Utopia, you are standing in it!

Proposals for another Brexit referendum will be at the heart of the election campaign and it is therefore important that the viability of politicians’ plans are thoroughly tested. Drawing on recent research, Alan Renwick, Meg Russell and Lisa James here set out five key questions. They suggest that Labour’s plans for a referendum within six months are challenging, though not necessarily impossible. A poll which pitted Boris Johnson’s deal against Remain would be simpler and quicker, avoiding additional negotiation time. This would also have the advantage of enhancing the referendum’s legitimacy among Brexit supporters. 

The parties are finalising their election manifestos, and several will propose a further referendum on Brexit. These policies will come under close scrutiny during the campaign. This post draws on and updates a detailed report published by the Constitution Unit last year. It sets out the possible routes to a further Brexit referendum, the key choices…

Animal rights campaigners claim service dogs are unfairly bred to benefit humans.

Charlie Parker, November 6, 2019, The Times

Blind people are being verbally abused by animal rights activists for owning guide dogs.

Owners say they were targeted while walking their specially trained labradors, who wear high-visibility harnesses to identify them as helpers.

Some animal welfare campaigners claim that service dogs are unfairly bred to benefit humans.

Jonathan Attenborough, from Fife, was born without sight in his right eye and aggressive glaucoma claimed the sight in his left five years ago. He was paired with Sam, a three-year-old labrador, in April last year.

Mr Attenborough, 30, described his pet as a “constant companion” who had enabled him to lead a more fulfilling life. He is convinced that Sam lives a happy life as his helper.

However, after two verbal attacks from people claiming to be campaigners against animal cruelty, he…

The wind industry is built on lies and runs on subsidies, so it’s no surprise that the market has taken revenge on wind power outfits pitching up overblown output forecasts.

One of them, Orsted (part owned by the Danish government) has seen its share price slashed, as investors recognise that they’ve been had. The knock-on effect has seen the share price of Danish wind turbine maker, Vestas also take a substantial hit.

Vestas is already in dire financial straits, having recently determined to eliminate some 600 of its groovy ‘green’ jobs. Its rival Siemens Gamesa, has also been forced to wield the axe, sacking 600 workers in its Danish operations.

In a case of, ‘it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of lads’, we’ll start with a lament from the renewable energy propaganda outfit, Bloomberg.

Offshore wind gets a warning from its biggest developer
Bloomberg
Will Mathis and…

A Supreme Court judgement in August last year has led to the Department of Conservation undertaking partial reviews of the Conservation General Policy and the General Policy for National Parks, to give better effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

And what are these principles?

Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage told Point of Order:

“The principles of the Treaty of Waitangi are not explicitly stated in the articles of the Treaty itself.”

Nope.

“They have evolved primarily though jurisprudence…”  

They also have significant governance and constitutional implications.

Another stage in this evolutionary process was the Supreme Court’s ruling which   buttressed an iwi’s claim to exclusive rights to conduct commercial tours for at least five years on the Rangitoto and Motutapu islands in the Hauraki Gulf.

Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki went to court to challenge DoC’s issuing five-year tourism concessions to Fullers and the Motutapu Island Restoration Trust on the…

BBC host Andrew Neil exposes the inaccurate and alarmist claims of Extinction Rebellion.

Last week a group calling themselves the Sustainable Finance Forum –  itself a creation of the self-selected left-wing environmental/political lobby group The Aotearoa Circle –  published an interim report.   The report is 70 pages long, but don’t let that deter you as there really isn’t much there.

Of course, this is not just any lobby group.  On the board of the Aotearoa Circle, for example, sits Vicky Robertson, chief executive of the Ministry for the Environment, and supposedly an apolitical public servant, advising ministers of whichever political stripe.  Oh well, never mind those old conventions…..   And one of the two co-chairs of the Sustainable Finance Forum is Matt Whineray, chief executive of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, and supposedly an apolitical public servant charged with managing a large pool of taxpayers’ money from one government to the next.   Somewhat surprisingly (but welcome) the Reserve Bank Governor…

Written with Aurélien Saïdi

(draft version with more footnotes and full references here)

