Utopia, you are standing in it!

Charles II (May 29, 1630 – February 6, 1685) was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651, and King of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685.

Charles II was the eldest surviving child of Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland and Henrietta Maria of France. After Charles I’s execution at Whitehall on January 30, 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War, the Parliament of Scotland proclaimed Charles II king on February 5, 1649. However, England entered the period known as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth, with a government led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell defeated Charles II at the Battle of Worcester on September 3, 1651, and Charles fled to mainland Europe.

Cromwell became Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. Charles spent the next nine years in exile in France, the Dutch Republic and the…

National has introduced a terrible housing policy that can only be a reaction of the struggling Chris Luxon to pressure from Nimbies. It means that an Auckland housing unit will have a land cost over $500k more per unit than the MDRS rules. See below for an example

Peter Cresswell has an on point critique here. A Green Party MP shepherded the rules through select committee.

SO WITH HOUSING ONCE again a political football, we await an election to sort out which fuckwits where get to tell us where and how we’re allowed to build, planning rules in and around our city are once again completely up in the air — as they were while we awaited certainty around the MRDS. And without that certainty, it’s impossible for developers and builders to make real plans, uncertain as they are as to how council’s planners might be allowed to curtail…

The Treasury released its budget economic forecasts. What do they say about the economy over the next four months?

• Brian Easton writes –  

Let me begin me with an irritation. One post-budget headline was ‘Treasury optimistic over recession risk in Budget 2023‘. Treasury being optimistic is almost an oxymoron. They fire down the centre.

It is true that Treasury has lifted its forecast of economic activity (GDP) a little since its December 2022 exercise, reflecting stronger migration and tourism and the rebuild from the cyclones. Even so, it expects GDP per capita to fall fractionally between the June 2023 and June 2024 years. The next year is going to be tough, with some quickening of economic activity in the middle of 2024.

Moreover, while Treasury does not forecast the fans showing the degree of uncertainty in the forecasts, it provides guidance about its assessment of upside and downside…

Credit: Scottish Power
Plenty of talk but not very much action, it seems. The author notes that ‘the small size of hydrogen molecules poses safety and greenhouse gas-related risks that must be mitigated’, while most current gas grids can’t cope with more than 20% hydrogen content anyway. Affordability looks at least questionable. Such issues will require years of effort and expense to even attempt to get to grips with.
– – –
The global discourse on addressing climate change, energy transition, and investments is currently dominated by the topic of green hydrogen, says Dr. Cyril Widdershoven @ OilPrice.com.

The media frenzy surrounding the expanding array of projects, subsidy schemes, and international strategies is fueled by the influence of Washington’s IRA plans and the EU’s energy strategic projects.

It appears as if the choice for a post-hydrocarbon world has already been made, with green hydrogen or its derivative, green ammonia…

Labour party’s Congress is underway in Wellington. The country’s worst ever minister for ‘Social Development’ (a ministry which does not involve developing society at all) has unveiled their first policy to campaign on:

Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni said a re-elected Labour government, led by Hipkins, would not raise the pension age from 65.

“New Zealand has one of the simplest superannuation schemes in the world. It is universal and generous,” Sepuloni said.

Labour would also continue making contributions to the NZ Super Fund and dishing out the winter energy payment.

That’s right. Despite soaring debt, an aging population and one of the most generous superannuation schemes in the world, Labour are committed to keeping it exactly as is.

Treasury had warned the cost of the ageing population was on an “unsustainable” track but Sepuloni stressed not changing the age was affordable “as long as we keep paying into…

Federated Farmers is working with the Taxpayers’ Union with a roadshow opposing the government’s replacement to the RMA:

“We all want to see reform of the RMA, but it needs to be done right to address the issues of cost and complexity that farmers face every time they want to do something productive with their land,” says Federated Farmers RMA Reform spokesperson Mark Hooper.

“The current legislation just ties farmers up in red tape, slows us down, and heaps on unnecessary costs – but the Government’s proposed reforms will only make that worse. It’s an absolute nightmare for farmers.

Federated Farmers strongly opposes the current reforms because they will shift land use planning away from democratically elected councils towards ‘Regional Planning Committees’, which will be at arm’s length from their local community,” Hooper said.

“We also have real concerns that the reforms will introduce new, vague and undefined concepts…

James E. Hanley provides a roundup of failed Green expensive ventures in his Real Clear Policy article Green Projects Hit Iron Wall.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Developers looking to build thousands of wind turbines off the Mid-Atlantic and New England coast are coming up against a force even more relentless than the Atlantic winds: the Iron Law of Megaprojects, offering a warning of the trouble ahead for green-energy projects.

