Utopia, you are standing in it!

One issue that annoys RE zealots, like a burr under a frisky pony’s saddle blanket, is the wind industry’s rampant bird and bat slaughter. It’s an inconvenient truth to be sure. But, as with everything that the wind industry does, if you can’t keep a straight face while lying about it any more, then pull out all stops and cover it up.

The wholesale slaughter of millions of birds and bats – includes rare, endangered and majestic species, like America’s iconic bald and golden eagles. The default response from the wind industry is to lie like fury and – when the corpses can no longer be hidden and the lying fails – to issue court proceedings to literally bury those facts (see our post here).

The hackneyed retort from the wind cult is that cars, cats and tall buildings kill more birds than their beloveds.

Attempting to compare an…

In light of the attempt of the current government to prorogue Parliament, we thought it would be appropriate to offer examples of prorogation or the aversion thereof in Parliament’s past. Today, Dr Vivienne Larminie, Assistant Editor of our House of Commons 1640-1660 project explains how prorogation was narrowly avoided in 1641 during a crisis in the early months of the Long Parliament. In an earlier blog, Vivienne has also explored how, a few months later in January 1642, the king deployed an alternative tactic to gain control over Parliament when he attempted to ‘decapitate’ Parliament by seeking to arrest prominent adversarial MPs.

In early May 1641, six months in to what became the Long Parliament, Members sensed that a crisis point had been reached.On the one hand it had become clear that enormous sums had to be found to pay for…

In today’s political and social climate, trying to defend colonialism is just asking for trouble—in fact, even for death threats. That’s what happened to associate professor Bruce Gilley at Portland State University, who recently published an article—actually, a “Viewpoint”, the academic equivalent of an op-ed, but refereed like a regular article—called “The case for colonialism” in a journal called the Third World Quarterly. If you go to the link, though, you won’t find the article; you’ll find this:

According to Andy Ngo, who’s been reporting this in Quillette, Gilley’s article said this:

First published on September 8, “The case for colonialism” argues Western colonialism has created net-good in some instances, particularly through establishing governance, institutions and infrastructure. Gilley argues that nations who embraced and built on their Western colonial legacy, for example, Singapore, have fared better than those who followed anti-colonial nationalist ideologies. The article also…

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.  The decayed and degraded state of moral and spiritual feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.  The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept free so by exertions of better men than himself.”  John Start Mill

“Intellectuals in society such as our own, it is not unusual for an intellectual to feel no attachment to his own country.  This type is mostly deeply cynical, disaffected.  Most strike a pretense of imitativeness or sheer cowardice.  Most are members of religious sects or humanists who have not bothered to think of the consequences.  The real though unadmitted motive is pure hatred for Democracy and liberty.”  George Orwell

The chief reporter was the veteran Frank Keeler, a terrific journalist who became my mentor. He was a stickler for accuracy, dunning into all cubs he ever mentored his personal philosophy: check, check and check again. Then write. I still do. (p.107)

This is a very entertaining, amusing, informative and life-affirming book. What a great life Forsyth has had and with what brio he sets it down in his brisk, non-nonsense style.

The challenge of autobiography

We think and feel and speak and interact with other people all the time in a myriad of complex ways. Just writing down everything that happens in a day would be challenging, because so much of our interactions have a long history of interactions preceding them, and ramify out in all directions. So if describing everything that happens in a day would be challenging, how do you go about writing about your entire life

The Commonwealth Attorney-General has released Exposure Drafts of a package of Federal Bills designed to improve religious freedom protections under Australian law, along with associated explanatory information. The legislation responds to the recommendations of the Ruddock Panel into Religious Freedom, released late in 2018. Public comment has been invited by 2 October, 2019.

The main item is the Religious Discrimination Bill 2019 (“RDB”), which broadly replicates the existing pattern of anti-discrimination laws enacted by the Commonwealth, but picking up for the first time at the Federal level the “protected characteristics” of “religious belief or activity”. Two ancillary Bills propose consequential amendments to other legislation, add some specific matters to be taken into account in objects clauses for other discrimination laws, and slightly amend or clarify the laws on charities and marriage.

The RDB is a lengthy document (68 clauses over 52 pages), with some complexities that will need to be…

An article in the Sunday Times by Professor Richard Ekins and Sir Stephen Laws QC advised that the Monarch could withhold Royal Assent to a bill passed if advised to do so by ministers.  Robert Craig  has also argued for that position in a blog post, making clear why in his view that is the democratically legitimate position.  Professors Mark Elliott and Thomas Poole both refute these views, but recognize a prima facie tension between a constitutional convention that the Monarch follow ministerial advice on the one hand, and a convention that the Monarch almost automatically give Royal Assent to duly passed bills on the other.  Poole assumes for the sake of argument that they might be in conflict, and argues that were it so, the convention on Royal Assent would prevail.  I agree with him so far as that argument goes. (Professor Poole also alludes to the view that…