Utopia, you are standing in it!

Regular readers will recall that since June I’ve been on the trail of events surrounding the appointment of Rodger Finlay as, first, a “transitional board” member (attending actual Board meetings) and then a full Reserve Bank Board member, at the same time that he was chair of NZ Post, the majority owner of Kiwibank, an entity subject to Reserve Bank prudential regulation and supervision. From 1 July, the new Reserve Bank Board had legal responsibility for all the powers the Reserve Bank had on prudential policy and implementation. Finlay’s term as NZ Post chair was due to expire on 30 June, but processes were in train that saw Cabinet reappoint him on 13 June.

The most recent post was here. The story gets a little complicated, and there have been various documents (from the Minister of Finance and from The Treasury), and comments from the Minister or his office…

Rocketing power prices is one inevitable consequence of the so-called ‘inevitable’ wind and solar transition. Germans know it, so do Californians, South Australians and Danes. Brits are learning fast, too.

Of course, the propaganda units that run cover for renewable energy rent seekers pretend otherwise. Francis Menton wades through their dross to reveal what Europe’s erstwhile power consumers are now living with, on a daily basis.

Cost Of The Green Energy Transition: Who You Gonna Believe, Some Research Assistants From Oxford Or Your Lyin’ Eyes?
Manhattan Contrarian
Francis Menton
16 September 2022

Over in Europe, and particularly in those countries in the vanguard of the green energy transition, the enormous costs of this folly have begun to hit home. In the UK, average annual consumer energy bills were scheduled to rise as of October 1 to £3549/year, from only £1138/year just a year ago. (The figure may now get reduced…

Edward VI (October 12, 1537 – July 6, 1553) was King of England and Ireland from January 28, 1547 until his death on July 6, 1553.

Edward was born on October 12, 1537 in his mother’s room inside Hampton Court Palace, in Middlesex. He was the son of King Henry VIII by his third wife, Jane Seymour. Throughout the realm, the people greeted the birth of a male heir, “whom we hungered for so long”, with joy and relief. Te Deums were sung in churches, bonfires lit, and “their was shott at the Tower that night above two thousand gonnes”.

Queen Jane, appearing to recover quickly from the birth, sent out personally signed letters announcing the birth of “a Prince, conceived in most lawful matrimony between my Lord the King’s Majesty and us”.

Edward was christened on October 15, with his half-sisters, the 21-year-old Lady Mary as godmother and the…

In my post yesterday I noted in passing that the Reserve Bank Board’s Annual Report had made no mention of their decision to recommend during the year the reappointment of two external MPC members (Bob Buckle and Peter Harris), notwithstanding the huge issues there appeared to be (inflation, and large monetary losses) around the handling of monetary policy. Perhaps it made sense to reappoint them, but the Board gave the public no sense of their reasoning or of what effort they had made to understand the contributions Messrs Buckle and Harris had made. Perhaps, after all, they had fought valiantly but fruitlessly to hold back the Governor’s excesses? (ok, just kidding, but you never quite know).

And then I remembered that months ago I had lodged an Official Information Act request with the Minister of Finance

and had not done anything with the response I had received in June.

There…

Has the Ardern government just  shot itself in the  foot?

Despite its  poll  ratings slipping in  recent  months, it nourished hopes of  returning to power next year.  But  its  “world-first” policy to  cut greenhouse  gases with farm-level pricing, effectively making 20% of  NZ’s  sheep and beef  farms uneconomic, could result in it  bleeding  votes  in  most  of the  regional electorates  it  won  in 2020.

The unpalatable  truth  is  just  dawning on the  country: cutting  agricultural emissions  means  cutting  food and fibre output.  And  that means slashing the export income on which  NZ  depends.

Clearly  the  Cabinet  ministers  adopting the  policy  announced  yesterday  believed  they  could “sell” it  on  the  basis  that NZ  would be  leading the world, in  cutting agricultural emissions.

In the event, they have been met with shrieks of outrage from farm lobby  groups.

The word baron comes from the Old French baron, from a Late Latin barō “man; servant, soldier, mercenary” (so used in Salic law; Alemannic law has barus in the same sense). The scholar Isidore of Seville in the 7th century thought the word was from Greek βᾰρῠ́ς “heavy” (because of the “heavy work” done by mercenaries), but the word is presumably of Old Frankish origin, cognate with Old English beorn meaning “warrior, nobleman”.

Cornutus in the first century already reports a word barones which he took to be of Gaulish origin. He glosses it as meaning servos militum and explains it as meaning “stupid”, by reference to classical Latin bārō “simpleton, dunce”; because of this early reference, the word has also been suggested to derive from an otherwise unknown Celtic *bar, but the Oxford English Dictionary takes this to be “a figment”.

Britain and Ireland

In the Peerage of England…