The Iron Law, coined by Oxford Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, says that “megaprojects” — which cost billions of dollars, take years to complete, and are socially transformative — reliably come in over budget, over time, over and over.

From Boston’s Big Dig to California’s high-speed rail to
New York’s 12 years-overdue and 300% over-budget East Side Access rail project,
big boondoggles routinely demonstrate the validity of the rule.

Offshore wind projects are not immune to the…

I pinched this guest opinion piece from over at the BFD where it appeared yesterday.

The Author Corina Shields appears to be a mid to late twenties lady with two children. There is a photo which I have not brought across to this post that indicates she is in a stable relationship.

Lets have a look and see what she said.

It would be foolish of me to write this without acknowledging the fact that this subject is one that has the potential to upset some Maori and, hopefully, the government and their friends. But nonetheless, it is one I feel strongly about, so if it means dealing with people’s ill-perceived notions of who I am as a person so be it. All I ask is that people at least read what I have to say before forming a judgement about me.

To get to the point, I need to…

During his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, King Henry VIII conducted an affair with Mary Boleyn, Catherine’s lady-in-waiting. There has been speculation that Mary’s two children, Henry Carey and Catherine Carey, were fathered by Henry, but this has never been proved, and the king never acknowledged them as he did in the case of Henry FitzRoy. In 1525, as Henry grew more impatient with Catherine’s inability to produce the male heir he desired, he became enamoured of Mary Boleyn’s sister, Anne Boleyn, then a charismatic young woman of 25 in the queen’s entourage. Anne, however, resisted his attempts to seduce her, and refused to become his mistress as her sister had.

It was in this context that Henry considered his three options for finding a dynastic successor and hence resolving what came to be described at court as the king’s “great matter”. These options were legitimising Henry FitzRoy, which would…

In case you’re not aware, there has been a growing movement in the USA that somewhat parallels the Treaty of Waitangi settlements here.

A small number of American academics, and now a growing number of Left-wing activists and minor politicians, are demanding that Blacks in America should be individually paid millions of dollars to compensate for the enslavement of their ancestors. It’s now reached the point where an official State government commission appointed in California has produced a recommendation to the State legislature of some$800 billion, or nearly three times the state’s annual budget.

This for a State that joined as a free state (meaning free of slaves) in 1850. How this would be figured out in detail is not explained, but perhaps the Democrats could return to their one-drop-of-blood rule? Or perhaps this blunter suggestion from a Democraticcouncilwoman:

Speaking before the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance, Cdebaca

As part of our series reflecting on the recent‘Politics before Democracy’ conference, Dr Martin Spychal, a Senior Research Fellow on the 1832-1868 Commons project, discussesthe impact of the 1832 reform legislation on English electoral politics.

At the 2023 Politics before Democracy conference I discussed the 1832 reform legislation and its impact on English electoral politics between 1832 and 1868. The paper was based on research completed for my forthcoming book, Mapping the State: English boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act, and a preliminary survey of the research completed for the History of Parliament’s ongoing Commons 1832-1868 project.

Three major themes emerged from my paper. First, electoral organisation was an inescapable aspect of political life across England’s* constituency system after 1832. Second, franchise, boundary and registration reform in 1832 explicitly refocused constituency politics around the social, economic and political circumstances of England’s counties and boroughs, and was…

Greece today held what will almost certainly be its first of two general elections of 2023 (hence the ‘a’ in the title above). The incumbent New Democracy (ND) won a substantial plurality of the vote, around 41%, over Syriza’s 20%. By seats, ND has 146, which is 48.7% (BBC, Wiki). That’s five seats short of a majority. The advantage ratio (%seats/%votes) is relatively high (1.19), but the electoral system did not quite manufacture a majority. And therein lies the reason why there will be another election, most likely.

In most recent elections, Greece has used a bonus-adjustment system, whereby the plurality party automatically wins 50 seats before the remaining 250 are allocated proportionally among those clearing the legal threshold (3%). However, back in 2016, the Syriza government passed an electoral system reform that removed the bonus provision. Under the Greek constitution, an electoral reform can take place…

The 3°C Scenario: What’s the economic impact of severe global warming?  James Pethokoukis writes at his substack.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Even with an extreme scenario, the world should be richer and more capable in 2050