Utopia, you are standing in it!

The House of Lords yesterday debated the merits of the Counsellors of State Bill, which seeks to add Princess Anne and Prince Edward to the list of people that can act when the monarch is unable to do so. As Craig Prescott explains, this is a neat solution, but a temporary one.

The start of a new reign inevitably brings change to the monarchy. One specific change is that the monarch will once again travel overseas, including visits to some of the 14 other countries that also have a new head of state.

But what about the monarch’s constitutional and legal role while they are away? This role includes the granting of royal assent to legislation, appointment of ministers, ratification of treaties, and appointment of judges and diplomats. Many of these functions require the personal signature of the monarch (the royal sign manual), or in the case of holding Privy…

Dan Hannan explains at Washington ExaminerDemands for ‘climate reparations’ are laughable.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The demands for climate reparations from wealthy countries are so absurd, so unscientific, and so offensive to natural justice that it is difficult to know where the criticism should begin.

The argument is that, since countries that industrialized earlier produced a lot of carbon a hundred years ago, they now owe a debt to poorer states. Naturally, this argument appeals to assorted Marxists, anti-colonialists, and shakedown artists, and COP27 has been dominated by insolent demands for well-run states to pony up.

Some, including Austria, Belgium, and Denmark, have capitulated. No doubt others will follow. These days, once something is framed as poor-versus-rich or darker-skinned-versus-lighter-skinned or ex-colony-versus-ex-colonizer, the pressure becomes irresistible. Nevertheless, it is worth running through the absurdities in play.

First, the claims are rooted in indignation rather than science.

From the Emperor’s Desk: I will not be addressing the attempted usurpation by Lady Jane Grey at the beginning of Mary’s reign. I will cover that in my series I am doing on Usurpers.

One of Mary’s first actions as queen was to order the release of the Roman Catholic Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and Stephen Gardiner from imprisonment in the Tower of London, as well as her kinsman Edward Courtenay. Mary understood that the young Lady Jane was essentially a pawn in Northumberland’s scheme, and Northumberland was the only conspirator of rank executed for high treason in the immediate aftermath of the attempted coup.

Lady Jane and her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley, though found guilty, were kept under guard in the Tower rather than immediately executed, while Lady Jane’s father, Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, was released. Mary was left in a difficult position, as…

Mary I (February 18, 1516 – November 17, 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, and as “Bloody Mary” by her Protestant opponents, was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death in 1558.

Mary was born on February 18, 1516 at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, England. She was the only child of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Infanta Catherine of Aragon, to survive infancy. Her mother had suffered many miscarriages and stillbirths. Before Mary’s birth, four previous pregnancies had resulted in a stillborn daughter and three short-lived or stillborn sons, including Henry, Duke of Cornwall.

Mary was baptised into the Catholic faith at the Church of the Observant Friars in Greenwich three days after her birth.

Despite his affection for Mary, Henry was deeply disappointed that his marriage had produced no sons. By the time Mary was nine years old, it was apparent…

Northern Ireland is again governed by civil servants. Alan Whysall argues that London’s self-interest requires it to give Northern Ireland serious attention in coming months. But success may require more effort and time than is currently envisaged, and a return to the approach that led to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. Not making this commitment could have grave consequences for the entire Union, not just Northern Ireland.

This blog draws on the Unit’s report on Northern Ireland’s Political Future, published in May (hereafter referred to as the Report).

No government again

Northern Ireland has had no functioning Executive since the DUP’s withdrawal of its First Minister, in protest at the Northern Ireland Protocol, in February. The party declined to appoint a deputy First Minister following Assembly elections in May – when, for the first time, Sinn Féin emerged the largest party, entitled to the First Minister post (the DUP…

The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge will open Parliament today after the Queen had to pull out due to mobility issues. They will be acting as Counsellors of State, but what exactly does that mean?

Counsellors of State are individuals empowered by the Sovereign to discharge royal functions under section 6 of the Regency Act 1937. Unlike a Regent, who exercises the full panoply of the Crown’s power, Counsellors of State are meant to handle routine business such as signing state documents or holding meetings of the Privy Council.[1] The Monarch ultimately decides what they can and cannot do, though section 6(1) of the 1937 Act states that the Sovereign can’t delegate the power to dissolve Parliament (except on their express instructions) or create new peerages.[2] Modern convention also dictates that Counsellors of State don’t handle business from the Commonwealth Realms.[3]

When George…

Autumn on a UK beach [image credit: BBC]
Living in Europe and feeling a bit warmer than usual this October? Ignore any Met Office reports of warm air originating from Africa and be concerned by ‘a sign of accelerating climate change’, say climate obsessives. For example, it hasn’t been ‘this hot’ in Spain, since…1961.
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October morning temperatures topping 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) in Spain may have brought cheer to the tourists, but they are provoking concern among environmentalists, says Phys.org.

