Yes, it's me! Mark Steyn of that ilk - back for another hour of questions from Steyn Clubbers around the planet. The fun starts at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm in the British Isles and 9pm in western and central Europe.
Lots going on in the world. But, under cover of the Canadian election-day thriller, the most disturbing story of the week is that an entire continent came within seconds of being plunged into the world's biggest electrical outage. Which continent would that be? Africa? South America?
Er, no. Europe. Monday's blackout in Spain quickly spread to Portugal, then southern France and was supposedly within 0.3 hertz of marching eastward to Ukraine. The initial cause was said to be a "rare atmospheric phenomenon", which explanation is apparently no longer operative. Some Portuguese officials were quick to suggest a cyber attack, although this too has been walked back. So what was it? Ah, well. Could take months to figure out, but don't worry, it's certainly not the breezy transition to "renewables"...
As The Washington Post likes to say:
Democracy dies in darkness.
Or maybe you prefer Sir Edward Grey in August 1914:
The lamps are going out all over Europe.
But, among their many other contributions to the gaiety of the passing parade, our rulers seem to be determined to lock basic elements of modern life into high-tech systems of state-of-the-art fragility.
Get used to a lot more of that in what passes for the future.
Meanwhile, Trump 47 marks his first hundred days in office. And, while his pledge to annex Canada may have taken out Pierre Poilievre, it did not distract the people of Ontario from delivering a former host of this very show, Andrew Lawton, to Ottawa as the new Member of Parliament for Elgin-St Thomas-South London. Nice to know that you can still have ridings named for the eighth Earl of Elgin.
Also from Canada: wasting no time, just a day after the election, Alberta premier Danielle Smith announced construction of an upgraded exit ramp from the Deranged Dominion:
BREAKING: Premier Danielle Smith has announced significant changes to Alberta's Citizen Initiative Act.
The threshold to spark a referendum has been dramatically lowered—from 600,000 to just 177,000 signatures.
Additionally, the window to gather those signatures has been... pic.twitter.com/ljs7iyvIBM
— YEGWAVE (@yegwave) April 29, 2025
Happy to take your thoughts on those or any of the other topics we've discussed in recent days. Whether or not you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club, you can listen to our show live as it happens wherever you chance to be on this turbulent earth: Club membership is required only to ask a question. We love to hear from brand new members, and especially appreciate those who are having such a grand time around these parts that they've signed up a chum for a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Among the additions to our ranks in recent days are newbies from around the globe - from Brentwood to Burton-on-Trent, Canmore to Kalamazoo, Linlithgow to La Jolla. If you've joined this week either for a full year or a see-how-it-goes experimental quarter, do shoot me a head-scratcher for today's show.
But, if you're not interested in joining, no worries, as they say in Oz: We seek no unwilling members - and as always the show is free to listen to, so we hope you'll want to tune in. So see you back here at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm in London and Dublin, 9pm in Paris and Berlin, 10pm in Kiev and Moscow; half-past-ten in Teheran; midnight-forty-five in Kathmandu; 3am in Singapore and Honkers (sorry about that); 6am in Sydney and Melbourne; 8am in Auckland, and an even more civilised hour for the kippers and kedgeree in His Majesty's Dominions eastward across the Pacific, where you're so far ahead Michael E Mann's probably lost his appeal by now...
