AN OUTSIDER'S VIEW 2006-2007

Poor transport links hit economies of northern towns.

2008-03-20T10:48:00.003Z

The economies of northern towns are falling behind their southern counterparts because transport links to the big cities of Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle are inadequate, according to a study by the Centre for Cities thinktank. There is a comment on the report in the Guardian.

The study focuses on the poor local public transport and road links around cities such as Manchester and Leeds, compared to those in London and the south-east, and gives this as a reason for lower average pay in those areas.

What it fails to mention is the sky-high housing prices - in reality, land values - in the prosperous areas, which gobble up much of the advantage of the economic benefits of better transport.

Suppose, for a moment, that substantial investment was made in transport around, say, Manchester, leading to higher pay and improved economic performance. This would quickly push up land values, with higher house prices, and higher commercial and residential rents. In other words, the benefit of the investment would be mostly taken by land owners. Little of the investment would turn up in higher tax revenue, and that only slowly and haphazardly.

If, on the other hand, a tax on annual land rental values was in place, the increasing values resulting from the investment would be captured and provide the revenue stream which would repay the cost of the investment. Indeed, the projects could be paid for from bonds issued on the strength of the enhancement to land values and consequently raised revenues. But it is not going to happy any time soon.

How stupid is that? #1

2008-02-21T09:54:00.001Z

Well done Brighton and Hove Council #1
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

A committee of MPs has criticised councils for their lack of enthusiasm about a pilot scheme to charge people for the amount of rubbish they put out for the dustmen.

Rubbish is left all over the place all the time even when it is taken away free, so what will things be like if people have to pay according to the amount of rubbish they produce?

Most rubbish is packaging. The cost of disposal should be incorporated in the price so that you pay for rubbish when you buy it. This would create a fund for it to be collected with no questions asked. Since the cost of disposal would thereby be reflected in the price, it would create incentives all round to be economical with packaging and to recycle and re-use containers.

Other rubbish such as metals and electronic scrap is potentially a source of valuable commodity elements, though many items could actually be kept in service much longer than they actually are - I recently bought a laptop computer for £150, only four years old and £1200 when new. It will do for several more years, which makes one wonder why the original corporate owner did not have the same idea.

Organic waste such as food is another matter. Composting is the best solution but difficult for people who live in flats.

Part of the solution is to get people to sort their rubbish into metals, paper, electronic scrap and batteries, and compostable food/garden waste.

But charging to take away rubbish. No.

Ticket touts

2007-12-05T10:44:00.001Z

Chimaira concert photographs from Tilburg Holland 06/10/03 MORE bands artists singers pop stars www.yoursuperstar.com
Originally uploaded by www.yoursuperstar.com.

There was a piece on the radio this morning about concert promoters who want a cut from people who buy concert tickets and then sell them on at a profit, often using the internet. The obvious question that comes to mind is that if the promoters want their full whack, why don't they just charge more for the tickets in the first place?

As the discussion developed, it turned out that sometimes, the tickets are sold at a discount from the original price. In other words, the intermediaries, the so-called touts, are taking a loss and doing the promoters a favour by taking the tickets off the promoters' hands.

All in all, then, these intermediaries are performing a useful function all round, in providing the promoters with an assured market and customers with an assured supply. It is a kind of insurance, with the "touts" taking part of the risk.

It is sad that public understanding of basic economic principles is so poor that their activities are regarded with opprobrium instead of being recognised as a useful service.

Canon Ixus RIP

2007-12-04T22:20:00.001Z

I never liked this camera, when the lens jammed I tried to open it up to fix it but all the bits are stuffed in and the task is impossible except for Canon's technicians who charge almost the price of a new camera.

It has lasted just two years and I took around 12000 exposures. All the same, it is unlikely I will be looking for another one of the same make. At least it cost a lot less than film but it has encouraged quantity rather than quality.

All suggestions welcome. I already have an SLR which lives under my bed and almost never comes out so a digital SLR is not for me. Olympus mju 795SW is a possibility.

The argument against religion

2007-12-04T20:31:00.001Z

There are lots of arguments against religion, but it would be nice if the people who felt that way would at least put their brain cells together, if they have any.

I am going to Peter Atkins' retirement dinner on Friday. He is a buddy of Richard Dawkins, probably Britain's leading atheist. As a Catholic, on the whole I prefer atheists to bible-bashing Protestants. Peter Atkins is the author of some of the best chemistry textbooks ever, but he doesn't seem to have much in the way of a cogent argument against religion, saying that science can explain everything. Actually, as a physical chemist he should know better, as at the quantum scale things go all awry, but that aside, one cannot dismiss people's claims of religious experience as meaningless or delusional . At the very least, it has to be studied as an epiphenomenon of neuroscience, and an aspect of sociology and phychology.

