Utopia, you are standing in it!

In this post which first appeared on the main History of Parliament blog, our research fellow Dr. Stephen Ball looks at the inaugural session of the reformed Parliament, a theme also explored in our previous blog on Harriet Grote.

When the reformed Parliament first met on Tuesday 29 January 1833 many people speculated about the way the reconfigured House of Commons would conduct its business. Fear that the Whig government would be unduly influenced by newly elected Reformers and Radicals, who might try to seize the initiative over legislation was widespread in conservative circles in the early weeks of the new parliament.

A contemporary analysis of non-Conservative MPs returned at the 1832 general election identified 145 Reformers, 40 Radicals, 33 Irish Repealers and two Liberals, who saw the Reform Act as a springboard for further constitutional change, and 194 Whigs, who could be counted on to support the 23…

Decommissioning wind turbines at the end of their economic lifespan (which is around 10 to 15 years, not the 25 years touted by the wind industry) is one of those phenomenally expensive exercises that the wind power outfit itself will never willingly pay for.

Already past their use-by date, thousands of these things around the world have just been left as rusting monuments to ‘green’ energy stupidity.

The standard corporate structures used by wind power outfits involve a parent company, usually structured as a holding company – NextTerror Ltd, say – with a subsidiary that takes on the name of the wind farm – Mount Misery Pty Ltd. The subsidiary is lumbered with all the current debts and other liabilities, which are loaded up in such a way as to exceed its assets (as long as the wind farm is operating, the parent sees that sufficient cash flushes through the…

Soaring energy  bills are a  problem for  firms,  households,  and  the  government. This  was  a  headline  in  The Economist last week – but it  can’t  happen here, can it?

After  all,  NZ has   plenty    of energy.  Unlike Europe, 80%  of  its electricity is  from renewable  sources. And  according  to oil industry  authorities, NZ is  surrounded  by a massive  continental  shelf — the fifth  largest in the  world, beneath  which  lie  vast  quantities  of  undiscovered  natural gas and, probably, some light oil.

So  surely  NZ  can face  the  future  with confidence?

Well,  no:  let’s not forget Prime Minister  Jacinda  Ardern had her “non-nuclear” moment and  placed a ban on new offshore exploration permits  for  oil  and  gas.  Since  then,  as  international oil explorers gave  up  their  offshore   exploration  licences, supplies  from existing  producing  wells have begun to  diminish for several reasons.

Higher  costs  are  starting  to  flow  into  household and  business …

Although Henry VIII caused the upheaval of many lives in trying to secure a male heir, he ended up leaving a sickly male child on the throne. King Edward VI was only 9 years old when he mounted the throne. Because of his age he ruled under a Regency Council.  The Council was first led by his uncle Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, (1547–1549), and then by John Dudley, 1st Earl of Warwick, from 1551 Duke of Northumberland.

Edward did not live long and died at the age of 15 from consumption (Tuberculosis). His death saw another struggle for the crown. A new element was introduced for the struggle for the crown that had not been an issue in other battles for the throne. The issue was religion. In trying to secure a male heir and a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII broke from the Roman…

Edward VI (October 12, 1537 – July 6, 1553) was the King of England and Ireland from January 28, 1547 until his death in 1553. He was crowned on February 20, at the age of nine.

Edward was the son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour by his third wife, Jane Seymour. Throughout the realm, the people greeted the birth of a male heir, “whom we hungered for so long”, with joy and relief. Te Deums were sung in churches, bonfires lit, and “their was shott at the Tower that night above two thousand gonnes”. Queen Jane, appearing to recover quickly from the birth, sent out personally signed letters announcing the birth of “a Prince, conceived in most lawful matrimony between my Lord the King’s Majesty and us”.

Edward was christened on October 15, with his half-sisters, the 21-year-old Lady Mary as godmother and the 4-year-old Lady Elizabeth carrying the…

I came across a fascinating, sad article today about the “post-Covid” world of Britain’s population, The Most Frightened Nation.

It lists a number of the things done in that country over the last two years in The War Against Covid-19.

First up are some examples of the propaganda used by the Tory government:

No wonder other health care experts began getting worried about patients not turning up to hospitals, even when they had urgent problems.

Try living a day without a reliable power supply; then try living a life-time without it. If the doomsday cult that’s thrusting hopelessly unreliable and insanely expensive wind and solar down our throats had its way, then that’s what a future ‘civilisation’ will look like.

For those not willing to make an immediate sacrifice to get a handle on what’s coming, look no further than continental Africa and India and a range of other places where the poorest billion on our planet reside. People whose daily energy needs are met with whatever wood they can scrounge from their locality, twigs and dung.

It’s pretty easy for well-healed Westerners to pontificate about energy use, when it’s always available to them and price is not an issue.

These characters couldn’t care less about their fellow citizens; those at the bottom of the economic heap, for whom energy costs have become a crippling…

Blade Runner (1982) Director: Ridley Scott

★★★★★

Loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Sheep?, Blade Runner is an extraordinary neo-noir dystopian detective film that was under-appreciated in its day but is now hailed as a classic. Watching Blade Runner offers a unique kaleidoscope of carefully crafted scenes that nevertheless appear effortless and unplanned. Philip K. Dick did not live long enough to see the film released but the early scenes he witnessed impressed him. After releasing the monumental film Alien (1978), Ridley Scott started work on a cinematic adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, but he soon moved on to Blade Runner. It was a film fraught with trouble from the outset. Ridley Scott battled with producers, studio budgets, script-writers, and lead actors especially Harrison Ford who did not appreciate how little direction he received and he despised his character’s moody…