The 2018 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was given for “addressing some of our time’s most basic and pressing questions about how we create long-term sustained and sustainable economic growth.” It was shared by Yale’s William Nordhaus for bringing negative externalities due to greenhouse gas emissions in growth models and New York University’s Paul Romer “for integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis.” The press release concludes that their contributions are “methodological . . . Laureates do not deliver conclusive answers.” Yet the methods rewarded are very different in kind. Nordhaus is praised for his development of a quantitative “integrated assessment model” of how climate and economic growth affect each other, a model then largely used to run simulations. Romer was crowned for a 10-years effort to endogenize growth culminating…

The Guardian is adept at amplifying, and failing to critically scrutinise, the unsubstantiated claims and accusations of anti-Israel NGOs, and today’s article about the Israeli Supreme Court decision on Human Right Watch’s regional director Omar Shakir – a long time BDS activist – follows this pattern.

First, as we predicted in a tweet before the article by Oliver Holmes (“Israel can deport Human Rights Watch official, court rules”, Nov. 5th) was published, the piece uncritically cites Shakir’s simply unhinged response to the court’s decision:

Shakir wrote on Twitter that if he was kicked out, Israel would join the ranks of Iran, North Korea and Egypt in blocking access to Human Rights Watch staff. “We won’t stop. And we won’t be the last,” he said.

The truth is that democracies all over theworld reserve the right to deny entry to those seen as intent on harming the state. Moreover…

It’s a year to the US presidential election.  With an unconventional president, a crowded field of Democratic party hopefuls and the possibility of an impeachment trial, American politics appear even more uncertain than usual.  

But a survey of 15,000 American voters undertaken by opinion polling guru Lord Ashcroft (a rich and maverick member of Britain’s Conservative party) throws up some interesting nuggets.

You might not be surprised that the poll finds Trump is unpopular (56% disapprove of his performance versus 40% who approve) – or even that 44% of all those polled strongly disapprove.

Nazism and fascism, in the popular imagination, are associated with evil, immoral, inhumane treatment across conquered groups and their own subjects alike. These evil actions loom even larger because the thought of an entire society dedicated to military industry, extending its reach across and beyond Europe, inspires ghastly fears not only of evil intent but also astonishing military might that could overwhelm the Allies with the technological wonder of the V2 rocket, the deadly and ever-present U-boat threat, and the German “Royal Tiger” tank that was so well armored that Sherman-fired shells literally bounced off of it. This vision of the Nazis as conquering through technological and industrial superiority is not just a mistake of modern historians, but is actually based on the overestimation of their foes by the Allies and on the disastrously misplaced overconfident messaging of the Germans, Italians, and Japanese that their technology, industrial power, and elan

Mr Burkhard Balz of the Deutsche Bundesbank in a recent speech compared why Germany and Japan both love cash:

Not a good look…

I’ve now taught social theory at the undergraduate level for over a decade, and I am now teaching social theory at the graduate level. I am also conversant, but no means an expert, in the history of what is considered canonical social theory. Here is an observation. While non-progressives do actually have fabulous careers in sociology (e.g., Robert Nisbet), their work tends not to “stick.” It doesn’t get remembered or canonized and seems to fade rather quickly.

For example, you might think some of the major figures of late 19th century laissez-faire, such as Herbert Spencer or William Graham Sumner, might be candidates for sociology’s “hall of fame.” Spencer’s evolutionary theory certainly feeds into Durkehim and Sumner was president of the American Sociological Association. Later, you might pick up on someone like Robert Nisbet whose book, The Quest for Community, is considered a touchstone for…

View of Oil Well Pumpjack (Horsehead) at Sunset Oil Industry GETTY

Michael Lynch writes at Forbes The Peak Oil Denier Takes A Victory Lap. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Monday’s New York Times includes a story titled “Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming,” which (presumably unintentionally) mimics the title of my 2016 book, “The Peak Oil Scare and the Coming Oil Flood.” Which provides a good reason to look back at the debate and some of the arguments countering my own.

Although I have spent decades writing about oil supply and the tendency of forecasters to be too pessimistic (see references at end of column), for many it was my 2009 New York Times op-ed, which the paper titled “Peak Oil is a Waste of Energy,” that brought attention to my heretical views. And unleashed a heap of opprobrium. Of…