Utopia, you are standing in it!

As each day passes, a new window seems to be thrown open exposing fresh legal issues to be solved as the UK continues its journey towards its withdrawal from the European Union. It’s like opening an advent calendar for lawyers.

On Monday 10 December, the Court of Justice of the European Union in its Wightman ruling resolved the legal question of whether an EU Member State can revoke its Article 50 TEU notification of its intention to withdraw from the EU and do so unilaterally. The Court ruled that unilateral revocation is a permissible action of a sovereign EU state provided it occurs before a withdrawal agreement enters into force or before the expiry of the two-year period for negotiations (or an extended period).

On Tuesday 11 December, the former UK Prime Minister Sir John Major suggested that the right to revoke be invoked with immediate effect in order to…

Finance   Minister   Grant  Robertson  has had a  good run this  year, with the  economy performing  well  and the  government’s books   in excellent  shape.

Despite   ministers  splashing  out  cash  in  every direction, the half-year  economic and   fiscal  update  (out this week)   may even  offer   the Finance  Minister  scope  for a  bit  more  spending  in  the years  ahead, without  endangering   his  self-imposed   goal of   sustainable surpluses .

But  a shadow may be  beginning  to emerge  from this  apparently  cloudless  sky.  It  lies  in  the  reports   from  all  those reviews  the  government   called  for   in  its  first  months  of  office.

Today the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgment in Wightman. This followed the opinion of Advocate General Campos Sánchez-Bordona, concluding that the UK may unilaterally revoke its notification of its intention to leave the EU. In a similar manner to the AG, the CJEU placed conditions on this unilateral revocation. A formal process would be needed to notify the European Council of the UK’s intention to revoke article 50. Such notice of revocation would have to be unequivocal and unconditional (para 74), and, importantly, ‘in accordance with the constitutional requirements of the Member State’, in this case, the UK, and following a ‘democratic process’ (para 66). It would also have to take place before the end of the Article 50 negotiation period, or any agreed extension, and before a Withdrawal Agreement between the exiting state and the EU had been ‘concluded’ – i.e. entered…

Several people sent me links to Andrew Sullivan’s latest column in New York magazine (click on screenshot below). The curious thing is that half the senders thought the article was great while the other half despised it.  After reading it (it’s long, but read it anyway), I can see why. His opening attacks on atheism as a dysfunctional religion are deeply misguided, but his criticism of both Right and Left extremist ideologies as religions is trenchant and on the mark. And the last bit, where Sullivan talks about the new Churchill movie Darkest Hour, shows Sullivan at his best, a thoughtful person and a writer who can be moving.

I used to get into fracases with Sullivan, and it was always over religion. Now that he writes less about it and more about politics—in which he’s moving left towards becoming a centrist—I like him better and read him more…

The QV house prices indices for November for each of the territorial local authority areas were released last week.  Much of the headline coverage is around the fact that in the last year Auckland prices have barely changed, while those in places like Dunedin, Invercargill, Palmerston North and Whanganui have shown double-digit rates of increase.  Even Wellington prices rose 7.4 per cent –  something brought home to me when a house across our driveway went for $2 million recently (a very big house).

Cycles are often not in synch from place to place and I’ve sometimes found it an interesting reference point to look back and see how (real) house prices have changed since the peak of the previous surge upwards in house prices, in mid 2007.  That, of course, was just before the onset of the last recession in New Zealand.

Here is a chart showing (mostly) the cities

We all agree that Columbo is one of the greatest shows of all time. But what’s most impressive is that the calibre of episodes was so high for so long. From its stunning debut in 1968’s Prescription: Murder, the show hit the ground galloping at full pace and barely let up throughout its 70s’ run.

But when, I wonder, can we say the show was at its absolute zenith? When it was still fresh enough to make for joyful viewing, while boasting performances, writing and story lines that were hitting all the right marks time and again?

Regular readers may have noticed that in my review of A Deadly State of Mind, the final episode of Season 4, that I queried whether we had reached ‘peak Columbo‘ in terms of consistent quality. And that’s really the genesis of this article.

“There’s a genuine argument that Season 4…

In a column published at Townhall on Thursday, journalist and former Fox Business host John Stossel announced that YouTubeattempted to prevent a video he produced on socialism from being viewed by young people.

Ironically enough, Stossel revealed this detail as part of his review of the documentary movie The Creepy Line. The film is about how tech giants (specifically YouTube owner Google and social media giant Facebook) can intentionally manipulate search engine results in order to influence certain political outcomes.

Below is John Stossel’s video in question and there is a Spanish version you can view here. Socialism is the achievement of Communism by political, as opposed to violent, means. Environmentalism hails from the Marxist tradition and the groups based on it use both politics and violence to achieve their ends. It does not do well for individual freedom when technology companies (like Google) further Leftist ends.