Whither Land Value Taxation in the UK?

2007-11-29T16:59:00.000Z

If land value taxation (LVT) and the ideas of Henry George are to be promoted, it needs supporters who are familiar with the underlying philosophy and theory. That means they will have gone through the School of Economic Science (SES) economics course. Otherwise their grasp of the subject is always shaky and they are vulnerable to being out-argued or talked into conceding compromises unnecessarily. Whatever one thinks about SES, and I have my reservations, there is nowhere else teaching economics soundly.

The principal organisation for the promotion of the ideas of Henry George in the UK, the Henry George Foundation, appears to be at long last in reliable hands. Subject to the limitations of that organisation as a registered charity, there appears to be no longer any reason why all the activity should not be channelled through that body, and it would probably be advantageous if other Georgist bodies were re-integrated into this mainstream.

The other issue concerns the use of the term Land Value Tax. This may have come to the end of its useful life and there is probably a need to describe what it does in another way, not "just one more tax". And people have different preoccupations and concerns and ways of thinking about the world. We cannot present things the same way we would have done in 1947. This all needs thinking about. SES is at present providing a useful forum for discussion.

The prospects for LVT in Britain are very poor. The public is badly informed and badly educated, and are focussed on trivia and personalities. The press panders to that and provides no leadership. There is a poverty of ideas on both left and right. The alternative centre seems unable to make any mark despite good parliamentary representation. Neither of the two main parties has anything useful to offer and both are apparently committed to the delusion that Britain is a great power that needs to be in a position to project military force around the world. Strange, when we cannot even have clean streets. Thus the best that can be done is to maintain a holding operation. As long as campaigners maintain a realistic view on this and do not imagine we are on the verge of any breakthrough, there is no reason why continuing effort should not be sustained.

Big Green Machine

2007-11-28T22:20:00.001Z

Steam locomotives are far from being an obsolete technology. On the night of 25/26 August this one was heading a construction train in connection with the installation of a new bridge on the Swiss railways at Thayngen. The steam engine is very popular for permanent way and works trains especially at night because it is practically silent when stationary and less obtrusive when working, which is appreciated especially by local residents.

This is not the whole story either, because unlike a diesel, which is constantly idling even when stationary, no fuel is used while in standby mode. When all the sums are done, it turns out that the greater thermal efficiency of the diesel is negated by the cost of processing the fuel to make it suitable for use in an internal combustion engine, and in these standby losses. Hence it has been found that on the Swiss and Austrian mountain railways where both steam and diesel locomotives run on the same diesel fuel, the former use less as they consume nothing when stationary or running downhill.

The locomotive has been rebuilt from a German Kriegslok constructed in 1944 and intended for no more than a few months' service. The work was carried out by the Swiss engineering companyDampflokomotiv- und Maschinenfabrik DLM AG of Winterthür. Improvements have been incorporated to provide for quick startup and efficiencies around 50% higher than the best that was being achieved when steam locomotives were last used regularly in the 1950s.

Steam locomotives are in many ways ideal for rail traction, where demand for power is intermittent, for example, when starting, accelerating, and on uphill stretches of route. Because the boiler acts as an energy reservoir, the conversion of the chemical energy in the fuel to mechanical energy is separated off from the use of that energy to provide traction. In an internal combustion engine, on the other hand, the engine where the conversion of fuel to mechanical energy takes place has to be sufficiently large to provide for the maximum power demand. And being external combustion devices, steam locomotives are not particularly fussy about the fuel that is used. The use of waste materials is relatively simple and thus the machines can be carbon-neutral.

Steam locomotives are in principle simple, with direct drive from the cylinders to the wheels. By contrast, internal combustion engines used for rail traction require a complex and expensive electrical or hydraulic transmission system, with consequential high manufacturing and maintenance costs and energy losses. Given a reasonably long production run, the cost of steam locomotives should be less than 40% of the equivalent diesel electric.

Unfortunately, so far there have been no takers for the technology, which still has to recapture its credibility amongst conservative railway managers who dismiss it as obsolete. It is unfortunate, however, that the obvious advantages when used, as here, for maintenance trains, have not been recognised.

What will cars be like when the oil runs out?

2007-11-26T16:34:00.001Z

aptera 230 mpg electric 3-wheeled car
Originally uploaded by mod*mom.

The oil will not run out. It will just become more and more expensive. And will people kick the car habit when that happens? Not if they can help it.

What are the alternatives? Hydrocarbons are the perfect transport fuel. They come in convenient liquid form and have a high energy density.

