Utopia, you are standing in it!

I’ve written a few posts here over the years about the idea – which apparently Labour, National, and the Greens are now keen on – of a state established and funded policy costings unit. The most recent two were a month ago, here and here. I’m a longstanding sceptic of the case for such a […]

Policy costings: a case study

There is an interesting free speech ruling in Texas in favor of the adult entertainment site, Pornhub. Senior U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled that a Texas law requiring age-verification and warning labels about the alleged dangers of porn contravenes the First Amendment. […]

Pornhub Wins Free Speech Challenge to New Verification and Warning Laws

By Paul Homewood   h/t Paul Kolk     Parisians have voted to ban rental electric scooters in their city, dealing a blow to scooter operators and a triumph for road safety campaigners.Almost 90% of votes cast on Sunday favoured a ban the battery-powered devices, official results showed. But under 8% of those eligible turned […]

Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

Jackson and the Treaty – it seems he has forgotten what Lange said about partnership and why Clark wouldn’t sign UN declaration Let’s hear it for Labour’s Willie Jackson, a minister of this, that and the other in the Hipkins government and a fellow with a curious grasp of what happened in the days of…

BOB EDLIN: Jackson and the Treaty

By Paul Homewood   h/t Paul Kolk   Blimey!! Ben Marlow has finally seen the light!       Sadiq Khan’s controversial Ultra-Low Emissions Zone scheme for London was supposed to put the rocket-boosters under electric car demand. With the Mayor pressing ahead with a highly-contentious scheme that forces non-compliant petrol and diesel car drivers […]

The electric car debacle shows the top-down economics of net zero don’t add up

Let’s hear it for Labour’s Willie Jackson, a minister of this, that and the other in the Hipkins government and a fellow with a curious grasp of what happened in the days of David Lange and Helen Clark. In Parliament yesterday, Jackson said ACT leader has a lot to answer for: “He’ll kill our Māori […]

Jackson and the Treaty – it seems he has forgotten what Lange said about partnership and why Clark wouldn’t sign UN declaration

Former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani lost a defamation lawsuit by default Wednesday in Washington, D.C. In a 57-page ruling, United States District Judge Beryl Howell shredded Giuliani for not producing evidence in the case filed by election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. She then ordered a default and the payment of the plaintiffs’ attorneys […]

Giuliani Loses Defamation Case By Default

I had to check up a specific productivity number this morning and noticed that it had got to the time of year when the OECD finally has a complete set of real GDP per hour worked (labour productivity) data for 2022. Data for 2020 and 2021 had been messed around by Covid disruptions, and measurement […]

Does any political party care?

By Paul Homewood h/t Dave Ward     German energy giant RWE has begun dismantling a wind farm to make way for a further expansion of an open-pit lignite coal mine in the western region of North Rhine Westphalia. One wind turbine has already been dismantled, with a further seven scheduled for removal to excavate […]

Germany begins dismantling wind farm for coal

In the 18th century, tea was a popular drink in America. Yet the East India Company struggled to sell their produce which prompted the British government to pass the Tea Duty Act. Dr Robin Eagles, editor of the Lords 1660-1832 project, explores the less than enthusiastic response in America… 250 years ago, tea was very […]

‘the genuine foundation of our evils’: the Tea Act and Boston Tea Party 250 years on

Before becoming Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni was one of the most strident voices on migration in the European Union. As an opposition politician, she warned darkly of efforts to substitute native Italians with ethnic minorities and promised to put in place a naval blockade to stop migrants crossing the Mediterranean. During her time in office, she has taken […]

Italy fact of the day

A day or two ago, I read an attempt by a Minister in the present Labour Government to justify “co-governance”, a word now used to mean governance where Maori New Zealanders share, on a 50/50 basis (sometimes with a veto), the governance of public services or natural resources with those without Maori ancestors. The Minister…

DON BRASH: A PATHETIC ATTEMPT TO JUSTIFY CO-GOVERNANCE

Believers in the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory often talk about “trends”; increases in atmospheric and ocean temperatures, plus hurricanes and other storms – almost anything in fact, as long as it can be tied to AGW and is getting worse. The graph above doesn’t show anything that we haven’t known for at least twenty […]

Fitting up? No! Stitching up!

Below is my column in The Messenger on the early struggle of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to preserve her strategy of holding a mass 19-person trial over the 2020 election case involving former president Donald Trump. Not only are defendants scattering, but some are seeking to go to federal court where the trial […]

Fani Willis Fights for a Mass Trial As the Georgia Defendants Scatter