Utopia, you are standing in it!

Aftermath

The Holy Roman Empire, an institution which had lasted for just over a thousand years, did not pass unnoticed or unlamented. The dissolution of the empire sent shockwaves through Germany, with most of the reactions within the former imperial boundaries being rage, grief or shame.

Even the signatories of the Confederation of the Rhine were outraged; the Bavarian emissary to the imperial diet, Rechberg, stated that he was “furious” due to having “put his signature to the destruction of the German name”, referring to his state’s involvement in the confederation, which had effectively doomed the empire.

From a legal standpoint, Franz II’s abdication was controversial. Contemporary legal commentators agreed that the abdication itself was perfectly legal but that the emperor did not have the authority to dissolve the empire. As such, several of the empire’s vassals refused to recognize that the empire had ended. As late as October 1806…

Many people give great credit to the USSR for their pivotal in the allies defeat of the Nazi regime. They say if it hadn’t been for the Soviets, the war could have lasted a lot longer and could have gone Germany’s way.

However, it can be argued that because of the USSR the war lasted longer. The did aligned themselves with the Nazis a few weeks before the start of WW2. For the first year and a half or so they fought along with the Nazis, in Poland.

On August 23, Germany and the USSR signed a non aggression pact.

The German-Soviet Pact was an agreement signed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It was negotiated by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Commonly called the German-Soviet Pact or the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, it is also known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact or the Hitler-Stalin…

One thing I like about following Israeli politics is that there is no lack of willingness to propose institutional reforms to deal with (real or perceived) problems of governance. They are not always good ideas (see the term limit proposal proposed by a party in the outgoing coalition), but it is good that there is a willingness to debate ideas for political reform.

A news update from the TOI today mentions a couple that are in play during the current election campaign. The National Unity Party, led by Benny Gantz and Gideon Saar, is proposing to (1) require more than an absolute majority for the Knesset to dissolve¹ itself, and (2) not make the failure to pass a budget a cause for automatic dissolution.

The second of these is an excellent idea, and I have thought for some time this should be changed. The problem with the current provision…

Image credit: thecount.com
Ministers ‘insist’ there will be no blackouts, but is anyone comforted by that? They’ve already contracted some extra power from coal that was supposed to be being phased out. Maybe they’re relying on the high price of energy cutting demand.
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A regular emergency planning exercise to help the UK prepare for the possibility of a shortage of gas supplies has been doubled in size, reports BBC News.

Potential scenarios – including rationing electricity – will be wargamed over four days, rather than the usual two, as energy concerns grow.

The government insists there is no risk to UK energy supplies and consumers should not panic.

Thanks to the hidden and crippling cost of subsidised wind and solar, households and businesses are being hit with staggering bills, with prices at levels unimaginable, until recently.

Double digit annual percentage increases are now the norm.

As we reported yesterday, Brits are already suffering power prices more than double what they were 12 months ago, with prices set to double again before their next winter is over. Germans are watching their power prices spiral out of control; with state-controlled rationing sets of institutionalised across the country.

Hopelessly intermittent wind and solar sit at the heart of this economy wrecking chaos. Notwithstanding the efforts of renewable energy rent-seekers to pretend otherwise.

Politicos and the MSM continue to blame everything else under the sun, Vlad Putin, included.

Energy users can only despair, with logic and reason banished from energy policy, long ago. Engineers don’t get a look in. Instead, the realm…

Today we hear from Dr Vivienne Larminie, editor of our Commons 1640-1660 project, who discusses Charles I’s attempts to secure loyalty by giving out peerages and other honours in the early 1640s…

By late 1640 the government of Charles I was in deep trouble.A treaty signed at Ripon on 26 October signalled the end of three years of war against his Scottish subjects – the so-called Bishops’ Wars – but peace came at a price. The Scots maintained an army of occupation in Northumberland and were to be paid £850 a day until a final settlement was ratified by the English Parliament.That Parliament assembled on 3 November in no mood to oblige the king, but instead set about attacking key components of royal policy.On 11 November, impeachment proceedings were launched against Thomas Wentworth, 1st earl of Strafford, Charles’s chief minister in Ireland; a fortnight later he was languishing…

The Governor of the Reserve Bank must have been feeling under a bit of pressure recently about the LSAP programme. Losses have mounted and some more questions have started to be asked – by more than just annoying former staff – about value for money.

And thus on Thursday morning “Monetary Policy Tools and the RBNZ Balance Sheet” dropped into inboxes. It was an 10 page note setting out to defend the Bank and the MPC over the bond-buying LSAP programme and the inaptly-named Funding for Lending programme, the crisis facility under which the Bank is still – amid an overheated economy and very high core inflation – lending new money to banks.

Of course, the Monetary Policy Statement had been out the previous day. Had the Governor been serious about scrutiny and engagement, he’d have released his note a day or two before the MPS (or even simultaneous to…

The Battle of Bosworth or Bosworth Field was the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses, the civil war between the Houses of Lancaster and York that extended across England in the latter half of the 15th century. Fought on Monday August 22, 1485, the battle was won by an alliance of Lancastrians and disaffected Yorkists.

Their leader Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, became the first English monarch, Henry VII, of the Tudor dynasty by his victory and subsequent marriage to a Yorkist princess, Elizabeth of York the daughter of King Edward IV.

His opponent Richard III, the last king of the House of York, was killed during the battle, the last English monarch to die in combat. Historians consider Bosworth Field to mark the end of the Plantagenet dynasty, making it one of the defining moments of English history.

King Richard III of England at the Battle…