One possible substitute is hydrogen. It can be converted into electricity using a fuel cell, with the cars driven by electric motors or it can be used in an ordinary internal combustion engine, suitably adapted. But fuel cells are likely to be expensive, since they use rare metals such as platinum. And hydrogen is difficult to store and handle, as it does not liquify except at very low temperatures, which makes it awkward and potentially dangerous to deal with. The biggest objection, however, is that energy is needed to manufacture hydrogen. As it does not occur naturally, it is not an energy source but simply a means of storing energy obtained from somewhere else.

What about biofuels? They are fine if they do not have to be grown specially, for example if they are made from waste materials, such as biogas from sewage and landfill sites.. Otherwise, the production of biofuels takes up land, water and other resources needed to grow food. Ethanol, another biofuel, can be made from waste products, though it tends to be made from crops specially grown. And ethanol-powered vehicles emit toxic and irritant gases.

How about electricity? As long as there are only a few electric vehicles, they can be powered by low-cost off-peak electricity which is usually available because nuclear power stations cannot easily be switched off. If there was any substantial number of electric cars all being charged at night, then the demand would quickly grow to the point that there would no longer be an off-peak period.

There is also the issue of batteries. These contain either lead or lithium. The former is toxic and the latter is a fire hazard. The production of both is energy intensive and they have a limited life; fortunately, the metals in them can be recycled quite efficiency. But they are heavy.

There are no easy answers but with the days of cheap portable energy coming to an end, the future of personal transport must be ultra-lightweight vehicles running at speeds where air resistance is not significant, which means around 30kph. And being too flimsy to share the roads with today's heavy vehicles, they will need a suitable infrastructure of their own.

Eurostar woes

2007-11-23T20:36:00.000Z

This is a reminder of what the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras looked like in 1960. Five billion pounds have been spent and now the train takes only 2 hours 20 minutes to get from London to Paris. But if you make the journey, you need to allow at least 45 minutes for all the messing around beforehand. This is due to the security arrangements which are still bad in London and even worse at Gare du Nord in Paris.

Passengers and luggage are screened for metal objects. Luggage goes on a conveyor belt through a tunnel with some kind of detector, which is unproblematic. At St Pancras, shallow plastic trays are provided for small objects like mobile phones, keys and cameras, and they go on the conveyor belt too. But nobody has thought about providing tables or shelving where passengers can put their things in the trays before they are screened, and back in their pockets afterwards.

Passengers themselves then walk through a metal detector. If you have anything left in your pocket, it will sound the alarm. You will then be frisked as if you were a criminal who had been caught committing a crime and arrested by the police. Unless you like being touched up by a security guard, this is degrading and embarrassing.

The situation at Gare du Nord is even worse. No boxes for small objects are provided (strange this, because they have them in the station left luggage office downstairs). So you have to take everything out of your pockets and show it to the French customs official. But there is only a tiny space to put all the things on. And I had to go through the metal detector gate five times before I was clear. So there is my stuff, including camera and lenses, balanced precariously on a small area a metre above the concrete floor, while the official pokes around with it. Who pays for my Leica if it drops on the floor, I wonder?

The French customs official with whom I dealt with was particularly stupid and awkward, insisting on opening a factory-sealed box of 35mm films, which is not a good thing to do with films. What did he think was in the box, clearly marked FUJI?

I also had trouble with the ticket, which got jammed and they had to open up the machine to get it out. This is probably because I had folded it, but the tickets are too big to get in a wallet and are likely to get folded.

So I complained to one of the Eurostar crew on the train and was given a telephone number, which I rang next morning. The person I spoke to said she knew exactly what I was talking about, having had the same problem. Presumably, Eurostar's senior managers also have the same experience. Which makes one wonder whether the company has ever heard of Quality Circles, a Japanese invention, where staff at all levels come together to consider ways of improving whatever it is the company produces. Or is the whole affair just taken for granted and regarded as inevitable by all concerned? Or, to put it another way, are their brains in neutral?

The solutions are straightforward. British credit-card style tickets will fit in a wallet without having to be folded, and if necessary they can be provided with a chip with additional information that can be detected by an electronic reader.

As for the security, there really is a need for a sane approach to the problem. The risk needs to be determined and appropriate measures put in place. If the aim is to prevent terrorism, the present arrangements are counter productive, since they force passengers to gather whilst awaiting screening, thereby making them particularly vulnerable to attack. And any serious terrorists would take account of the security measures and adopt tactics which worked round them. I am not going to spell out the possibilities, but they are so numerous that the security measures amount to little more than a charade that inconveniences passengers. There are in any case other targets, presently unguarded, that would be of far more interest to a terrorist.

