Utopia, you are standing in it!

In the face of Napoleon’s assumption of the title “Emperor of the French” in 1804 and the Austrian defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, the Habsburg monarchy began contemplating whether the imperial title and the empire as a whole were worth defending.

Many of the states nominally serving the Holy Roman Emperor, such as Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria, had openly defied imperial authority and sided with Napoleon. Even then, the significance of the empire was not based on actual control of resources, but on prestige.

The main idea behind Franz II’s actions in 1806 was to lay the groundwork needed to avoid additional future wars with Napoleon and France. One concern held by the Habsburg monarchy was that Napoleon might aspire to claim the title of Holy Roman Emperor.

Franz II-I, The Last Holy Roman Emperor and First Emperor of Austria

Napoleon was attracted to Charlemagne’s legacy; replicas…

The ultimate cost of renewable energy virtue signalling is truly crippling, wind and solar-obsessed Britain is a case in point. Power prices have doubled over the span of a few months and will quadruple as energy demand spikes again in winter.

Attempting to ditch its coal-fired power plants (and converting them to run on wood pellets imported from the US) was never going to end well.

The first sign of trouble in wind-powered paradise began in September last year when (and for months following) Britain’s much heralded wind-powered future ran headlong into reality when the Big Calm struck. Wind power output was reduced to a risible trickle across the continent. The Brits were forced to fire up their mothballed coal-fired power plants, and wholesale power prices went through the roof.

Natural forces continued to conspire into November: on 2 and 3 November, wind power output across the UK once…

My recent post about the heroic-journalist myth of Watergate prompted a few blinkered, ahistoric observations.

Among was this comment, posted at Romenesko‘s feedback site:

“Who cares?” the comment reads. “Watergate was in the early 1970s. …  Arguing the point now about what role a paper played almost 40 years later in a presidency that a significant number of people have no recollections of? Ya gotta admire those authors willing to tackle cutting-edge topics.”

So why does it matter? Why is addressing and debunking the heroic-journalist myth of Watergate — the notion that intrepid reporters for the Washington Post brought down Richard Nixon’s corrupt presidency — still important?

Several reasons present themselves, not the least of which is the vigor that characterizes the Watergate myth: It lives on in textbooks, in classrooms, in newsrooms. It’s a very robust myth, little-restrained in its reach and infiltration.

A hint of its reach…

Back in 1983 the American Wind Industry Association claimed that solar and wind would be “competitive and self-supporting on a national level by the end of the decade if assisted by tax credits and augmented by federally sponsored R&D”. That was 39 years ago. Over that span of time, there has been no lack of assistance in the form of tax credits and federally sponsored R&D, along with a raft of punitive mandates and targets designed to cripple conventional generators and favour chaotically intermittent wind and solar.

Now, as then, bold claims from renewable energy rent seekers about wind and solar being truly competitive with nuclear, coal or gas turn to water as soon as talk turns to cutting subsidies to wind and solar.

With their 40^th birthdays approaching, the wind and solar ‘industries’ are a pair of perpetual infants who – like Peter Pan – are determined to…

I don’t like big-government Republicans in the United States, so it naturally follows that I don’t like big-government Tories in the United Kingdom.

Indeed, I wrote just a few days ago about the new leadership race for the Conservative Party in the U.K. and wondered whether either of the candidates has what it takes to reverse Boris Johnson’s failedstatism.

I hope one of them is the reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher (just as I’ve been waiting decades for another Ronald Reagan).

We will find out relatively quickly. The race for Prime Minister will be decided next month and I will be very interested to see whether the winner fixes two very foolish energy policies.

The Wall Street Journal has a pair of excellent editorials this month.

On August 18, the paper opined about a bone-headed policy to cap energy bills.

Britain’s ruling Conservatives have imposed some awful energy…

In 1943, the village of Imber on Salisbury Plain began to be used as a Second World War training ground. The residents were ordered to leave by the War Office and, despite promises to the contrary, have never been allowed to return.

The comments made earlier remain relevant, but in the light of both the Jerry Sadowitz cancellation and proposed regulation of speech in the UK and elsewhere I have reposted this item once again.

Here is some additional relevant commentary re the Jerry Sadowitz issue. I have never seen Sadowitz, but what he says and does is controversial. However, nobody is compelled to see him. This incident serves to illustrate the free speech threats are multiplying.

As posted previously

I have decided to repost these previously posted item once again. My reason for doing this is the current furore over a joke made by Jimmy Carr.
Frankly, Carr’s humour does not appeal to me. Consequently I do not watch him. Therefore, nothing he says offends me.

Having watched the clip of Carr, see end of post below I have to say I did not find the item offensive. In fact the…