Utopia, you are standing in it!

Continuing our series reflecting on the recent‘Politics before Democracy’conference,our assistant editor Dr Kathryn Rixlooks at the impact of the 1832 Reform Act on the personnel of the House of Commons.

In March 1833, two months after Parliament assembled following the first election held under the terms of the 1832 Reform Act, the cartoonist ‘H.B.’ (John Doyle) produced a cartoon depicting the ‘March of Reform’. Set in the lobby of the House of Commons, it showed four former Tory MPs – marshalled by Francis Williams, the under door-keeper – looking on with suspicion and dismay as three newly elected MPs walked into the chamber. While the effects of the 1832 Reform Act have been much debated by historians, for contemporaries, as Doyle’s image of the changing of the guard at Westminster encapsulated, it marked an important symbolic break with the past.

George I (May 28, 1660 – June 11, 1727) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from August 1, 1714 and ruler of the Electorate of Hanover within the Holy Roman Empire from January 23, 1698 until his death in 1727.

George was born on May 28, 1660 in the city of Hanover in the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg in the Holy Roman Empire. He was the eldest son of Ernst August, Elector of Hanover and Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and his wife, Sophia of the Palatinate, daughter of Friedrich V, Elector of the Palatinate of the Rhine, a member of the House of Wittelsbach, and Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of King James I-VI of England, Scotland and Ireland and Princess Anne of Denmark and Norway.

George inherited the titles and lands of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg from his father and uncles. A succession of European wars expanded his German domains during his…

Catherine of Aragon (December 16, 1485 – January 7, 1536) was Queen of England as the first wife of King Henry VIII from their marriage on June 11, 1509 until their annulment on May 23, 1533. Born in Spain, she was Princess of Wales while married to Henry’s elder brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales, for a short period before his death.

Infanta Catherine of Aragon was the daughter of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Fernando II of Aragon. Infanta Catherine was three years old when she was betrothed to Prince Arthur, heir apparent to the English throne, eldest son of King Henry VII of England, Lord of Ireland and Elizabeth of York, daughter of King Edward IV of England, Lord of Ireland and Elizabeth Woodville.

Catherine and Arthur married in 1501, but Arthur died five months later. Catherine spent years in limbo, and during this time, she held…

Backing ideology over sound engineering was never the smartest ploy. Now the ideologues are in a flat panic as the public begins to realise that they’ve been lied to, all along.

The ‘renewables are cheap’ story doesn’t seem to cut it anymore, with Australian households and businesses set for 25-30% increases in their power bills next month. Australians have been hit with double-digit percentage increases in their power bills every year since the Green-Labor Alliance ramped up the Federal government’s Renewable Energy Target back in 2010.

Their ‘more giant batteries will fix it’ meme is struggling, too. There is no grid-scale power storage system using batteries operating anywhere in the world. Australia is no different. The reason batteries offer no solution is all down to physics and economics.

As the grand wind and solar ‘transition’ collapses around them, the zealots and rent-seekers are reduced to accusing Australia’s coal-fired power plants…

Edward the Confessor (c. 1003 – 5 January 1066) was an Anglo-Saxon English king and saint. Usually considered the last king of the House of Wessex, he ruled from 1042 until his death in 1066.

Edward was the seventh son of Æthelred the Unready, and the first by his second wife, Emma of Normandy daughter of Richard I the Fearless Duke of Normandy and Gunnor. The names of Gunnor’s parents are unknown, but Robert of Torigni wrote that her father was a forester from the Pays de Caux and according to Dudo of Saint-Quentin she was of noble Danish ancestry. Gunnor was probably born c. 950. Her family held sway in western Normandy and Gunnor herself was said to be very wealthy.

Edward was born between 1003 and 1005 in Islip, Oxfordshire, and is first recorded as a ‘witness’ to two charters in 1005. He had one full brother, Alfred, and…