But assuming that there is a rationale behind the present screening system, then it should at least be organised so that it is less troublesome. There should be a stack of boxes just inside the screening area. The boxes should be big enough to contain people's outdoor clothing ie the same size as household storage containers, about 40 x 50 x 30 high, in assorted colours so that they could be identified. There should be tables or shelves at a convenient height so that people can put their things in the boxes, with trolleys available so that people can take the box, together with their luggage, to the screening machine.

Once screened, passengers would then take their box to another shelf or table and put their outdoor clothes on again, again with trolleys available.

It is shocking that this situation has been allowed to arise, with, seemingly, nobody giving a thought to the procedure to make it run as smoothly as possible.

I have already given up on Eurostar for journeys to northern Europe, as the ferry is cheaper, quicker and more comfortable. Now I am just giving up on Eurostar for trips to France as well until I hear they have sorted themselves out. There is none of this at the smaller ferry terminals, so I will go back to using the boat, which is not all that slower because there is no need to travel up to London and the port is quite close. I do not like being treated like a criminal.

POSTSCRIPT After a couple of months I received a letter from Eurostar expressing their concern and assuring me they are looking into the problem and will try to get it resolved.

Government computer bungle

2007-11-23T20:19:00.000Z

This week's Inland Revenue computer bungle is beyond belief. Why do the government's departments not have access to each others' data over a secure computer network?

But if there really is no alternative to sending data out on discs by post, why was it not encrypted with a unique encryption key sent separately to the recipient?

Any teenage hacker would know how to do it so why is this not standard practice in government departments?

Perhaps this is the explanation. In British culture, anyone who knows about science and technology is dismissed as a nerd. This has always been the case. At the root of the problem is the idea that the highest form of life is to be a country gentleman landowner with an income ie to be a parasite. This goes back to the days of agricultural enclosures and the slave trade.

When the present generation of senior politicians and civil service mandarins were at university in the 1950s and 1960s, most of them studying at Oxbridge, the science students were dismissed as the Grey Men - who were usually people from the old grammar schools.

There was a pecking order. At the top were men who spend their time with the Christ Church and New College Beagles and usually got Fourths, if they were not sent down. If they took any part in public life at all, they might have become Conservative Party grandees. Next came a self-styled elite, mostly from public schools, who took subjects like Classics, Philosophy Politics and Economics and Law. These became the Civil Service mandarins and politicians. And they were the ones who ran Britain. Few of them had even a clue about anything to do with science and technology, consequently any policy area which requires such knowledge is in a shambles, which is virtually everything the British government touches.

That generation is approaching retirement, but fewer and fewer students have been opting for science and maths, preferring the softer subjects like media studies, while the most able have generally swallowed the idea that the way to make money is to push money around and go into the financial sector. The situation can only get worse.

St Vincent de Paul

2007-11-14T22:15:00.000Z

Soup runs have come under criticism recently for encouraging dependency and ignoring people's real problems. I would not like to comment on this as the circumstances in which people accept what is given out by soup runs is so varied. One can envisage lonely people just going there for the company.

There has been one on the seafront at Brighton for many years, run under the auspices of the Society of St Vincent de Paul. People from our parish go out every evening in all weathers to hand out soup and sandwiches to people, mostly young men, who live in the city. One of the stalwarts was Ann Roberts, who died last year, and the picture shows the dedication of a bench that was placed on the spot in her memory.

Who was St Vincent de Paul? There is plenty of information on him: in short, he came from a peasant family and became a priest in the French court in the middle of the seventeenth century. At that time, the courtiers' wives lived pointless and extravagant lives, and he urged them to good works, in this case, to go out and help the poor of Paris.

The women of the court responded marvellously, which was all very well but what if he had encouraged the rich courtiers to investigate the causes of the poverty and see the connection between it and their own great wealth? In the following century, the French Physiocrats did precisely this, and when Louis XIV was king, and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune, had been appointed Comptroller-General, an attempt was made to put the proposed solutions into practice. There is every reason to suppose that their schemes would have worked, but vested interests prevailed and the ideas of the Enlightenment were gathering strength. It was too late, and the French Revolution was the result.

Freemasons and Catholics

2007-11-14T10:26:00.000Z

Catholics are not allowed to become Freemasons. My father was a Freemason for many years and rose to become Worshipful Master of his lodge. He suggested that I might like to join, but, being forbidden to do so, I declined.

It is sometimes suggested that the Freemasons are plotting to destroy the Catholic church. The subject came up for discussion the other day, as it does from time to time, and the case of Cardinal Bugnini is sometimes cited. Bugnini, an alleged Freemason, was the principal architect of the revised Catholic liturgy, which seems to have done the Catholic church no good at all.

