Utopia, you are standing in it!

Germany, Denmark, South Australia, California, the list of places that prove our headline grows by the day. The wind and solar cancer that saw South Australia suffer the country’s only statewide blackout and end up suffering the world’s highest power prices, bar none, quickly spread and has now taken hold across the entire Eastern Grid (which takes in Queensland, New Wales, Victoria and Tasmania as well as SA).

Wholesale power prices have more than doubled in the last six months; retail power prices are rising at double-digit rates each year – consumers face a minimum 18-20% jump in their power bills next month; and power rationing by postcode is the new normal, whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in.

The last thing Australia needs is another MW of intermittent power generation, which means slashing subsidies to wind and solar, right now, re-engineering the electricity market and returning…

For many, one of the most polarizing figures of the Second World War was Pope Pius XII. Up until 2019 the Vatican archives did not allow access to most of the documents related to Pius XII’s actions before and during the war. Under the current leadership of Pope Francis, the archive has been made available to historians and has brought about a reassessment of Pius XII’s relationship with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in addition to his attitude toward the Holocaust.

Until the opening of the archive, historians were of two minds; either Pius XII was too close to Mussolini and Hitler and did not confront them publicly concerning their murderous atrocities and said and did little in relation to the genocide of European Jewry or he did as much as he could in balancing the protection of the Catholic clergy in Germany…

There is an extraordinary column in the Herald this morning, by their excellent Kate MacNamara (complete with nice biblical allusions in the online version headlines, which may be lost on a younger generation of readers) on the travails of the Productivity Commission. If you can get access, and you care at all about economic policy and institutions in this country, you really should read it.

The Productivity Commission was set up a decade or so ago by the previous government. Inspired by the Australian Productivity Commission – which has done some good work over several decades – there were both cynical and genuine motivations behind it. On the cynical side, it was a cheap win for ACT (this was during the 2008 to 2011 term), and it offset the premature termination of the 2025 Taskforce. But on the more serious side, there was a recognition of the long-running New Zealand…

Failure’s an orphan, success has a thousand fathers, but subsidised wind and solar are central to the energy disaster playing out in America, Europe and Australia.

Faced with rocketing power prices and an angry proletariat, the political classes have amped up their deceptive rhetoric, with wild and fantastic claims that the only way to rein in runaway power costs is to add even more chaotically unreliable and heavily subsidised wind and solar power. A little like throwing gasoline on a raging fire.

Not renowned for his grip on reality, or relationship with the truth, America’s President, the hapless Joe Biden has taken the lead in the stakes for America’s annual Pinocchio awards, as Francis Menton explains below.

Biden’s Most Preposterous Lie Is Too Much Even For The Washington Post
Manhattan Contrarian
Francis Menton
3 June 2022

When President Biden talks, there may or may not be any connection between what…

When Edward VII ascended to the throne on January 22, 1901, he continued the imperial tradition laid down by his mother, Queen Victoria, by adopting the title Emperor of India. Three subsequent British monarchs followed in his footsteps.

The first emperor to visit India was George V. For his imperial coronation ceremony at the Delhi Durbar, the Imperial Crown of India was created. The Crown weighs 920 g (2.03 lb) and is set with 6,170 diamonds, 9 emeralds, 4 rubies, and 4 sapphires. At the front is a very fine emerald weighing 32 carats (6.4 g). The king wrote in his diary that it was heavy and uncomfortable to wear: “Rather tired after wearing my crown for 3+1⁄2 hours; it hurt my head, as it is pretty heavy.”

The title “Emperor of India” did not disappear when British India became the Dominion of India (1947–1950) and Dominion of Pakistan (1947–1952)…