the Arctic. It rivals the better-known Antarctic ozone hole that forms in the southern hemisphere each year.

Record-low ozone levels currently stretch across much of the central Arctic, covering an area about three times the size of Greenland (see ‘Arctic opening’).