Never having been associated with Freemasonry, I know little about it apart from what has been published by Freemasons themselves. It has been described by one as "a system of morality taught by role-playing in small-scale allegorical theatrics, with the addition of lectures and catechisms to which the candidate gives set answers to set questions."

Freemasonry has a mythic origin claiming to be descended from the masons who constructed the Temple of Solomon, and passed down via the Knights Templar to modern times. The rituals, known as "workings", are a representation of the ancient practices. Modern Freemasonry in English speaking countries appears to have taken shape, initially in Scotland, in the earlier years of the eighteenth century and is said to have drawn on ideas of the Enlightenment. Mozart, famously, was a Mason and, as The Magic Flute portrays, it seems that Wisdom was the highest ideal.

Freemasonry flourished in France as an Enlighenment movement in the eighteenth century and promoted notions of egalitarianism, which no doubt helped to nuture the ideas behind the French Revolution, when the Goddess of Wisdom was enshrined in the cathedral of Notre Dame. And of course it can be no accident that the currency of the United States carries masonic emblems.

There is a clearly a spritual content to Freemasonry, but because there are varieties of the practice, there will inevitably be different spritualities. All require a belief in a Deity and in the afterlife, and some require members to be Christians and have their origin in the Catholic refugee flight from Scotland in the seventeenth century. The spirituality has Gnostic and Rosicrucian elements.

So what does this mean for Catholics and the Catholic Church? The usual objection is that Freemasonry is esoteric - that is, members are initiated into the teachings of the organisation in a step-by-step manner, whereas the Catholic Church is an open path. But there is a good reason for this. Any ordinary academic subject is naturally pursued step-by-step. It is often the case that what is comprehensible to a student who has studied a discipline in the correct order will seem nonsensical if presented to a beginner. And Catholicism is not really an open system either, as the doctrines and dogmas of the Catholic Church, which make sense to a believer, appear nonsensical or oppressive to someone who has contact with them for the first time. Some of the teaching of the Catholic Church make no sense to anyone who has not experienced "conversion" and thereby received the "gift of faith". This is why the Catholic church comes under criticism for its views on all sorts of things, whereas to those who have received this gift of faith, they make complete sense.

Given this experiential dimension to Catholicism, it can reasonably be argued that it is itself gnostic, at least to the extent that Catholics have no need to become Freemasons. Should they feel drawn in that direction, they should make a more positive effort to commit themselves to their Catholicism. Were they to join, it would result in confusions and they should most certainly obey the teaching of the Church in this matter.

As to whether there is a plot to destroy the Catholic Church - it seems that Freemasonry encompasses a diversity of practices, some of which might possibly be anti-Catholic in sentiment. But as Catholics must not become Freemasons and what goes on in the Masonic rites is confidential, no trustworthy information will ever be revealed.

But there is no need to invoke the notion of a Masonic plot to account for the decline of the Catholic Church in Western Europe since 1960. The damage is self-inflicted and unfortunately continuing. The clergy responsible are going to have a lot to answer for. This is not a new thing; the Catholic hierarchy were reluctant to challenge the unjust status quo in eighteenth century Europe, thereby creating the breeding ground for the French Revolution. Even people like St Vincent de Paul seem not to have questioned the economic system which created the class of poor on which he and his patrician women associates lavished their charity.

There is no need to invoke conspiracy theory. The Catholic church comes under attack when Catholics stop proclaiming Christianity and conducting themselves as Christians.

The photograph is of the Freemason's headquarters in London

Does Britain really need more high speed railway lines?

2007-11-12T09:49:00.000Z

I will be travelling on the new high speed Eurostar line next week. It opens on Wednesday and will knock 20 minutes off the journey time from London to Paris, which means I can have a later start and still catch my connection. It will be quite useful for me as I use the Eurostar service once or twice a year.

The opening of the line, called HST1, prompted an article in Rail magazine (7 November) by the expert Jim Steer, arguing that there is a need for more high speed lines in Britain. What he says is unconvincing, and I drafted the letter below, but had to shorten it to 250 words before I sent it off, so here is the thing in full.
_____________________________________________

It is natural that the opening of the new high speed line will have whetted people's appetite for more. But the case for more high speed lines does not follow from Jim Steer's analysis.

Continental TGV lines have mostly utilised existing routes into city centres. But Jim Steer's article refers to the looming capacity problems on lines leading into the large conurbations in Britain, and so the option of using existing rights of way is not available. Although, as he says, new lines into cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester will be needed to relieve the congestion, they will pass through densely developed areas, making them very costly. They alone may well consume all the funds available for new rail infrastructure. For this and general reasons of cost-effectiveness, these new lines could perhaps more usefully take the form of new suburban routes for continental sized high capacity commuter trains, thereby releasing extra paths on the existing tracks.

