Utopia, you are standing in it!

Any enquiring mind has already rumbled the fact that the grand wind and solar reset is a great ‘green’ fraud. Wind turbines, solar panels and mythical mega-batteries require more energy to produce than they’ll ever repay.

Miners love it, of course, with the insatiable demand that’s been generated by delusional autocrats and cynical rent-seekers. Although, perhaps, not so much the kids in the Congo dragging cobalt out of muddy pits with their bare hands.

At the heart of the ‘wind and solar will save us’ myth is a yawning gulf of ignorance concerning the energy and resources required, is the subject dealt with by Frances Menton below.

They Can’t Make Green Energy Using Only Green Energy
Manhattan Contrarian
Francis Menton
17 October 2022

Not being a dope, you likely realized a long time ago that it was going to take a lot of energy to manufacture the components of the…

The government repealed blasphemous libel laws three years ago but now looks set to re-introduce something remarkably similar. It is an amendment that not even the Royal Commission has recommended.  THOMAS  CRANMER writes-

As the government was labelled “reckless and irresponsible” on Wednesday for attempting to rush through 24 bills, some without public consultation, the chances of bad law being made is extremely high.

Already this week we have seen the Prime Minister and her Cabinet colleagues so badly exposed on the Water Services Entities Bill, that it has required Minister Mahuta to make an amendment in an effort to quell growing public concern about the scope of the Bill.

That amendment, by the way, is merely a drafting sleight of hand that doesn’t change the substance or scope of the Bill but more on that next week.

Given the speed at which the government is moving we can be sure…

The Counsellors of State Bill cleared the House of Lords yesterday. Counsellors of State are members of the Royal Family who carry out the Sovereign’s functions if they are ill or absent from the United Kingdom, and this Bill would add the Earl of Wessex and the Princess Royal to the pool of people who are eligible to serve. [1]

Under the Regency Act 1937, the Queen Consort and the first four people in line for the Throne who are of legal age are eligible to be Counsellors.[2] Because the Prince of Wales’ children are too young, the Duke of York and the Duke of Sussex remain on the roster. This is awkward given that neither one is a ‘working royal’ and Prince Harry also lives in America. While the King can excuse someone if they will be absent from the UK, he can’t substitute anyone in their…

The makers say: ‘To charge the battery, we take CO2 at near atmospheric temperature and pressure and we compress it. The heat that is generated during compression is stored. When we exchange the thermal energy with the atmosphere, the CO2 gas becomes liquid.

To generate and dispatch electricity, the liquid CO2 is heated up and converted back into a gas that powers a turbine, which generates power. The CO2 gas is always contained and the entire system is sealed. We don’t use any exotic materials.’
— Looks like another net user of power.
– – –
Italian startup Energy Dome, maker of the world’s first CO2 battery, is officially entering the US market, says Electrek.

Energy Dome’s battery uses carbon dioxide to store energy from wind and solar on the grid.

The latest monthly data on the UK’s public finances included the first of many payments from the Treasury to cover losses made by the Bank of England’s Asset Purchase Facility (APF). This may seem like an arcane subject, but the sums are huge and at least partly avoidable, so bear with me.

First, the technical details. This is yet another unwelcome hangover from Quantitative Easing. Under QE, the Bank’s APF bought government bonds, or gilts, by crediting the accounts that commercial banks hold at the central bank, using newly-created money. These accounts, known as central bank reserves, pay interest at the Bank Rate, which is currently 3%.

The APF also receives interest on these gilts from the government, like any other bondholder, in the form of coupon payments. When these payments are higher than the cost of the reserves, the Bank has been making a profit which it has paid…

Lack of information sparks speculation

Rather coincidentally as I was preparing my Ombudsman compliant (actually there is no such thing as coincidence) against NZTA’s refusal of my Official Information Act request on the City Centre to Mangere Light Rail project (CC2M) (see: Inadequate Response from NZTA on City Centre to Mangere Light Rail sparks Ombudsman Complaint) a fellow Tweeter shared a link from Interest.co.nz on Treasury being at tension with Transport Minister Twyford over CC2M and its complexity.

For the full article see: Treasury report shows tensions with the Minister of Transport Phil Twyford over ‘extremely complex’ Auckland light rail project

That article was published yesterday the same day I got my OIA request back and it looks like NZTA were showing the same level of contempt in withholding information to Interest as I got with my OIA request.

Let’s break down the article as it is a pile of…

The claim that wind and solar guarantee falling power bills is being revealed for the big fat lie that it truly is. It’s a reality that is catching up with a vengeance for Australians gullible enough to have bought it. Tens of $billions have already been squandered on subsidies to chaotically intermittent wind and solar and, under the truly deranged leadership of Anthony Albanese and his Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, there is much, much worse to come.

Retail power prices are already amongst the highest in the world; the hot tip is for power bills to jump somewhere between 30 and 50% in the next 12 months.

What that means to small businesses and households is the subject of this timely piece by the Australian’s Gemma Tognini.

Green zealotry will not save battlers from power pain
The Australian
Gemma Tognini
12 November 2022

Up the road from where I live…

*Editors’ note: this post is part of a series on ‘The Human Rights Act After 22 Years’, following theSLS Annual Seminarheld in November 2022.You can read the first post in the serieshere.*

With the reinstatement of Dominic Raab as Secretary of State for Justice, the Bill of Rights Bill, currently before Parliament, is once again a possibility only weeks after Liz Truss halted its progression on account that it was a ‘complete mess’. This post examines the Bill’s provisions on overseas military operations, how they compare with the UK judiciary’s approach, the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021, and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) jurisprudence. Also highlighted  are other extraterritoriality issues outside overseas military operations that the UK will have to consider. 

The main extraterritoriality issue that the Bill addresses explicitly is overseas military operations. Clause 14 states that a…

Mary and her husband Felipe

In September 1554, Mary stopped menstruating. She gained weight, and felt nauseated in the mornings. For these reasons, almost the entirety of her court, including her physicians, believed she was pregnant. Parliament passed an act making Felipe regent in the event of Mary’s death in childbirth.

In the last week of April 1555, Elizabeth was released from house arrest, and called to court as a witness to the birth, which was expected imminently. According to Giovanni Michieli, the Venetian ambassador, Felipe may have planned to marry Elizabeth in the event of Mary’s death in childbirth, but in a letter to his brother-in-law Maximilian of Austria, Felipe expressed uncertainty as to whether Mary was pregnant.

Thanksgiving services in the diocese of London were held at the end of April after false rumours that Mary had given birth to a son spread across Europe. Through May and…

It doesn’t take a genius to connect calm weather with total collapses in wind power output. Even the functionally illiterate have the capacity to understand just how incapable wind power is of delivering power on demand.

For example, depicted above – courtesy of Aneroid Energy – is the output delivered by Australian wind power outfits to the Eastern Grid in June 2020. Back then, all of the wind turbines connected the Eastern Grid had a combined notional capacity of 7,728MW. Spread from Far North Queensland, across the ranges of NSW, all over Victoria, Northern Tasmania and across South Australia these whirling wonders routinely deliver a risible fraction of their capacity.

During June 2020 there were lengthy periods when the combined output of every wind turbine connected to the Eastern Grid struggled to top 400 MW (5.1% of total capacity). Such as: 11 June when output collapsed to a trifling 86…