Utopia, you are standing in it!

There are several problems with the judgment in Forstater v CGD Europe and Ors (case no 2200909/2019) (“Forstater”). Some of these have been highlighted by Amir Paz-Fuch in his recent analysis on this blog, ‘Principles into Practice: Protecting Offensive Beliefs in the Workplace’. In this blog post, I look more at the specific findings of the Employment Tribunal and whether they are sustainable. I shall consider this issue in light, in particular, of the holdings of the High Court in R(Miller) v College of Policing and A’or[2020] EWHC 225 (Admin). 

Image by Mizter_X94 from Pixabay 

In analysing the judgment in Forstater, it is important to identify first what the Employment Tribunal Judge was required to decide. The Claimant’s (“C”) claim had been listed to determine the answer to a single question: whether the beliefs relied upon by C (in support of…

1) The Times of Israel’s Raphael Ahren explains ‘Why the Palestinian case at The Hague took a big hit this past week’.

“The notion that “Palestine” is a full-fledged state that can grant jurisdiction to the International Criminal Court was dealt a serious blow over the past week, as seven countries and many scholars of international law argued that the issue was not as simple as the Palestinians and their supporters would like to make it seem.

Even some countries that have formally recognized the “State of Palestine” along the pre-1967 lines argued that Palestine cannot necessarily be considered to have validly granted the ICC jurisdiction to probe war crimes allegedly committed on its territory.

Germany, Australia, Austria, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Uganda last week submitted written documents to The Hague, each asking to become an amicus curiae — a “friend of the court” that is…

forty quotes from and about
Richard Burgon
born 1980
Labour MP for Leeds East 2015–
shadow city minister 2015–16
shadow justice secretary 2016–

‘Richard Burgon broke convention by calling for the end to the Monarchy before affirming an oath of allegiance. “As someone that believes that the head of state should be elected I make this oath in order to serve my constituents,” he said.’ – Daily Mirror (2015) [i]

‘No-one was more surprised than me that my swearing in as an MP made the news last week.’ – Richard Burgon (2015) [ii]

‘New SNP MP Patricia Gibson flinched in disgust after one of her colleagues broke wind in the Commons. Shocked Patricia was caught on camera recoiling in horror when Labour rival Richard Burgon let off during a debate. She could be seen on telly covering her mouth and trying to waft away the nauseating stench as Mr Burgon ignored…

In the ever-lengthening list of UKIP leaders, Baron Pearson of Rannoch was far from the worst. Nor, however, was he much good. He spent just ten months in the job, during which time he oversaw the disappointing general election result of 2010, when the average vote for a UKIP candidate fell below that for the BNP. Perhaps, though, he’d already made his contribution to the party, even before joining, by providing it with a mission statement.

He’d originally been a Conservative – he got his peerage from Margaret Thatcher – but had felt frustrated by its mealy-mouthed espousal of Euroscepticism. He was still a Tory when, during the 2004 campaign for the European Parliament elections, he called for people to vote UKIP. ‘The only party which might save our democracy, our right to govern ourselves, from the corrupt octopus in Brussels is the Conservatives,’ he said. ‘But the only people…

By Sara M. Butler; posted 21 February 2020.

A recent article in the Journal of Legal History by Gwen Seabourne addresses one of the more unusual requirements of medieval law. If a widower hoped to remain on the land brought into marriage by his dead wife, his claim rested on having fathered a live and legitimate child by her. Even if the child immediately died, its short life was sufficient to grant a widower an interest in his wife’s land for the remainder of his life. What is most remarkable, though, is the nature of the evidence required for proof of life: a crying test. A Year Book from the late thirteenth century spells out the condition:  “[I]n order that the husband may hold the inheritance of his wife by the curtesy of England by reason of issue between them, it is necessary that the issue be heard to cry…

Because of his extremist views, I often refer to Senator Sanders as “Crazy Bernie.”

You can argue I’m being unfair. After all, I pointed out during the last campaign that his voting record in the Senate was almost identical to the voting records of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (his vote rating also was similar to supposed moderate Joe Biden when he was a Senator).

But that doesn’t necessarily mean they think the same or have the same agenda. As the cartoon illustrates, Bernie wants to travel at a faster rate in the wrong direction.

And it’s quite likely that he wants to travel farther in the wrong direction. And he may even want to get to a very unpleasant destination.

You don’t have to believe me. You can simply listen to what Bernie Sanders has said, in this video narrated by Maxim Lott.

And if that’s…

Many of you are probably familiar with Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton which was the basis for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “Hamilton.”  The book is the ultimate source for the first Secretary of the Treasury, and it is a narrative that is hard to measure up to.  However, there are a number of important biographies of Hamilton, one of which is Richard Brookhiser’s ALEXANDER HAMILTON: AMERICAN, a compact volume that covers all the important aspects of Hamilton’s life in a very analytical fashion that can serve as a wonderful introduction to its subject.

