Utopia, you are standing in it!

We are born for justice and what is just is based, not on opinion, but on nature.
(De legibus, book I, section 28)

Cicero began writing the De legibus or On the laws during the same period as the De republica, i.e. the late 50s BC, but suspended work on it when he was compelled to go and be governor of Cilicia in 51 BC, and possibly never resumed it. It is certainly unfinished. We have just two books of 60-odd sections each and most of book 3 (49 sections) then the manuscript stops in mid-sentence. The 4th century AD philosopher Macrobius refers to the existence of a book 5. Maybe it was intended to have 6 books to parallel the De republica to which it is obviously a partner.

Like most of Cicero’s other works it is a dialogue though, unlike the De republica, it…

Australia’s politics is bereft of leadership and there’s no better example thereof than the failure to advance nuclear power in this country. Notwithstanding the unfolding power pricing and supply calamity – driven by chaotically intermittent and heavily subsidised wind and solar – its new Labor Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, more Elmer Fudd than Bob Hawke, refuses to even discuss the prospect of nuclear power generation, and is left to waffle about mythical battery storage and pie-in-the-sky ‘green’ hydrogen schemes somehow saving his country from the consequence of attempting to rely upon the perpetually unreliable.

The Labor/Green Alliance will always run the anti-nuke mantra – they’re far too invested (literally and figuratively) in the mythical ‘transition’ to an all wind and sun-powered future.

The Australian voting public, on the other hand, is decidedly in favour of a nuclear-powered future, and has been for some time.

Most Australians want nuclear power to…

Archduke Franz Ferdinand Charles Ludwig Joseph Maria of Austria-Este (December 18, 1863 – June 28, 1914) was the heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary. His assassination in Sarajevo was the most immediate cause of World War I.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the eldest son of Archduke Charles Ludwig of Austria, the younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s mother was Archduke Charles Ludwig’s second wife, Princess Maria Annunciata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. In 1875, when he was eleven years old, his cousin Francis V, Duke of Modena, died, naming Franz Ferdinand his heir on condition that he add the name “Este” to his own.

Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria died in 1889 part of a murder-suicide with his mistress Mary Vetsera at his hunting lodge in Mayerling. With the death of his father Archduke Charles Ludwig in 1896 from Typhoid, Archduke Franz Ferdinand became the…

More than 47 million workers quit their jobs in 2021, in what has become known as The Great Resignation. However, many of these workers are getting re-hired elsewhere. Hiring rates have outpaced quit rates since November, 2020.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has published some statistics on this reshuffling of the labor force, which I will reproduce here.  As shown in the chart below, quit rates in leisure and hospitality  (which require in-person attendance and pay lower salaries) were enormous. However, the recent hiring rates have been even higher in this area, so the shortage of labor there is only moderate.

When taking a look at the labor shortage across different industries, the transportation, health care and social assistance, and the accommodation and food sectors have had the highest numbers of job openings.

But yet, despite the high number of job openings, transportation and the health care and social assistance…

Henry VIII (June 28, 1491 – January 28, 1547) was King of England from April 22, 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry was Lord of Ireland until 1542. At home, he oversaw the legal union of England and Wales with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, and he was the first English monarch to rule as King of Ireland following the Crown of Ireland Act 1542.

Born on June 28, 1491 at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, Kent, Henry Tudor was the third child and second son of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Of the young Henry’s six (or seven) siblings, only three – his brother Arthur, Prince of Wales, and sisters Margaret and Mary – survived infancy.

Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disagreement with Pope…

Between them, China and India have already dragged hundreds of millions out of abject poverty, thanks to cheap and reliable coal-fired power. There’s no mystery to it; having electricity as and when households and businesses need it is central to an ordered, prosperous and civil society. Cheap power is at the heart of manufacturing and manufacturing is what’s driven the rise of China and India.

Woke Western wonks still spout drivel about the purported “death of coal”, but, in reality, the demand for the black stuff has never been stronger in the history of humankind.

Robert Bryce explains the relationship below.

India and China Coal Production Surging By 700M Tons Per Year: That’s Greater Than All U.S. Coal Output
Real Clear Energy
Robert Bryce
3 June 2022

If you think the world is moving beyond coal, think again. The post-Covid economic rebound and surging electricity demand have resulted in big…

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill continues its progression in Parliament, having initially been introduced in the House of Commons by the then-Education Secretary Gavin Williamson in May 2021, and recently “carried over” into the new (2022-23) parliamentary session; the Bill was debated at (and subsequently passed) Report stage and Third Reading in the House of Commons on Monday 13th June, and is due to be read a second time in the House of Lords today. (A useful summary of the Bill’s progress up to April 2022 can be found here.)

In this post, I argue, firstly, that the Bill appears to be addressing a “problem” that, in reality, is far smaller than the Government perceives it to be; and, secondly, it does so in a manner that fails to tackle the deeper issues that, if anything, may be harming free speech in practice. That is, the…

Humorous lessons too! He even looks a bit like Luxon.

Take it away Chief.

Image credit: livescience.com

In their computer model game they use the discredited RCP 8.5 formula that assumes a highly unlikely surface energy increase of 8.5W/m^2 by 2100 (not 2050). What’s the point?
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You may have seen some of our forecasts that look a little further ahead than you would usually expect, says the UK Met Office.

Although they use the same graphics as our normal weather forecasts, we’ve been producing theoretical ‘forecasts’ for 2050 to look at what conditions we could expect to see in the UK if global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.

One of the greatest challenges with communicating the risks of climate change is how to show, in a relatable way, how changes in our atmosphere could impact the weather we experience on the Earth’s surface.

Dr Andrew Thrush, editor of our Lords 1558-1603 section, discusses the thorny issue that faced Elizabeth I in the wake of the discovery of Mary Queen of Scots’ role in the Babington Plot of 1586…

On 1 February 1587 Sir Francis Walsingham and his fellow Secretary of State, William Davison, wrote on behalf of Elizabeth I to the privy councillor Sir Amias Paulet, one of the gaolers of the deposed Scottish queen, Mary Stuart, who had fled to England more than twenty years earlier and had recently been judged guilty of plotting to overthrow and murder Elizabeth. In this letter – perhaps the most extraordinary ever to have been written at the behest of an English monarch – Paulet was informed that Elizabeth ‘doth note in you a lack of that care and zeal of her service that she looketh for at your hands’. The Queen…