Utopia, you are standing in it!

Electricity grids are finely balanced systems, which depend upon order and are wrecked by chaos; chaos of the kind these things deliver on a daily basis across Australia’s Eastern Grid.

Pictured above – courtesy of Aneroid Energy – is the output of every wind turbine connected to Australia’s Eastern Grid, situated from Far North Queensland, down through New South Wales, all over Victoria, Northern Tasmania and South Australia, with a combined notional capacity of 6,702 MW during June.

Throwing 2-3,000 MW into the grid one minute and sucking the same magnitude out, the next, the chaotic intermittency associated with wind power threatens the Eastern Grid with a complete ‘system black’ this coming summer – to match the complete ‘system black’ enjoyed by South Australians in September 2016, thanks to its obsession with wind power.

A couple of Australia’s leading electrical engineers, Tom Quirk and Paul Miskelly, take a critical look…

This is the Legal succession issue which inspired me to do this series. It is complex so I will divide it into a couple of blog entries.

Many know that Richard III was killed at Bosworth Field on August 22 1485 in the last battle of the War of the Roses and that the victor on the field of battle, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, a scion of the House of Lancaster, mounted the English throne to become King Henry VII. The question I ask is, did Henry VII have any legal claims to the throne? Was he a usurper or did he obtain the crown by conquest? My assertion is that his blood claim to the throne was weak, there were many ahead of him in the order of succession, therefore that he obtained the throne by right of conquest.

First of all I would like to examine his blood claim…

I was interviewed a couple of days ago about rival tax plans by various Democratic presidential candidates.

It’s the “Class Warfare Olympics,” and even Joe Biden is thinking about going hard left with a tax on financial transactions.

It’s not just Joe Biden’s crazy idea. Other Democratic candidates have endorsed the idea, as has Nancy Pelosi, and CNBC reports that legislation has been introduced in the House and the Senate.

House Democrats are reintroducing their proposal of a financial transaction tax on stock, bond and derivative deals, and this time they’ve signed on a key new supporter: left-wing firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. …“This option would increase revenues by $777 billion from 2019 through 2028, according to an estimate by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation,” the Congressional Budget Office’s website says. …The House bill comes on the heels of its companion legislation introduced by Sen…

This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine has a long interview with Bill Maher (click on screenshot below)—complete with footnotes, something I haven’t seen in the NYT.

I’ve always been a big fan of Maher: there are in fact few things he’s said on his show that I don’t agree with. I suppose it’s because both he and I criticize both the Right and the Left, and Maher, one among many, has suffered for doing that. The Left wants to be immune from criticism by others who profess to be Left, but Maher is not only a Leftist, but an incisive social critic.  And now I learn that he’s a huge Beatles fan as well. What’s not to like? And so, to celebrate International Blasphemy Day, treat yourself to a read. I’ll put a few excerpts below.

By the way, in the interview Maher defines political correctness as “the elevation of…

Now you’ve made your acquaintance, get on and start using it.

Subsidised into existence, intermittent wind and solar now pose existential threats to Australia’s once reliable power supply, this summer and beyond.

No industrialised country has ever run itself on sunshine and breezes; no country serious about maintaining first world living standards, ever will.

So just how Australia’s energy boffins still cling to the notion that wind and solar are meaningful parts of the so-called ‘energy mix’, remains a mystery.

Ross Fitzgerald attempts to unravel that mystery in a pertinent and timely article below.

Don’t Leave Us in the Dark, Mr Morrison
Quadrant Online
Ross Fitzgerald
19 September 2019

Just now, the Morrison government still seems secure. Its narrow but decisive win has shattered an opposition that had thought it was coasting to victory. The Labor Party is about to begin a civil war between green-left ideologues and old-fashioned pragmatists…

In 1970, Neil Young released his classic album, After the Goldrush. One of its standout tracks was Southern Man.

The following year, Young recorded the follow up, Harvest. This featured the song Alabama. The South more generally, and Alabama in particular was in his sights.

In 1973, Lynyrd Skynyrd recorded their classic song in reply, Sweet Home Alabama.

Well, I hope Neil Young will remember

A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow

Over the years, it was often assumed that the band hated Young, or even that they were the voice of the white racist south. Neither ‘fact’ was true.

Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant would later claim that:

We wrote Alabama as a joke…We didn’t even think about it — the words just came out that way. We just laughed like hell, and said ‘Ain’t that funny’… We love Neil Young, we love his…

Like night follows day, adding chaotically intermittent wind and solar to your grid sends power prices into orbit. South Australians know it: they suffer the world’s highest power prices as a result of their 50% RET.

Other Australian states are heading in the same direction. Victoria’s great wind rush has already sent prices rocketing: wholesale prices jumped 19% last financial year. Part of a trend (see above) which is all set to continue.

The effect of surging power prices is economically insidious. Electricity is a critical input to a range of businesses, such that rising power prices reduce margins, squeeze profits and limit the opportunities to employ staff and otherwise re-invest in those businesses. Ultimately, profits become losses and a date with insolvency and a liquidator soon looms.

On the consumption side, households being belted by ever-rising power costs naturally reduce their spending on everything else.

Not that the…

An open letter to Jan Thomas, Vice-chancellor of Massey University.

Massey University in Wellington is the venue for an event on 13 November called Feminism 2020, organised by Speak Up For Women (SU4W). The university has come under pressure from rightist forces masquerading under the banner of transgender rights to break its contract with the meeting organisers and cancel the booking. At the time of writing, the university has resisted the pressure to cancel the venue booking. However, on 27 September it released a statement which can only be read as paving the way for cancelling the meeting. This open letter was written response to that statement.

To Jan Thomas,

Vice-chancellor,

Massey University,

Wellington.

Dear Ms Thomas,

I commend Massey University’s stated commitment to free speech, and in particular, its decision to host the event Feminism 2020 in face of criticism and pressure to shut the meeting down.

However…

My son is doing the Scholarship history exam this year and the topic is something like “populism in history”.  It got me interested and I’ve been reading various books and talking the issue over with my son trying to get straight in my own mind just what “populism” actually is.

It seems like one of those elusive terms where each user means something subtly different, usually –  at least when it is quasi-academic usages –  things/beliefs/actions the author themselves disagrees with, often almost viscerally.  I’m still left unclear that it means anything much different than “things/views which are popular with a significant share of the population, perhaps even a majority, but where those views cut across or defy those held by the contemporary elites of the society in question”.   Since there is no particular reason to suppose that contemporary “elite” opinion is any better or closer to being right…

This illuminating article by Bruce Moon (no relation to Paul) appeared in the Northland Age last Thursday.

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It is a curious fact that there are many part-Maoris today (though certainly not all) who have remarkably good memories about their alleged sufferings since 1840, but completely blank minds about what happened to them any earlier.

It is not hard to work out why this should be.

But it is more helpful, perhaps, to assist them in remembering a bit more about their earlier days.

When Europeans first arrived in New Zealand, Maoris were an aggressive warrior race, ready to attack for the slightest reason, as Tasman found out quickly to his cost. [1]

This happened again when, just over a couple of years after Captain Cook, Marion du Fresne arrived off our shores.

While fishing innocently in calm waters, as he thought, he broke a tapu unknown to him.

His…