Brookhiser presents Hamilton as the nation’s accountant who was able to create the bureaucratic infrastructure that allowed the new republic to survive and fostered the basis of our current economy.  Brookhiser identifies a number of threads that run through his narrative.  First, despite his background as an immigrant throughout his life Hamilton saw himself as an…

CURRENT NUMBER OF CARTOONS: 216+ links to more

LAST UPDATE: 8 May 2008

*NEW CARTOONS ARE ADDED WHENEVER I COME ACROSS THEM. CHECK BACK HERE ONCE IN A WHILE.*

*NOTE ON SAVING IMAGES: If you save the images and they turn out as bmp format, you can change them to jpg or gif by changing the extension name in Windows, or open them using Microsoft Paint and save as jpg or gif.*

*Or just Save this entire web page. This will save all the cartoons into a single folder on your PC in one shot.*

Note: To make it easier to load the cartoons, I’ve split them into separate posts. This is Part 1.

Part 2 here

Part 3 here

————————————-

I love editorial and political cartoons, and I hate lies, hoaxes and fear-mongering. So you can probably guess that editorial cartoons mocking global warming and its hypocritical supporters…

The most depressing data about America’s economy is not the top tax rate, the regulatory burden, or the level of wasteful of government spending.

Those numbers certainly are grim, but I think they’re not nearly as depressing as America’s demographic outlook.

As you can see from this sobering image, America’s population pyramid is turning into a population cylinder.

There’s nothing a priori wrong with an aging population and a falling birthrate, of course, but those factors create a poisonous outlook when mixed with poorly designed entitlement programs.

The lesson is that a modest-sized welfare state is sustainable (even if not advisable) when a nation has a population pyramid. But even a small welfare state becomes a problem when a nation has a population cylinder. Simply stated, there aren’t enough people to pull the wagon and there are too many people riding in the wagon.

But…

By Anton Lang ~

This Post details the daily wind power generation data for the AEMO coverage area in Australia. For the background information, refer to the Introductory Post at this link.

Each image is shown here at a smaller size to fit on the page alongside the data for that day. If you click on each image, it will open on a new page and at a larger size so you can better see the detail.

Note also that on some days, there will be a scale change for the main wind power image, and that even though images may look similar in shape for the power generation black line on the graph when compared to other days, that scale (the total power shown on the left hand vertical axis) has been changed to show the graph at a larger size to better fit the image for that…

Much to the horror of wind power promoters, all eyes are on Germany at the minute, with its wind industry in freefall, turbine manufacturers in ruin and rural residents in revolt.

In 2019 less than 200 turbines were erected onshore [a figure of 325 is given below which apparently includes offshore turbines] and a trifling 160 are planned for 2020, so far. Over the last two decades, heavily subsidised wind power outfits managed to spear almost 30,000 of these things across rural Germany.

Driven mad by practically incessant, turbine generated low-frequency noise and infra-sound, wind farm neighbours got organised, and fought back. There are now hundreds of anti-wind industry groups across Germany.

In addition, many groups and individuals have launched litigation against developers and government to either prevent wind farms from being built, or to seek substantial financial compensation for the loss of the use and enjoyment of their homes.

With a “front runner” who so far is not mustering more than a quarter of the vote in polling aggregates (e.g., both Fivethirtyeight and Economist), and four other candidates in the 10%–20% range (here with some variation between different aggregators), it is a good thing the Democratic Party uses proportional representation to choose its nominating-convention delegates. Right?

Well, not this “proportional” system. I will now leave aside those zany rules of the Iowa caucus or the marginally more rational rules of the Nevada caucus, and focus on the closest thing we will get to a national primary: “Super Tuesday”. Specifically, I will focus on California for the the obvious reason that it is the biggest. And happens to be where I live and vote. Other states have broadly similar systems, but for smaller numbers of delegates.

This is one awful example of “proportional representation” (PR). Why? First, because it…

I’ve written about scientism for several years, and have highlighted the many people, including Philip Kitcher, Massimo Pigliucci, Uncle Eric MacDonald, Steve Gould (in Rocks of Ages), and the flock of theologians who use the term “scientism” as a cudgel: an example of science overstepping its boundaries.  The faithful also use it to say, ironically, “See? Science is just as harmful as faith.”

One of the problems has been the definition of “scientism,” which varies from commenter to commenter but is always pejorative.  I take it to mean “science overstepping its boundaries” in the sense of Gould’s Non-Overlapping Magisteria: scientists misusing science or technology to bad ends (racism or eugenics), claiming they will take over the humanities (as in E. O. Wilson’s notion of “consilience”), or making moral and political pronouncements that exceed scientific expertise or ambit.

The problem is that these accusations always exceed the crimes, and that’s…