Utopia, you are standing in it!

Robert Hazell and Bob Morris have been examining the accession and coronation oaths the Queen’s successor will have to take once her reign comes to an end. Their research on the subject has led to two reports, both of which were published today. In this blogpost, they discuss their conclusions and call for both oaths to be rewritten to reflect a country that has changed significantly since they were last used.

The Constitution Unit has published two reports that look forward to the accession and coronation of the next monarch. This might be thought premature. But because so much has to be decided quickly, within 24 hours of the Queen’s death, it is important to spend time now considering the issues that will arise, before they have to be dealt with in the rush of a new reign. There will be no shortage of critics ready to snipe at the…

Five California thieves with the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) have been charged and face felony sentences in connection with the theft of five pigs from a farm operated by Smithfield Foods in Beaver, Utah Deseret News reports.

What is significant is that Deseret News also points out that the founder of DxE, Wayne Hansen Hsiung, is among the accused in which he was arrested twice before for livestock thefts from farms in North Carolina and San Francisco. However, DxE states they are being persecuted for exposing corporate misconduct, saying that the meat industry doesn’t want people to see how their food is produced. This despite the fact that the nihilists trespassed on private property and conducted a theft of animals owned by the company who owns and operates the Utah farm.

What is hilarious and unreal at the same time, police found out who was responsible for…

Azar, Marinescu, and Steinbaum recently released a working paper through the Roosevelt Institute on Labor Market Monopsony.  In their words:

In short, we find that most labor markets (as defined by occupation and geography) are very concentrated, and that that concentration has a robust negative impact on posted wages for job openings. These findings are drawn from only one (large) dataset, so they are not the last word on the subject. The implication, along with the other papers cited above, is that the antitrust authorities should not operate under the assumption that labor markets are “naturally” competitive.

Their posted map of the concentration indices for each region is certainly striking:

It seems that the entire nation is blanketed in a sea of exploitative employers!  Until, that is, we compare this map to a population density map of the United States…

…in which “hotspots” of population are also “hotspots” of labor market…

We are taking a spin on my Top 100 Films of All Time list. To make it more interesting and exciting we are going to start pitting each film against each other until a winner is chosen. Without further ado, let’s start.

Category I – Art Direction

image via DVDizzy

On The Waterfront is about an ex-boxer, Terry Malloy who witnesses a death of his good friend and in return decides to revolt against the mob boss responsible. Quite the simple story and overall never adds too much of anything else other than a typical love interest. The camera work makes the movie seem newer than the ’50s. That is a true testament to how well it has aged. There were hiccups along the way. It’s a movie which goes on for longer than needed. I surely didn’t think it was pushed to its potential.

image via Signature Reads

Schindler’s…

These days, it’s almost impossible for wind power promoters to finish a sentence without reference to batteries or pumped hydro.

In the beginning, when the wind industry said ‘let there be light’, they meant only occasionally, and only when the wind was blowing, just right.

Now that the average punter has worked out that the only guarantee delivered by wind power, is guaranteed chaos, those still in on the rort are bound to start waffling about storing all that wonderful ‘green’ energy; lovingly caressed from nature’s bounteous breezes (albeit at times when there is no market for it), to be gently guided back into the grid when there might actually be a demand for it.

In that vein, PM, Malcolm Turnbull is all pumped up about Snowy 2.0 (an un-costed $10 billion brain fart, unlikely to get past the scoping phase).  And there are plenty also pumping up Tasmania…

In May 2017, we postedabout multiple British news sites – including the Guardian – which misled readers about a new Hamas political document, falsely characterizing it as a sign of the group’s new ‘moderation’.  We noted that nothing could be further from the truth, as the document – despite a few sentences suggesting they’d accept a state on ’67 borders for the time being – still called for violence to liberate Palestine from the ‘River to the Sea’.

A new Guardian report by Oliver Holmes on recent border violence included the following paragraph in the penultimate paragraph:

In May last year, Hamas presented a new charter accepting the idea of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories, not all of historical Palestine, a move that was seen as a softening from the militant faction’s founding charter that advocates Israel’s destruction.

However, the Guardian, as they so often do…

We have followed the continuing difficulties on airlines where the increasing number of therapy dogs has caused rising complaints from passengers and staff alike, including the recent bizarre case on Frontier Airlines. Universities are facing the same pressures as more students demand the right under federal law to bring their therapy pets to campus and their dormitories.  At Yale, the number of such animals have increased from just one last year to 14 animals this year.  This the increase has come complaints of constant barking and other inconveniences.

WHEN will climate-theory-obsessed politicians and sycophant media finally call off their global warming climate change jihad that’s punishing the poor without helping the planet?

WE were told we’d have more cyclones, not less.

WE were promised “permanent” drought, not record rains.

WE were promised less snow, not more.

WE were promised more “extreme weather”, not less.

WE were promised less crops, not record output.

WE were promised more global warming, not a near twenty year warming “pause”.

POWER prices through the roof. Pensioners unable to pay for their heating or cooling. It’s time to count the shocking price we’ve paid for listening to global warming scaremongers like Tim Flannery.

SEE now what their panic-making has inspired – global warming schemes that have hurt us infinitely more than any slight global warming could ever do.

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DURING the height of the…

There seems to have been almost no media coverage of an extraordinary statement put out late on Wednesday by the going-rogue Governor of the Reserve Bank, Adrian Orr.  Perhaps he was fortunate that all eyes were already on Thursday’s Budget.

I’ve been drawing attention to the way in which Orr has been speaking out on all and sundry issues – often contentious political issues – for which neither he nor the Bank has been assigned responsibility by Parliament.   We’ve had climate change issues, infrastructure spending, both sides of the bank conduct issue (where he was defending the banks only to flip sides and start poking a stick at them), sustainable agriculture, and capital gains taxes. (Various posts touching on the Governor’s comments are here.)

Last week he was at it again, giving an interview to Stuff’s Hamish Rutherford in which he took the opportunity to attack the…

What I call “the dominant popular narrative” of the Watergate scandal made an appearance the other day, in a posting at the popular Huffington Post blog.

The occasion was a withering attack on James O’Keefe, the activist-undercover journalist arrested last month posing as a telephone repairman at the New Orleans offices of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu.

The Huffington Post item unfavorably compared O’Keefe to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who reported most prominently on the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post in the early 1970s. The item declared:

“Woodward and Bernstein brought down a president and they didn’t have to break into anyone’s office.”

Neither did O’Keefe. But it is striking how routinely and off-handedly Woodward and Bernstein are credited with such an accomplishment, especially when the record of Watergate shows that the Post‘s reporting had a marginal effect on forcing Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency.

Also…

Her Majesty the Queen has conferred on HRH Prince Henry of Wales the titles Duke of Sussex Earl of Dumbarton and Baron Killeen.

AFter the Wedding Meghan Markle will be known as HRH The Duchess of Sussex.

The First Duchees of Sussex

The title of Duke of Sussex was conferred upon Prince Augustus Frederick, the sixth son of King George III, on 24 November 1801. Prince Augustus Frederick married Lady Augusta Murray at St George’s, Hanover Square, Westminster in 1793, and then Lady Cecilia Gore at Great Cumberland Place, London, on 2 May 1831. Both marriages were in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act 1772; thus the couple’s children were illegitimate. Not being the Prince’s legitimate wife, Lady Cecilia could not be received at court. She was eventually (on 30 March 1840) given the title of Duchess of Inverness in her own right by Queen Victoria. Since Augustus Frederick had…