The mercury has been rising well above the norm across vast swathes of Europe, from Spain to as far north as Sweden.

After a summer marked by repeated heatwaves across much of the continent, Europe is experiencing exceptional temperatures even as it heads into the start of autumn—a sign of accelerating climate change.

Let’s start with the good news. This change of Prime Minister undoubtedly makes a difference for the better. The Conservatives have finally found a leader with a decent chance of making it until the next General Election, providing some much-needed political stability.

The financial markets have reacted positively too: the pound has strengthened, the cost of government borrowing has fallen, and investors have trimmed their expectations for how far the Bank of England will raise interest rates. This should ease the pressure on the cost of mortgages, in particular.

Investors prefer certainty and Rishi Sunak is, of course, a known quantity. The new Prime Minister’s credibility has been enhanced by his warnings of what might gone wrong if his predecessor lost the confidence of the markets.

Nonetheless, the economic situation remains difficult and could be about to worsen. There are two main challenges, but it will be hard to meet…

If one is interested in spy craft and traitors during World War II and the Cold War there are few authors that have produced more satisfying works than Ben Macintyre. Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times (U.K.) and has written monographs whose narratives include the history of the British SAS; deceptions that encompass plans to misinform the Nazis in the lead up to the invasions of Sicily and D-Day; well-known spies such as Kim Philby, Oleg Gordievsky, the woman known as Agent Sonya, Eddie Chapman; and his latest the escapees from the Nazi fortress, Colditz. Whether describing and analyzing the actions of double agents loyal to the United States, Britain, or Russia or other topics Macintyre’s approach to conveying espionage history is clear, concise, entertaining, and remarkably well written. All books are based on sound research and his readers will welcome his latest effort PRISONERS OF…

Typical electric car set-up
Water and electricity don’t mix too well. A headache for owners but also for insurers.
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A top Florida state official warned Thursday that firefighters have battled a number of fires caused by electric vehicle (EV) batteries waterlogged from Hurricane Ian, reports Fox News.

EV batteries that have been waterlogged in the wake of the hurricane are at risk of corrosion, which could lead to unexpected fires, according to Jimmy Patronis, the state’s top financial officer and fire marshal.

“There’s a ton of EVs disabled from Ian. As those batteries corrode, fires start,” Patronis tweeted Thursday. “That’s a new challenge that our firefighters haven’t faced before. At least on this kind of scale.”

Within weeks, Liz Truss’s premiership was plunged into economic and political turmoil due to Kwasi Kwarteng’s ‘mini budget’. But this crisis, suggestsMeg Russell, has distinctly constitutional roots. Building on Boris Johnson’s legacy, Truss chose to sideline expert officials and regulators, and shut out her own MPs. The consequences that have since befallen her are a compelling advertisement for respecting – and rebuilding – appropriate constitutional checks and balances.

The Conservative Party conference, indeed the entirety of Liz Truss’s new premiership, has been severely destabilised by the market reaction to Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s ‘mini budget’. Far from securing Truss her desired reputation for acting on the energy crisis and boosting the economy, and a positive bounce in the polls, Kwarteng’s 23 September ‘fiscal event’ saw the pound plunge, lenders withdraw mortgage products, and Labour achieve record poll leads. Faced with a mass rebellion…

The ups and downs of the U.S. stock market are largely driven by the degree to which the Federal Reserve makes easy money available. After (ridiculously) insisting for most of 2021 that inflation was merely “transitory”, chairman Powell has finally put on his big boy pants and started to attack the problem by raising short term interest rates, and (only now) starting to reduce the Fed’s holdings of bonds. Massive buying of bonds is termed “Quantitative Easing” (QE), and its opposite is known as “quantitative tightening” or QT. QT can be accomplished by outright sales of bonds into the open market, or (as the Fed is doing) simply letting bonds mature and not replacing them with purchases of new bonds.

The specter of Fed tightening drove stock prices down all year, to a low in June. Then a new mantra began to circulate on Wall Street, that the Fed would…