Utopia, you are standing in it!

Readers of this blog will be aware of the dispute between the Scottish and UK Governments over who should legislate in areas hitherto covered by EU law after Brexit (or more accurately after the end of the post-withdrawal Implementation Period). That dispute saw the Scottish Parliament enact its own Continuity Bill intended as an alternative to the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (EUWA). That Bill – the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill (the “first Continuity Bill”) (discussed here and here) – was subsequently referred to the Supreme Court and held to be outwith devolved competence so far as it conflicted with the EUWA (discussed here). Although some provisions of the Bill survived the Supreme Court reference, the Scottish Government decided not to proceed with Bill, but undertook to bring back the remaining provisions on a future occasion.

On 18 June 2020, the Scottish…

Since World War II affordable power was regarded as a birthright: RE obsessed virtue signallers have destroyed that notion in a heartbeat.

In California, compassion is a rare commodity among those promoting and profiting from subsidised wind and solar. Seminal Californian Punk outfit, the Dead Kennedys seem to have foreshadowed their State’s insane energy policy with their cheery ditty, ‘Kill the Poor’. Because it’s the poor and vulnerable that suffer most from rocketing power prices.

As in South Australia, Ontario, Denmark and Germany, so it goes in California.

After decades of throwing $billions of taxpayer’s money at intermittent wind and solar, Californians now pay 60% more for their electricity than the next most expensive state in the US: power prices have risen more than five times as fast than the other states over the last eight years.

For the unemployed, underemployed and a large proportion of the working poor…

“Colorblind casting” is defined in this New York Times piece by culture critic Maya Phillips as “performers [inhabiting] characters of racial backgrounds that [differ] from their own.” When applied in such a way to ensure “acting justice” (people of all ethnicities getting an opportunity to play anyone) rather than just letting white people play people of all ethnicities—as was often the case in early movies—it would seem to be fine. But in Phillip’s piece she finds several reasons why such casting is problematic.

In a way, Phillips’s counterintuitive take on colorblind casting reminds me of the piece by the paper’s music critic, Anthony Tommasini, urging orchestras to drop blind auditions as a (misguided) way to increase ethnic diversity. And it shows the ability of the op-ed writers at the New Woke Times to justify any action, however crazy, if they can be made to look antiracist.

I don’t find…

On 6 May 2020, the National Assembly for Wales (hereafter “the Assembly”) will officially be renamed, adopting the new title of Senedd Cymru / Welsh Parliament. The change comes as a result of section 9 of the Wales Act 2017, amending the Government of Wales Act 2006 (hereafter “GOWA”) to include the new section 111A which transfers to the Assembly the power to legislate on matters relating to its electoral and operational arrangements.

The new powers transferred under the 2017 Act were in keeping with recommendations made in Part II of the Silk Commission Report (R.53) and included in the St. David’s Day Agreement, as well as also reflecting some similar provisions implemented in Scotland under the Scotland Act 2016. Under section 111A Government of Wales Act GOWA, the Assembly may now, by way of a two-thirds supermajority, pass legislation on protected subject-matter relating to the…

At least it seems that way judging from an infographic they put up in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, which already had a section devoted to “Whiteness“.

Here’s the infographic.

Incredible is it not? We often see accusations about “Systemic Racism” in the USA, and perhaps you could take this as an example, where the graduates in Critical Race Theory have apparently imbibed the beliefs of White Supremacists so completely that they now regurgitate them without critical thought, even as they acknowledge that such things have been “internalized” by “People of Color”.

Perhaps they should just hire David Duke and be done with it. After all, how different would this infographic be if he’d written it?

Latest from the Beehive

Before Point of Order had wrapped up the previous bulletin, the busy bees in the Beehive were releasing the most comprehensive review of New Zealand’s resource management system since the Resource Management Act (RMA) was enacted in 1991.

At much the same time, the Government was signalling its intention to introduce legislation to allow it to recover some of the costs for managed isolation and quarantine.

This isolation measure is something of a rarity in the run-up to the election – it will result in the Government collecting money rather than borrowing to give it away in billions.

The RMA review is reported in New Directions for Resource Management in New Zealand,  commissioned by Environment Minister David Parker and prepared by an independent review panel led by retired Court of Appeal Judge Tony Randerson QC.

Among its recommendations is the replacement of the existing RMA…