This is why there is a need to examine the overall picture. In thirty years' time, energy will be expensive. This will tell particularly against the private car, which is inherently energy-inefficient, and against air travel. There will be less competitive pressure against rail travel and less demand for fast journeys to attract passengers to the railway. At the same time, the railways themselves will be seeking to reduce energy consumption, and running at top speeds of not more than about 160kph is an important way of achieving fuel economy. Given that 90% of rail journeys in Britain are less than 90 miles long, the time savings gained by running at higher speeds are of little value to the majority of passengers; few people make long distance journeys more than a couple of times a month.

There is also a need to set priorities. People experience transport difficulties most acutely in the trips they make daily - going to work, getting the children to school, etc. Even the simplest of journeys, like walking to the shops or park, or cycling to college, has become problematic - indeed, dangerous - because most British cities have become overwhelmed with cars, trucks and buses. Investment in high speed rail does not address this. Moreover, as Jim Steer notes in his article, long distance travel involves journeys over local networks, and so improvements to these will automatically reduce door to door times and encourage people to leave their cars at home.

As for the argument that high speed rail will improve the economic performance of the regions, this could be achieved at fraction of the cost by reconstructing the tax system to take account of geographical advantage and disadvantage; at the moment, people are expected to pay the same tax per unit of wealth created, regardless of whether they are operating their business in the middle of the City of London or in a marginal location such as remote Caithness.

There may well be a case for new high speed rail lines, but it needs to be made within a balanced set of policies which do not neglect people's mundane day-to-day travel needs, looking ahead to a time when energy is substantially more expensive than it is today.

New taxes will hurt small firms that try to go green

2007-11-11T17:34:00.001Z

Energy Saving
Originally uploaded by Neil101.

Small businesses that want to do their bit for the environment face higher tax bills.

An article in today's Independent on Sunday states...
"The Conservatives have warned that SMEs that want to tackle climate change and install green energy technology will face a hike in their tax charges.

"The Valuation Office Agency (VOA), an arm of Inland Revenue, is preparing to tax solar panels, wind turbines and micro-generation technology with higher business rates and council tax. This follows news that Gordon Brown is set to abandon Tony Blair's targets on renewable energy.

"The small print of last month's pre-Budget report revealed that "the installation of micro-generation equipment in business premises can trigger an increased liability for business rates".

"Parliamentary Questions have also revealed that green energy measures will result in higher council tax bills. Such measures can push a home into a higher council-tax band when the house is sold or after council tax revaluation. The VOA is already undertaking training and preparations for the revaluation..."

One might think that this is crazy, but it is a logical consequence of Britain's property tax system. The solution is to exempt all buildings and improvements from property tax assessments and to tax on the rental value of the site alone, on the assumption that it was at it optimum permitted use.

Unfortunately, such is the power of the clique of vested interests that has Britain's politicians and civil servants in its pocket, that this simple and sensible measure is promptly struck off the political agenda whenever it is suggested.

Shome mishtake shomewhere?

2007-11-08T11:27:00.000Z

The house a couple of doors away is for sale. They are asking £390,000. They would certainly get £360,000 so they are obviously trying it on a bit, but I don't blame the owners for that and they will have to find somewhere else. They have probably realised the schools round here are no good.

Twenty five years ago the price of the house would have been about £30,000. Of course it is not the house that has gone up in value but the land it is standing on. The government claims to be concerned about the shortage of affordable "homes" and is proposing to allow the building of hundreds of thousands of new houses.

But this morning, a commentator on the radio was saying that there is a risk of house prices falling as this would have all sorts of dire effects. Of which, presumably making houses more affordable is one of the dire effects. And so this commentator suggested that interest rates should come down to keep the prices buoyant and prevent a fall.

So which is it? Are high house prices a good thing or a bad thing? Can someone please explain? There seems to be some mistake somewhere.

Laptop computer failures - blame the EU?

2007-11-05T10:05:00.000Z

I got a three year old IBM Thinkpad computer for a friend and it packed up after a few months. It is not entirely dead, but the fault is with the display, which sometimes works and sometimes does not. Apparently it is a widespread problem both with Thinkpads and Apple Mac laptops. The Graphics Processor Unit, a surface-mounted chip, becomes detached from the motherboard due to a combination of failure of the soldered joints and flexing of the motherboard.

It turns out that the root cause of the problem is the use of lead-free solder, as required by the EU's Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive, which came into force in 2003.

