On D-Day what did the Germans know?
02 Jun 2021 Leave a comment
in defence economics, war and peace Tags: D-Day, World War II
What did Kaiser Wilhelm do After His Abdication?
02 Jun 2021 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economic history, war and peace Tags: World War I, World War II
Paolo Sandro: Do You Really Mean It? Ouster Clauses, Judicial Review Reform, and the UK Constitutionalism Paradox
01 Jun 2021 Leave a comment
The Conservative government’s response to the IRAL report has raised plenty of alarm bells from UK constitutional scholars. The widespread observation that the government’s judicial review reform plans appear to go well beyond what the Independent Panel recommended points to a more fundamental problem: that the government seems to proceed from a very partial understanding (at best) of the UK ‘constitution’.
In this short blog post, which draws on the account of constitutional democracy I develop in a monograph to be published later this year by Hart, I argue that the government fundamentally misunderstands (or misrepresents) the UK constitutionalist model. It does so especially when it affirms (at paras 24-25 of its response) that the ‘historical developments’ of judicial review are not ‘in any way indicative of how the courts and the UK Constitution “ought” to evolve in the future’, with the result that Parliament is ‘completely free to…
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Bob Dylan with Tom Petty- LIVE – Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (1986)
01 Jun 2021 Leave a comment
in Music
A Scandinavian U.S. Would Be a Problem for the Global Economy
01 Jun 2021 3 Comments
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economic growth, economic history, economics of education, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, human capital, income redistribution, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, Public Choice, survivor principle Tags: creative destruction, regressive left, taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and innovation, taxation and labour supply, taxation and savings
What Happens If Yellowstone Blows Up Tomorrow?
01 Jun 2021 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of media and culture Tags: super-volcanoes
Making progress with Progressivism
01 Jun 2021 Leave a comment
It’s a bog-standard feature of every Labour government that the state will expand, not just in terms of money spent, but people employed.
So I’m not surprised to see this information from a recent post by Don Brash, Do We Need So Many Bureaucrats?:
- Land Information New Zealand, 25.5%
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 30.7%
- Ministry of Education, 32.4% (not teachers)
- Ministry of Defence, 35.3%
- Ministry of Primary Industries, 36.7%
- Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, 38.9%
- Oranga Tamariki, 40.7%
- Ministry of Transport, 40.8% (not including NZTA)
- Ministry for the Environment, 41.0%
- Public Service Commission, 42.6%
- Ministry for Women, 45.8%
- Ministry for Maori Development, 69.8%
- Ministry for Pacific Peoples, 81.1%
As Brash points out, this would not be so bad if there was evidence that the government was getting stuff done with all these extra people. But as is increasingly obvious to anybody who ignores the NZ MSM, it’s…
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Book Review: “The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots: Elizabeth I and Her Greatest Rival” by Kate Williams
01 Jun 2021 Leave a comment
Two cousins fighting for the right to rule England during the 16th century. One was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn who fought tooth and nail to rule without a man by her side. The other was the daughter of Mary of Guise and King James V of Scotland whose marriage record would prove to be fatal. Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, may have been sister queens, but the way they were treated in their own countries differed completely. While Elizabeth I was praised and protected from harm in England, Mary was a scapegoat for so many in Scotland. The way that Mary was used as a pawn even though she wore a crown was nothing short of extraordinary. The story of how these two queens came on a collision course that would leave one queen beheaded and the other forever changed has been told in…
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