Utopia, you are standing in it!

When I first embarked on this constitutional odyssey in 2011, I encountered scholars who propagated a novel constitutional interpretation with no basis in history, nor in the principles of Responsible Government itself, which I call “Reserve Powers Without Consequence”: the notion that the Governor General can reject a prime minister’s constitutional advice and that this extraordinary and rare vice-regal intervention, in turn, entails no consequences and allows the prime minister to carry on in office as if nothing happened until the House of Commons might say otherwise. This is false. And numerous historical precedents — along with the recent case from British Columbia in 2017 — demonstrate the falsity of this notion. I have written on one such case study in my latest piece in The Dorchester Review.

Solar Thermal: Big, Shiny White Elephant.

US taxpayers are on the hook for hundreds of $millions following the spectacular financial collapse of the world’s biggest solar-thermal power plant, Crescent Dunes, situated in the Nevada desert, north-west of Las Vegas.

South Australians (victims of their government’s obsession with chaotically intermittent wind and solar) can count themselves lucky that they didn’t end up with a carbon copy of the Crescent Dunes debacle.

Back in August 2017, STT reported on efforts by the Weatherill Labor government to build a solar-thermal plant at Port Augusta with the ‘help’ of the characters behind Crescent Dunes. It was designed with a trivial 150 MW (notional) capacity, but came with an absolutely staggering $1.2bn pricetag: South Australia: Sublime One Day, Ridiculous the Next – Premier Set to Squander $1.2bn on Solar-Thermal Boondoggle

Fortunately for South Australians that big, shiny white elephant never get off the ground and Jay…

Last weekend marked 29 years since the first Iraqi missile attack on Israel during the Gulf War of 1991. 

A review of available BBC online content relating to those five and a half weeks of attacks shows that anyone searching today for information on those events will find only minimal references to the topic.

The timeline in the BBC’s profile of Israel reads:

“1991 January – Gulf War. Iraq fires 39 Scud missiles at Israel in failed attempt to regionalise conflict. Israel refrains from responding at US request.”

An entry for January 18^th 1991 in the BBC’s ‘On This Day’ archive titled “Iraqi Scud missiles hit Israel” states:

“Iraq has attacked two Israeli cities with Scud missiles, prompting fears that Israel may be drawn into the Gulf War.

Israel’s largest city, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, its main seaport, were hit in the attacks, which began at…

Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) – Positive Phase | BOM

“People have been imagining that the climate is changing,
exaggerating every weather event, getting widespread press coverage,
and blaming it on man – for as long as there have been newspapers.”
–Tony Heller
Climate Change Insanity Never Changes

“It is fortunate for the community’s peace of mind
that the Commonwealth Meteorological Office exists as a
corrective to scare mongering and shameless prophecy.”
– Mr. E. Bromley : Commonwealth Meteorological Office (BoM) 1923

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AUSTRALIA’s highly variable climate is influenced by the broad patterns in the oceans around it and the atmosphere above it. These patterns are considered the “dominant climate and weather drivers“ according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.

ENSO (El Niño–Southern Oscillation) is one of Australia and the planet’s key climate drivers, influencing extremes including devastating bushfires, “droughts and flooding rains“.

ENSO swings…

The High Court of Justice was the court established by the Rump Parliament to try King Charles I of England. This was an ad hoctribunal created specifically for the purpose of trying the king, although the name was used for subsequent courts.

After the first English Civil War, the parliamentarians accepted the premise that the King, although wrong, had been able to justify his fight, and that he would still be entitled to limited powers as King under a new constitutional settlement. By provoking the second Civil War even while defeated and in captivity, Charles was held responsible for unjustifiable bloodshed. The secret “Engagement” treaty with the Scots was considered particularly unpardonable; “a more prodigious treason”, said Oliver Cromwell, “than any that had been perfected before; because the former quarrel was that Englishmen might rule over one another; this to vassalize us to a foreign nation.” Cromwell up to this…

Run on ‘real’ electricity: the City of Light,
brought to you courtesy of the Atom.

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After the Paris Climate Jamboree, the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers are licking their chops at the prospect of having the rich world fund the construction of millions of these things in the dark corners of the Planet. Sensible first world economies have tumbled (albeit, belatedly) to the fact the wind power is patent nonsense.

Paris, aka ‘The City of Light’ has been lit up by nuclear power for over 50 years, and that’s not about to change any time soon.

Britain has seen the light and has scrapped subsidies to wind power, with the number of threatened wind farms going from a roar to a whimper:

UK Wind Industry Collapses as David Cameron Slashes Subsidies for Wind Power

The Spanish were beguiled for a while by the wind industry’s promises of millions…

There’s something altogether cynical about well-healed nations forcing the impoverished to embrace expensive and unreliable wind and solar. It is, of course, all done in the name of ‘saving the planet’. [Note to Ed: Not to mention saving the manufacturers of industrial wind turbines and solar panels, who are struggling back home].

As any economist specialising in development will eagerly tell you, the first step out of poverty for the Third World’s unfortunates is access to reliable and affordable energy. Relieving households of the daily drudgery of gathering sticks and dung to cook and heat homes; providing light and electricity to those homes by which the children might read and become educated; pumping and purifying the water they use; and giving a reliable source of power to miners, manufacturers, food processors and the like is – if you’re serious about creating a path out of poverty – all to the…

Andrew Sullivan’s “Intelligencer” column is a breath of fresh air in an increasingly woke New York Magazine. His Friday pieces are usually in three parts, and this week’s (click on screenshot below) is no exception. The three topics are, in order, the progress we’ve made in gay rights and women’s rights, and those who deny it (Sullivan doesn’t mention the demonization of Steve Pinker for his progressivism), the Democratic candidates with Sullivan’s assessment, and a bit of “shade” thrown at Meghan Markle for marrying into the royal family, knowing what she was getting into, and then kvetching about it. (“Sorry, but if you choose to marry into royalty, you have to take the rough with the smooth: The fame and luxury of being a princess comes packaged with bad press, intrusive photographers, and constant public duty. If Meghan didn’t expect this, it’s hard to understand how not.”)

Surprisingly, Andrew…

From the team at CFACT ~

How many doomsday predictions about the Earth’s climate must fail before they finally get broadly ignored and dismissed out of hand? Considering the track record of climate predictions that turned out to be false, we are well passed the moment of ridicule.

The latest climate prediction fiasco, about glaciers disappearing in Glacier National Park by 2020, is the latest reminder of the falsity of the man-made global warming movement.  It’s 2020; the glaciers remain.

Predictions of climate catastrophe drone on, and get more hysterical, including many from the same people whose credibility was destroyed long ago. Yet, the climate alarmists remain undaunted and impervious to embarrassment. Instead, they simply move the goal posts by predicting more planetary weather Armageddon in the future and proposing more insanely expensive solutions to “address” it (notice they rarely promise to reverse assumed man-made warming).

It is not just…