The lead/tin alloys used in traditional solder have peculiar properties which is why they have long been used for making joints in electrical, electronic and plumbing work. The physical chemistry of this is explained here

Lead is of course extremely toxic and there are problems associated with both the extraction and manufacture of lead and lead products, and with their disposal at the end of their useful life. But if the alternatives result in a short-lived product, that is not environmentally friendly either.

It looks as if the legislation has been promoted by politicians and civil servants who do not know what they talking about as they do not understand the science.

The way round the problem is not to ban lead but to ensure effective re-use and end of lifecycle recovery. One of the issues affecting the life of computers is the production of new software which makes ever more stringent demands on the hardware, which, assuming it is of sound manufacture, is discarded only part of the way through its useful life, which is typically about twelve years. This has been the root cause of the mountain of electronic scrap. For the individual, this is good news as serviceable computers are available at no cost. If they are fitted with a new hard disc and the Linux operating system and software are installed, they will do everything that most people use their computers for. But it has been bad news for the environment.

In this light, surely what is needed are directives on software efficiency and the recycling of electronic scrap?

The absurdity of it is that the amount of lead used in electronic equipment is tiny compared with the amount used in car batteries and buildings, for which there is no effective substitute.

Should you have a dead laptop which has stopped working due to failure of the soldering under the GPU, you may be able to resuscitate it. There is a lot of discussion of the matter on the internet. It can be temporarily cured by putting something under the chip to force it back into contact. A risky but effective procedure is to re-flow the solder, which will effect a long term cure.

Hopefully the manufacturers might come up with a solution, but it is not a simple matter and they should have been given the opportunity to do this before the legislation came into effect. As it is, thousands of consumers have been saddled with computers that have to be thrown away after a short life.

The Corruption of Banking

2007-11-03T17:53:00.001Z

Towers of Mammon
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

Banks perform essential functions in society. They provide people with a place to leave their money. And they give credit. Farmers, for instance, need credit so that they can live between the time they plant their seeds and when the crop has been harvested and sold, when the credit is extinguished.

Trouble has arisen because banks lend money for land purchase, or proxies for land purchase, and do it on the basis of using the capital value of the land as collateral for the loan.

The effect of this is to stoke up land prices. And the more land prices rise, the happier the banks are to advance money, again using the land as collateral. This leads to periodic land price bubbles. Then things go bad. The real value of land it its annual rental, which is not subject to the bubble effect to anything like the same extent. Yields, as a percentage of selling prices, gradually drop, which is acceptable to investors only so long as people think that prices are going to keep on growing. Eventually, the realisation dawns that the growth has come to an end, and then there is a crash. It seems to happen every 18 years or so. An economic depression follows. It can last five years or so before confidence starts to return and the cycle begins again.

We are now in the feverish stage of the cycle. Bank have been doing all sorts of stupid and barely honest things, like lending to people who cannot pay the money back, imagining that it does not matter because of the security of the rising value of the land being used as collateral, and then selling-on the bad debt. Both the borrowers and the banks are going to be in trouble.

The underlying problem is that the rental value of land is retained by the owner instead of being taxed away. This is how capital values attach to land in the first instance, as land purchase is the purchase of a rental stream. Once that happens, land prices froth up as they reflect the expectations of a larger rental stream in the future. Then land becomes a speculatively traded commodity. And that is the whole problem. The corruption of the banks is a side-effect.

Under a system where land rental value was taxed away, land would have no significant selling price. Banks would have no option but to make their loans on the basis of the credit-worthiness of the borrower. And competition would make prices fall. There would be no necessity to charge interest because charges for credit would need to be no more than was required to cover the cost of administration and to cover the possibility of default - a kind of insurance premium. This is the key to an honest banking system.

Latest food scare

2007-11-03T16:16:00.001Z

what puts the great in great britain
Originally uploaded by lomokev.

Two traditional British staples, bacon and beef, are the latest food scares. It would be nice to think there was going to be some commonsense on the subject but I fear another panic response.

To judge from the size of them, some people are obviously eating too much. A full English breakfast is calorie-laden, it is true, but you feel full up for hours afterwards. Too little exercise, too much beer and too many sugary soft drinks also play their part in the prevalence of fatness. And a lot of bacon is not worth eating. It oozes white stuff and smells of pigs' wee.

But now we are told that bacon and beef cause cancer. The relationship is not a surprise, especially in the case of meats cured using sodium nitrite. If these foods sit inside the gut, they can fester away and produce carcinogens.

So the solution is a simple one. There is not need to stop enjoying these foods now and again. But they need to be eaten as part of a balanced diet with plenty of vegetables, fruit, wholemeal bread and other things with roughage, to keep everything moving through the digestive system.

