Utopia, you are standing in it!

The Single and Separate Sex Exceptions in the Equality Act 2010 are the bit of UK law which allows single sex services. They are tucked away in Schedule 3, Part 7, Paragraphs 26 and 27 and it is sometimes said they are ‘rarely used’, or that service providers have to choose to use them in exceptional circumstances. This is a myth and a misunderstanding.

Single sex spaces, such as women’s and men’s changing rooms, toilets, dormitories, hospital wards, and women’s refuges are not mountains or rivers to be explored. They are created through plans, policies and rules – you create a single sex space by having a policy that a service is only open to people of one sex (and in some cases their accompanying small children). In other word you discriminate. You communicate that discriminatory policy with words and signs.

When you do that you are using the single…

Memorandum on revolutionizing the Islamic territories of our enemies (Title of a paper written in October 1914 by German archaeologist and Orientalist Max von Oppenheim which argued for enlisting the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to call on the world’s Muslims to engage in a Holy War or jihad against the colonial powers, France and Great Britain)

This is a colourful and entertaining book about Germany’s military and diplomatic involvement with the Ottoman Empire during the Great War of 1914-18.

Kaiser Wilhelm’s enthusiasm for Islam

The first 80 pages or so provide background, describing Kaiser Wilhelm’s first state visit to Turkey in 1889 when he met the reigning Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, and his second visit in 1898 when Wilhelm grandiosely rode into Jerusalem through a breach specially made in its walls.

And they detail the very slow progress made on an ambitious commercial scheme to extend the railway line…

If you’re looking for the reason why wind power has never worked and never will? Here it is: THE WEATHER.

If you’re looking to wreck a grid and send power prices into orbit, then pin your power hopes to mother nature’s whims. South Australia did; it suffers the world’s highest retail power prices and became the butt of international jokes for a series of weather-related mass blackouts.

Looking for an example? Take a scan of what’s depicted above.

That’s the ‘performance’ of Australia’s wind power fleet during April – courtesy of Aneroid Energy

Spread from Far North Queensland, across the ranges of NSW, all over Victoria, Northern Tasmania and across South Australia its 6,960 MW of capacity routinely delivers just a trickle of that.

Collapses of over 3,000 MW or more that occur over the space of a couple of hours are routine, as are rapid surges of equal magnitude…

I was going to attempt to articulate today where I agreed and disagreed with both the New Zealand Initiative’s Bryce Wilkinson and Social Credit on money, banking, fiscal policy etc (Social Credit having taken out a half page advert in Saturday’s Herald to attempt to rebut Bryce’s recent Herald op-ed, itself drawing on a longer recent Initiative publication).  Perhaps tomorrow.

But in this morning’s papers I saw reference to a new plan (and/or critique of other plans) for policy in responding to the economic challenges of Covid, under the joint authorship of former Minister of Finance Roger Douglas and Auckland University economics professor Robert MacCulloch.  MacCulloch kindly sent me a copy of the ten page underlying paper which goes under the title “In a New World, New Thinking is Required: Why Prioritization of Resources is Crucial to New Zealand’s Economic Recovery in the Wake of Covid-19”.  MacCulloch’s Herald op-ed…

Dr. Boettke finishes his conversation with us from last time. We discuss the personal bonds between many GMU economics faculty. We talk about Hayek and his influence on economists. Are GMU economics professors ideologically biased? Dr. Boettke gives his answer. We also talk about college basketball. More great conversation with Dr. Boettke — we promise you’ll learn something you didn’t know before and laugh along the way. Marcus Shera cohosts.

Loose, Vague, and Indeterminate is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Podcast Addict, Overcast, RadioPublic, PocketCasts, and Breaker. You can listen and catch up on old episodes on any of those platforms in addition to our Anchor page at go.gmu.edu/LVI.

We have been increasingly troubled by the abuse of executive power that inevitably stems from democratic governments introducing emergency measures in the name of public safety to protect scared citizens.

Our musings led us to Austria (where a bloke called Adolf Hitler was born) and an observation on Austria’s Parliamentary website on the necessity for the separation of powers:

History has time and again shown that unlimited power in the hands of one person or group in most cases means that others are suppressed or their powers curtailed. The separation of powers in a democracy is to prevent abuse of power and to safeguard freedom for all.   

More to the point of what has happening around the world in recent months, we found this:

As the coronavirus pandemic has spread to all regions of the world, we have begun to see governments respond predictably to the threat by agitating…

This week is Parliament Week, a programme of events and activities that connects people across the UK with Parliament and democracy. To mark it, every day this week we are publishing a blog on ‘unlikely parliamentarians’  – the men and women across history who became parliamentarians only unexpectedly.

In today’s blog, Dr Paul Hunneyball of the Lords 1603-29 section discusses a group of parliamentarians unlikely because of their religion – Catholics in the early Stuart period – and asks whether they were in fact able to act freely…

The religious settlement at the start of Elizabeth I’s reign saw the return of Anglican Protestantism as the official faith of England and Wales, and, by definition, the rejection of Catholicism. Elizabeth famously had no wish to ‘open windows into men’s souls’, but she did expect public conformity to the new patterns of worship. Those who refused to comply could…