Utopia, you are standing in it!

Despite the now well-established academic interest in homicide, criminal justice historians have paid relatively little attention to a sub-group of murderers with whom the media has long been obsessed: the so-called serial killers. Whilst there remains a debate about how many victims a killer must claim before the ‘serial killer’ label is applied,[1] and a distinction should be made between spree and serial killers,[2] for our purposes it is more important to note that the term is now used mainly to describe male sex killers of the type personified by the infamous Jack the Ripper of 1888.[3] Those who kill successive victims for purely financial reasons tend to inspire less enduring fascination. However, they too are serial murderers and, as such, offer historians valuable insights on the investigative and legal tactics used to identify and convict uniquely dangerous repeat offenders. In Britain, poisoners were among the earliest…

Insanity is doing that same thing over and over again and expecting different results, which is why STT raises an eyebrow (or two) at Boris Johnson’s persistent love affair with heavily subsidised and chaotically intermittent wind power. His belief that taking it all offshore will make a difference, only confirms that this man has a tenuous grip on reality. Indeed, the belief that a modern, industrialised economy can rely upon a stone-age power source is positively bonkers.

Boris and his fellow travellers have now had the benefit of Europe’s Big Calm – a period when winds slackened across Western Europe and the UK – leaving thousands of these things completely idle. And yet, the amorous obsession remains.

Then there’s the astronomical cost of trying to generate occasional electricity tens and even hundreds of kilometres offshore and returning it to terra firma using cables prone to failure, and difficult and costly…

I don’t have too much to say about yesterday’s HYEFU, but two things caught my eye.

The first was a bit of attention on the $6 billion “operating allowance” the government has given itself to increase spending (or, I suppose, cut taxes) at next year’s Budget. It is a big number, but it doesn’t mean a great deal. In principle, the operating allowance covers things where the government has some discretion (whereas, by legislation, tax revenue tends to rise each year as nominal GDP does, and welfare benefits rise each year as inflation/wages do, and without new legislation the government of the day has no choice in the matter).

But governments tend to care about purchasing/delivering real goods and services, and they need actual people to work for them. And when there is inflation, the dollar cost of purchasing goods, services, and labour tends to rise. Governments don’t have to…

The rampant slaughter of millions of birds and bats, including America’s iconic bald and golden eagles, is met with a shrug by wind power acolytes, everywhere. When confronted, the wind industry simply resorts 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.

For concentrated carnage, though, California’s Altamont Pass takes the cake. With thousands of turbines slicing and dicing dozens of golden eagles, owls, hawks, and kites every day, it’s more like an abattoir than a power generation facility.

Finally, America’s Audubon Society has lawyered up in an effort to…

First thing this morning the Reserve Bank fronted up at Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee for their Annual Review hearing.

The Governor kicked off with some introductory remarks that were celebratory (the focus of the hearing was notionally on the last financial year) but superficial. In some cases barely even honest. He was “very proud” of all the Bank had achieved, talked up monetary policy as having been “highly effective in preventing deflation”, claimed (wrongly) to have been one of the first central banks to have raised policy interest rates again, and ended with a paean to “diversity and inclusion” talking of having “many plans” and “much action” on that front. There was no mention, for example, of the $5 billion of taxpayers’ money they had lost, or of the continuing churn at the top of the organisation.

Last evening they had had to announce that two more senior managers…