Utopia, you are standing in it!

Until 2022, calling for the abolition of the monarchy may still have been a form of treason in the United Kingdom, but it did not seem to be more generally criminalised. According to the statute books, the Treason Acts remained in force, but they were specialised tools and provided for a limited range of crimes. Section 3 of the Treason Felony Act 1848, for instance, criminalised compassing, imagining, inventing, devising or intending to depose the monarch from the style, honour or royal name of the imperial crown. In practice, such legislation had rarely been used. Even vociferous criticism of the monarchy had not led to such charges or prosecutions. While it technically remained ‘treason’ to call for the abolition of the monarchy, the criminal law had fallen away in reality. Addressing the question of the lawfulness of the Treason Felony Act 1848 and its compatibility with the protections given effect…

James VI and I (June 19, 1566 – March 27, 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from July 24, 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from March 25, 1603 until his death in 1625. Although he wanted to bring about a closer union, the kingdoms of Scotland and England remained individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciaries, and laws, both ruled by James in personal union.

James was the son of Queen Mary I of Scotland and her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. James was a great-great-grandson of King Henry VII of England and Lord of Ireland, through Margaret Tudor, his daughter and the older sister of Henry VIII, and thus a potential successor to all three thrones.

James was born on June 19, 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, and as the eldest son and heir apparent of the monarch he automatically became…

Global demand for most of our export commodities has softened recently, ANZ Bank economists tell us. China’s economy has not recovered as quickly as expected, putting downward pressure on prices.

Farmgate returns for most industries are at or above a five-year average, ANZ agricultural economist Susan Kilsby  reports. But cost increases in many cases mean that returns are barely covering costs, The rapid rise in interest rates is a major cost that is taking a toll on heavily indebted businesses.

Farmgate prices for milk and meat have softened, although procurement pressures have kept movements in meat schedule prices in check.

For the horticultural sector autumn harvests are now almost in. The sector’s overriding theme is smaller harvests and slightly stronger prices, but overall returns are well down for many growers.

Dairy commodity prices in particular have continued to weaken and the ANZ Bank has lowered its milk price forecast to…

Edward I (June 17/18, 1239 – July 7, 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he was Lord of Ireland, and from 1254 to 1306, he ruled Gascony as Duke of Aquitaine in his capacity as a vassal of the French king.

Edward was born at the Palace of Westminster on the night of June 17–18, 1239 to King Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence. Edward, an Anglo-Saxon name, was not commonly given among the aristocracy of England after the Norman conquest, but Henry was devoted to the veneration of Edward the Confessor and decided to name his firstborn son after the saint.

Edward’s birth was widely celebrated at the royal court and throughout England, and he was baptised three days later at Westminster Abbey. He was commonly referred to as the Lord Edward…

The obsession with chaotically intermittent and heavily subsidised wind and solar has few winners and plenty of losers. The latter include the householders and businesses being crushed by power price increases of a magnitude that few of them can afford, and none of them expected (having been consistently lied to by the politicos and MSM about the true and inevitable cost of attempting to run on sunshine and breezes).

The victors include the power generators and retailers (sometimes one and the same – referred to as ‘gentailers’) whose profits are inversely proportional to the pain being suffered by their customers.

While STT has reported on the upcoming 25-30% hike in retail power prices – set to take effect from 1 July – that staggering impost comes on top of increases of between 10-20% in retail power prices that have taken effect throughout the financial year. Which means that many households…

Oh, dear.  Our Maori people are being dealt another blow.

That’s the impression given by the headline on an article in The Post headed Carbon plan ‘damaging to Maori”.

The report by Glenn McConnell says the Government is about to release controversial plans to reform the carbon market,

“… which have already led to legal challenges and comparisons to the foreshore and seabed saga.”

What’s this struggle about?

