Utopia, you are standing in it!

Writing about the “work” of the Queen in 1958, the journalist and Herald Dermot Morrah claimed there had been “scarcely any allusion” in her coronation ceremony to the fact that Elizabeth II “was Queen of seven distinct and sovereign realms”. Indeed, added Morrah, “she was crowned not even as Queen of the United Kingdom, but of England alone”.

This was a peculiarly Anglo-centric take, particularly so coming from the pen of a Herald, usually such sticklers for detail. At first glance, the coronation of a British monarch is indeed a very English affair. It takes place at the Abbey Church of Westminster and the service is given by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Yet a closer examination of coronations between 1714 and 1953 reveals them to be constitutional mirrors in which were reflected changes to the territorial constitution. And by highlighting these reflections, one can draw some preliminary observations as to…

Yesterday Jeremy pointed out that while the 2021 economics Nobelists have reached various conclusions in their study of labor economics, the prize was really awarded to the methods they developed and used.

I find the best explanation of the value of these methods to be this 2010 article by Angrist and Pischke in the Journal of Economic Perspectives: The Credibility Revolution in Empirical Economics: How Better Research Design Is Taking the Con out of Econometrics

Like Jeremy, they think that empirical economic research (that is, research using econometrics) was most quite bad up to the 1980’s; as Ed Leamer put it in his paper “Let’s take the CON out of Econometrics”:

This is a sad and decidedly unscientific state of affairs we find ourselves in. Hardly anyone takes data analyses seriously. Or perhaps more accurately, hardly anyone takes anyone else’s data analyses seriously.

Angrist and Pischke argue that the field…

Last night the major party candidates for Senate in Pennsylvania had their first and only debate. I didn’t watch it, since I don’t live in Pennsylvania. But judging by my Twitter feed, a lot of people did watch it, including (bizarrely to me) lots of people who don’t live in Pennsylvania. And overnight, tons of articles were written analyzing the debate, saying who “won” the debate, and so on (“5 Things You Need to Know About the Pennsylvania Senate Debate” etc.).

But this blog post is the only thing you need to read about that debate. And these charts are really all you need to look at.

These two charts come from the prediction market website PredictIt. The charts show the “odds” (more on that below) that each candidate will win the Pennsylvania Senate race, over a 90-day time horizon (first chart) and the last 24 hours (second chart)…

Fracking: note the deep shaft
The people doing the banning conveniently forget they can’t enough gas at the moment, including from the US obtained by the method they profess not to like. But importing fracked gas is no problem, essential even.
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The ban on fracking in England will be reinstated, new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said.

It reverses a decision by his predecessor Liz Truss, says BBC News.

Fracking was first halted in England in 2019, amid opposition from green groups and concerns about earth tremors.

What is fracking?

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique for recovering gas and oil from shale rock.

It involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals at a rock layer, to release the gas inside.

Wells can be drilled vertically or horizontally in order to release the gas.
. . .

The office of Prime Minister is a creature entirely of constitutional convention. While legislation references the office itself, setting out pay for example, this is only statutory recognition of the existence of an office which arises purely by virtue of convention. It is by convention that the Monarch appoints as Prime Minister someone who is capable of commanding the confidence of the House of Commons and it is by convention that he exercises certain prerogative powers only on the advice of the Prime Minister (or another minister in his government). The mechanism for choosing a Prime Minister is, however, not entirely covered by convention. While they must command the confidence of a majority of MPs in the Commons, it is not necessary that they be chosen directly by the Commons. This is because of the party system and the presumption that the leader of a given party has the confidence…

Mass civil unrest is odds-on in power starved Germany and Britain this winter, thanks to the so-called wind and solar ‘transition’.

With thousands likely to freeze to death, the collective sense of humour will soon evaporate, along with any remaining faith in the ability of wind and solar to deliver power, as and when it’s needed.

Everything about renewable energy policy is political; no one woke up 20 years ago thinking what a good idea would be to watch power prices triple and suffer power rationing every time the wind dropped and the sunset. Instead, it was a political ‘sell’ (aka lie) that the world would be an altogether happier place if only we were powered exclusively by sunshine and breezes.

Well, that didn’t pan out so well.

The political response to the disaster is all directed at preventing the proles from turning seething anger into outright revolt.

At the…

Retail electricity prices in Australia are expected to rise by 50%  over the next two years, with  Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers said to be weighing up market intervention to stop those costs spiralling further.

The  Australian Treasury has assumed in the federal budget  presented  in Canberra  last  night that retail power prices will increase by an average of 20% nationally in late 2022 and a further 30% in 2023/24.

These  startling  rises  stem  from  Australia’s  drive  to  decarbonise  its  electricity  supplies. After  enjoying  a long  run of  cheap  electricity, Australian consumers  are  now  facing  what  will be  a  severe attack  on  household  budgets.

By  comparison,  with  80%  of our  electricity  already  coming  from  renewable  sources, New Zealand may escape  such  rises.