Utopia, you are standing in it!

As  New Zealand   faces the  most brutal   recession in  living memory,  the  battle  to preserve   the core  of the  economy deepens.  Companies  are  cancelling  dividends  to protect what cash they have, others  are  reaching  for  financial  aid  from  their banks or  the government.

Yet for   some   businesses, notably  the  big  supermarket  chains,  the crisis  is accelerating    their  cash   flows.

Point of Order   has surveyed an array of   companies listed on  NZX, particularly in  several sectors—food  production, health and pharmaceutical  supplies, transport, agriculture  services—   which  have issued  updates. These should provide   comfort  to  their shareholders, and the market generally.

Latest  to  do so  is   King  Salmon,  the world’s largest aquaculture producer of the premium King salmon species.   Employing 500 people,  it operates  within the primary industry food producer category which has been included in the government’s list of essential services.

In its update to the  NZX, it  says :

The proposition that our Police are paving the way for a partnership in which former MP Hone Harawira and other iwi leaders police communities within the borders they define went unchallenged when put to press officers working for the Prime Minister and the Police.

The picture painted in the preceding paragraph was drawn from Deputy Police Commissioner Wally Haumaha’s statement on road blocks Harawira set up in Northland to check tourists’ health.  He declared:

” … we want to model what it looks like when iwi, police, councils and other agencies work in partnership”. 

But nether the Police nor the Prime Minister’s Office directly answered questions put to them by Point of Order about the legality of Harawira’s blocking public roads while policing the a border which he presumably established.

At the Trust, yet verify blog, Michel has written a couple of posts about the Hornsdale Power Reserve.  I had intended to do a post on this energy storage facility for a while and commented that I was planning to do a post but hadn’t gotten around to it.  When I said would not have to produce a post Michel said his was only one way to look at it and there are other possible views.  After reading the second post I decided to make a point about this system as it relates to New York State energy policy.

Background

According to the Hornsdale Power Reserve website “At 100MW/129MWh, the Hornsdale Power Reserve is the largest lithium-ion battery in the world, and provides network security services to South Australian electricity consumers in concert with the South Australian Government and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).  The Hornsdale Power Reserve is…

This piece is the result of a collaboration between the Economic History Review, the Journal of Economic History, Explorations in Economic History and the European Review of Economic History. More details and special thanks below.

Exhibit depicting a miniature from a 14th century Belgium manuscript at the Diaspora Museum, Tel Aviv. Available at Wikimedia Commons.

As the world grapples with a pandemic, informed views based on facts and evidence have become all the more important. Economic history is a uniquely well-suited discipline to provide insights into the costs and consequences of rare events, such as pandemics, as it combines the tools of an economist with the long perspective and attention to context of historians. The editors of the main journals in economic history have thus gathered a selection of the recently-published articles on epidemics, disease and public health, generously made available by publishers to the public, free of access, so…

During World War II a debate raged among allied strategists as to how much civilians should be targeted to defeat the Nazis.  As the Germans wreaked havoc on civilian populations throughout Europe and the United Kingdom the defeat of Hitler’s henchmen was deemed a necessity no matter the cost.  Max Hastings, a British journalist and historian, the author of numerous volumes ranging from World War I, the Battle of Britain, World War II, Winston Churchill and Vietnam tackles the issue of civilian casualties in his latest effort, OPERATION CHASTISE: THE RAF’S MOST BRILLIANT ATTACK DURING WORLD WAR II.

By May 1943 the British had accomplished little against the Nazis when compared to the effort and suffering of the Soviet Union which was finally making its push from Stalingrad westward.  Further, Winston Churchill was under a great deal of pressure to produce victories to stir the English people.  The allied…

The Coronavirus Act 2020, the UK’s most substantial legislative response to the Covid-19 pandemic, received Royal Assent yesterday after a fast-tracked procedure through both Houses. Indisputably, the pandemic falls within the range of situations under which it is constitutionally acceptable for Bills to be fast-tracked. While there is no corollary between an expedited piece of legislation and a bad piece of legislation, fast-tracking the Coronavirus Bill carries important implications for the constitutional relationship between Government and Parliament. Not least, parliamentarians had limited time to scrutinise legislation containing measures that have been described by the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law as ‘the most sweeping powers ever taken by the UK Government outside of wartime’. But, in this context, the implications for the balance between Government and Parliament extend beyond the immediate passage of the Act. Therefore, while Tierney and King stressed the dilemma between safeguarding public health and…