Utopia, you are standing in it!

Goldilocks-thinking is the basis for the wind and solar transition, which relies on power sources that can only operate when conditions are “just right”.

When the weather turns nasty, giant industrial wind turbines simply turn off. When there’s no wind, they produce nothing; when winds hit gale force, they produce nothing.

Solar panels aren’t any more resilient.

A few fluffy clouds give them grief.

Hailstones make short work of them; a blanket of snow and ice cuts their production to nothing, even when the sun is shining.

A hurricane or tornado soon tears them to worthless shreds.

As the wind and sun cult would have it, however, the answer is always more wind and solar capacity, not less.

Their central and founding myth is that solar panels and wind turbines are gradually, inevitably replacing conventional generators, especially coal-fired power plants.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the weather is…

King Henry VII of England, Lord of Ireland died on April 21, 1509, and the 17-year-old Henry succeeded him as King Henry VIII of England, Lord of Ireland. Soon after his father’s burial on May 10, Henry suddenly declared that he would indeed marry Catherine of Aragon. Technically at this time she was the Dowager Princess of Wales as the widow of Henry’s brother, Prince Arthur, Prince of Wales.

Catherine of Aragon daughter of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Fernando II of Aragon, Catherine was three years old when she was betrothed to Prince Arthur, heir apparent to the English throne. They married in 1501, but Arthur died five months later. Catherine spent years in limbo, and during this time, she held the position of ambassador of the Aragonese crown to England in 1507, the first known female ambassador in European history.

Henry’s desire to marry Catherine which…

Libertarians often make the claim that taxation is a form of robbery, and some of them (especially the anarcho-capitalists) even assert that it is a form of slavery.

Since I’m an economist, I stick to less flamboyant arguments about the adverse impact of high marginal tax rates and double taxation.

But, based on a controversy in the Netherlands, maybe the more radical libertarians have a point.

There are some people in that country who think a race car driver who left the Netherlands and now lives in Monaco has an obligation to surrender half his income to the Dutch government.

Here are some excerpts from a report published by a sports website.

Max Verstappen, ever since he turned 18 has been living in Monaco which is known to be a tax haven. Essentially, Max Verstappen has not paid any tax whatsoever to the Dutch government for his earnings…

The Kings of England and the Kings of France had a history of rivalry, enmity and even being enemies of one another. There are often times when attempts at peace were made.

An early meeting between the kings of England and France when they’re trying to bring peace between the two realms occurred in 1396 rom October 27 to 30, 1396, when King Charles VI of France and King Richard II of England had meeting at Balinghem, Ardres near Calais to treat for peace during the Hundred Years’ War. The scale, splendour and pageantry were comparable to the later Field of the Cloth of Gold meeting held on the same site in 1520.

At this meeting a truce was agreed to, which was to last 28 years. As part of the truce, Richard agreed to marry Isabella of Valois, daughter of Charles VI of France, when she came of age…

I don’t trust The Spinoff, which I regard as the online, 21st century version of The Listener, hitting all the notes of whatever is currently trendy with the Left.

However, they have given space to Danyl Mclauchlan, the man behind the fabulous blog The Dim Post, which has sadly been locked in private limbo since Danyl got proper writing jobs. As much as I enjoy his serious essays, like this one on the Administrative State, his satire was brilliant and biting during the Key era (** see below for three examples). It’s no great surprise to see him now writing for…. The Listener.

And so I was willing to give this lengthy article a crack and I think you should too, as it covers the history of Seymour in ACT from its nadir in the 2017 polls to now: The fall and rise of David…

Last month, our Green Minister of Energy approved the doubling of the grid tariff (a charge for network use that the grid manager charges to the electricity users). The reason for this increase is the massive investment that the grid manager wants to do in the next decade.

These investments are expected to cost around 7 billion euro over the next decade. A big part of the investments goes to a sea cable to Denmarkand and to the UK, also cables to Germany, France and the Netherlands. Another part of the investment is the strengthening of the backbone that brings the Denmark/UK/offshore electricity inland (Ventilus). So, these investments have directly to do with the energy transition.

These costs will be billed to the end users (families and industry). There was some protest against this increase from the energy watchdog, consumer associations and the industry, but the Minister pushes through(translated…

If wind power were delivered at an affordable cost, 24 x 365, the wind industry might just justify the rampant slaughter of millions of birds and bats, including America’s iconic bald and golden eagles. However, given that wind power will only ever be delivered in chaotic fits and spurts all avian carnage is is entirely pointless.

Every butchered eagle is greeted by the wind power cult with a ‘couldn’t care less’ shrug; the wind industry switches to lies and obfuscation and – when the corpses can no longer be hidden and the lying fails – issue court proceedings in an effort to literally bury those facts (see our post here).

Cars, cats and skyscrapers don’t kill Eagles – like the critically endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle, but 60m wind turbine blades with their tips travelling at 350Kph routinely smash them out of existence.

With thousands more of these things…

The new Three Waters amendment bill is intended to increase the number of water services entities to ten and introduce a Funding Agency but only makes a bad policy worse.

• Thomas Cranmer writes –

 The Three Waters legislation was back before Parliament this week in the form of an amendment bill which is intended to implement changes to the reforms announced by Prime Minister Hipkins and Local Government Minister Kieran McAnulty in April.

Those changes came about as a result of the new Prime Minister’s “policy refresh” which asked McAnulty to consider options for reform of the Three Waters proposal, including timing and sequencing, the number of entities and boundaries and alternative approaches for Māori representation and involvement.

The relevant Cabinet Paper from February suggested that alternative approaches for Māori representation could include replicating in the Regional Representative Groups the structure proposed for the Regional Planning Committees in the…