Utopia, you are standing in it!

On this date in History: February 13, 1542 Execution of Catherine Howard, 5th wife of King Henry VIII of England and Ireland.

Catherine Howard (c. 1523 – February 13, 1542) was Queen of England from 1540 until 1541, as the fifth wife of Henry VIII. She (then 16 or 17) married him (then 49) on July 28, 1540, at Oatlands Palace, in Surrey, almost immediately after the annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves was arranged.

Catherine’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, found her a place at Court in the household of the King’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. As a young and attractive lady-in-waiting, Catherine quickly caught Henry’s eye. The King had displayed little interest in Anne from the beginning, but on Cromwell’s failure to find a new match for Henry, Norfolk saw an opportunity. The Howards may have sought to recreate the influence gained during Queen Anne’s reign…

I missed this the other day. June 11th is the date my wife and I were married and it is also the date that Catherine of Aragon married King Henry VIII of England in 1509.

This portrait is either Catherine of Aragon, Mary Tudor (sister of Henry VIII) or an unknown English noble woman.

Henry VII planned to marry Arthur to a daughter of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella I of Castile and Fernando II of Aragon, in order to forge an Anglo-Spanish alliance against France. It was suggested that the choice of marrying Arthur to Fernando and Isabella’s youngest daughter, Catherine (b. 1485), would be appropriate and suitable. The Treaty of Medina del Campo (March 27, 1489) provided that Arthur and Catherine would be married as soon as they reached canonical age. Since Arthur, not yet 14, was below the age of consent, a papal dispensation (i.e., waiver) allowing the…

When the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted in April 2010 it threw up a huge, glass-rich ash plume nine kilometres into the sky, penetrating the jet stream which then swept the volcanic debris south-eastwards over most of Europe. European air space was closed down, stranding approximately ten million passengers over six days at a cost of £130 million per day to the aviation industry. It disrupted the funeral of the Polish president and general election campaigning in Scotland, and brought blissful quiet to residents around Heathrow and other major European hubs. Ironically, the noxious gas-spewing volcano actually reduced air pollution by grounding planes for nearly a week. Among both witnesses to the eruption and those marooned by its billowing ash-clouds, it also produced a lot of stories (as well as a plotline for a 2013 French comedy).

Image of Eyjafjallajökull during its eruptions in 2010. (“14.05.10 | Eyjafjallajökull”…

Oxford Circus climate demo [image credit: London Evening Standard]
So does the manufactured climate alarm due to a minor trace gas in the atmosphere, but this is the world we find ourselves in.

A lawyer representing hundreds of Extinction Rebellion protesters said it “beggars belief” so many of them are being prosecuted, reports the Evening Standard. 

It comes as two courtrooms are being set aside for a day each week at Westminster Magistrates’ Court for 19 weeks, to deal with Extinction Rebellion protesters arrested in mass demonstrations across the capital.

Around 35 protesters are due to appear at City of London magistrates’ court on Friday, while it is thought more than 50 will be summonsed every Friday in August.

Spitting Image was right: John Major really does look grey in the analogue 1990s television signals.

Something about prorogation seems to bring out a toxic mixture of anger and ignorance.

Brexit and Prorogation

The Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, 2011 put the prerogative over dissolution as well as the established constitutional position of the Queen and Prime Minister with respect to dissolution into abeyance. This resulting inflexibility in the British constitution has made a right mess of things and prevented a natural dissolution of a deadlocked Brexit Parliament elected in 2017. And now Britain’s radical reformers have set their sights on the prerogative authority over prorogation as well.

In a recent Times article, Lord Pannick QC – leading Counsel in the Miller litigation – argues that if a Prime Minister were to advise HMQ to prorogue parliament to avoid a No Deal exit, an application could be made to the courts to determine the lawfulness of such advice. Sir John Major said on the Today programme on 10 July that he would personally bring a judicial review of any decision by the Prime Minister to advise prorogation.

After briefly considering issues of timing and justiciability, Lord Pannick makes three main arguments as to why, in his view, advice to prorogue parliament to achieve No Deal would be ruled unlawful by the courts. First, he claims that proroguing parliament would contradict parliamentary sovereignty. Secondly he claims the urgency of the situation would make prorogation unlawful. Thirdly, he argues that such advice would be ‘seeking to evade parliament because it…

Lady Jane Grey (c. 1537 – 12 February 1554), also known as Lady Jane Dudley (after her marriage)and as “the Nine Days’ Queen”, was an English noblewoman and de facto Queen of England and Ireland from July 10 until July 19, 1553.

Lady Jane Grey was the eldest daughter of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and his wife, Frances Brandon, the second child and eldest daughter of Princess Mary, and Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. Princess Mary was King Henry VIII’s younger sister. Jane had two younger sisters, Lady Catherine and Lady Mary; through their mother, the three sisters were great-granddaughters of Henry VII, grandnieces of Henry VIII, and first cousins once removed of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

Lady Jane Gray

The traditional view is that she was born at Bradgate Park in Leicestershire in October 1537, while more recent research indicates that she was born…

A few years ago, the late Sherlock Hibbs gave $5M to his alma mater, the University of Missouri. The intent was for Mizzou to hire six (!) professors and each needed to be a “dedicated and articulate disciple” of Ludwig von Mises. The Columbia Daily Tribune reports that the university got sued by Hillsdale College over this donation. Why? Hillsdale College claims that the terms of the donation were not met and the terms of the donation require that the gift, now valued at $9M would go to Hillsdale if the University of Missouri could not fulfill its terms.

Comment #1: This is a fascinating way to create some enforcement within the non-profit sector. It’s not full proof but in relatively simple donations, third parties would be willing to litigate if the reward was big enough and the enforcer could be written into the contract. Hillsdale is ideologically…

Unlike the current manufactured climate crisis, Tony Heller states, in 1936 the US and much of the rest of the world were having a very real climate crisis. The week of July 7-14, 1936 was the hottest week on record in the US – and that was just a small portion of the climate troubles that year. Atmospheric CO2 levels were very low at the time.

PHOTO CREDIT: – 1936 Atlantic hurricane season – Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2504597