A major legal battle has sparked up between the Government and Maori forestry companies over proposals to stop pine trees from earning carbon credits, which are then cashed in through the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Oh.  The carbon plan is not “damaging to Maori” , as the headline would have us believe – it is upsetting for Maori forestry companies.

The IMF says New Zealand is living beyond its means :

. . . the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) latest report on New Zealand’s economy warned the Government to rein in spending and for the Reserve Bank to prepare for further interest rate hikes, should they be needed. 

The financial agency on Wednesday said New Zealand’s economy was likely to continue slowing in the near term.

Inflation wasn’t expected to decline to the Reserve Bank’s target range of between 1 and 3 percent until 2025, the IMF warned.

It also warned New Zealand’s “current account balance (meaning the country is exporting less than importing) has deteriorated significantly, reflecting excess demand and one-off factors”. 

“For the first quarter, that [current account deficit] number came in at 8.5 percent [of GDP],” explained Mark Riggall, a portfolio manager at Milford Asset Management. “So it’s an improving situation – but it’s still pretty bad…

• Michael Bassett writes – 

As cabinet ministers traipse around the country, feverishly talking up Budget largesse in the hope it will help their re-election, they inadvertently let slip what Labour’s key priorities are. A recent senior citizens’ meeting was told that grants to Maori are top priority. Pasifika come in a distant second, with disadvantaged youth somewhat further behind.

Ordinary Europeans, Indians, Chinese and others, who together make up a big majority of our population, don’t get much of a look in.

So, let’s examine the legal definition of this government’s favourite citizens. Who is a Maori? Right up until passage of the Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1974, a Maori was anyone who had half Maori ethnicity or more. A half Maori could choose to be classified as a Maori or a non-Maori. Less than half, and the law said one could not legally claim to be Maori.

But, from…

The heroic attempt to increasingly rely on unreliable wind power ultimately reveals itself as suicidal.

Driving reliable conventional generators off the grid and hoping that they will be replaced (in substance) by chaotically intermittent wind power comes with a grab bag of consequences.

Rocketing power prices follow as night follows day; the result of incorporating the subsidies that led to wind power generation in the first place, and paying over the market prices for power generated using expensive gas or diesel fuel run through fast-start up Open Cycle Gas Turbines or even internal combustion ship engines, all of which are inefficient and costly to run.

Then come the blackouts, for the reasons laid out by John Hinderaker below.

Here Come the Blackouts
Powerline
John Hinderaker
22 May 2023

You can’t replace reliable energy (coal, nuclear, natural gas) with unreliable energy that most of the time produces nothing (wind and…

Continuing our series reflecting on the recent‘Politics before Democracy’conference,our assistant editor Dr Kathryn Rixlooks at the impact of the 1832 Reform Act on the personnel of the House of Commons.

In March 1833, two months after Parliament assembled following the first election held under the terms of the 1832 Reform Act, the cartoonist ‘H.B.’ (John Doyle) produced a cartoon depicting the ‘March of Reform’. Set in the lobby of the House of Commons, it showed four former Tory MPs – marshalled by Francis Williams, the under door-keeper – looking on with suspicion and dismay as three newly elected MPs walked into the chamber. While the effects of the 1832 Reform Act have been much debated by historians, for contemporaries, as Doyle’s image of the changing of the guard at Westminster encapsulated, it marked an important symbolic break with the past.

George I (May 28, 1660 – June 11, 1727) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from August 1, 1714 and ruler of the Electorate of Hanover within the Holy Roman Empire from January 23, 1698 until his death in 1727.

George was born on May 28, 1660 in the city of Hanover in the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg in the Holy Roman Empire. He was the eldest son of Ernst August, Elector of Hanover and Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and his wife, Sophia of the Palatinate, daughter of Friedrich V, Elector of the Palatinate of the Rhine, a member of the House of Wittelsbach, and Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of King James I-VI of England, Scotland and Ireland and Princess Anne of Denmark and Norway.

George inherited the titles and lands of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg from his father and uncles. A succession of European wars expanded his German domains during his…