So the breakfast of bacon and eggs is probably best started with a bowl of porridge and a roast be followed by fresh fruit such as an apple or whatever is in season. And the fried bread should be the proper wholemeal stuff.

Bacon and beef are not addictive drugs and having them once or twice a week in the context of a balanced range of foods is not going to endanger health.

I shall continue to enjoy a Full English and a roast once in a while.

Oxford - redevelopment of the Lucy factory

2007-11-02T01:03:00.001Z

This was an iron foundry until about ten years ago and now they have built very expensive apartments. But what a strange thing to have this mixture of styles, part of which is meant to look like Victorian warehouses, which is not what the previous buildings looked like.

Not coming soon to a street near you

2007-10-31T23:28:00.000Z

The Department for Transport has published a new 90 page document setting out long term strategy, Towards a Sustainable Transport System, which builds upon the Eddington and Stern reports published earlier this year.

The topic has been sliced up into five sets of policy aims: Gross Domestic Product growth; Health and Safety; Preventing Climate Change; Quality of Life; and Social Equity. This is perhaps a reasonable way of assessing policies but it seems an odd approach to developing those policies.

Achieving GDP growth has been an important target of government for many years, the assumption being that it is the only way of lifting the poor out of poverty. But there are two fallacies here. The first is to equate GDP with well-being, when experience is that some growth has a negative effect on quality of life, and present means of measurement do not attach the necessary minus sign to such "growth". The second fallacy is the assumption of the famous trickle-down effect to bring the benefits to those who are less well-off.

There is discussion of a broad range of transport-related issues. Although it claims to be opposed to continuing with the old predict-and-provide policies, it assumes that investment needs to be focussed where the pressure is greatest. This would not in itself be unreasonable if the present pattern of settlement and industry in Britain were a natural thing, as seems to be the prevailing assumption. But it is not. Over 85% of the population of Britain is concentrated into a corridor which includes London, Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, less than a quarter of the land area. Within that area, however, people are quite dispersed, to the extent that they have become dependent on road transport. Yet in principle, there is no reason why many more people could not be living in fairly compact cities outside this corridor. An important reason why it does not happen is the tax system, which inhibits economic activity in otherwise marginal locations, thereby making them sub-marginal.

The document refers to persistent regional differences in income and productivity, without considering the possibility that these could be a simple effect of geography about which nothing can be done. The notion is reasonable enough; anyone operating their business in, say, Tyneside, will inevitably have additional transport and other costs. This difference in desirability between regions is reflected in differences in land values, but it is not recognised by the tax system which does not distinguish between thriving productive enterprises in the most favourable locations in the country - the City of London, for instance - and outfits struggling to survive in remote Caithness. Until this issue is dealt with, nobody can tell what the natural pattern of settlement in Britain might be.

There are suggestions of possible schemes, such as a new railway between London, Birmingham and Manchester, but with all the references to end-to-end journeys and quality of life, one might have expected to see an emphasis on local travel. It is good that the authors of the report have acknowledged the importance of those parts of the journey from, for example, home to the railway station, because one people have got into their cars, they are likely to want to make the entire journey in them. But there is little said about how to ease people out of this dependence on cars, through, for instance, the relatively low cost investment to improve conditions for pedestrians, cyclists and people trying to move about inside towns and cities. In this context, and bearing in mind the desire to reduce carbon emissions, there is clearly a role for electric trams, which receive just one mention in the entire report. They are unlikely to be coming soon to a street near you.

There are some good things said, such as the need to avoid expensive flagship schemes, to focus on the whole journey and to consider all the external effects. Important things are left unsaid, however. Transport infrastructure is one of the major elements that goes to creating and sustaining land value, but in the absence of any coherent mechanism for capturing land value, the benefits of infrastructure investment are pocketed by landowners. The Treasury is presumably aware of this and it may be one reason why it is reluctant to put up the cash for new schemes.

As a whole, then, the report does not convey the sense that much of value will come out of it, partly because it is a difficult text to read, clumsily phrased and loaded with jargon and managementspeak. The document is constructed of sentences containing thirty or forty long words apiece. Writing of this kind is not conducive to clear thinking, and what became of plain English? Before things like this are published, they ought to be read out aloud and revised by a group of three or four people. There is no better way of making sure that the result is readable and jargon replaced by proper English words and sentences. If the government is serious about promoting an informed discussion on this or any other topic, it needs to communicate better than this.

Apart from the obvious uncertainties about the future, perhaps the most serious difficulty for long term planning of the kind envisaged is that the decisions are being made for people who are themselves makers of decisions, and what they decide depends on the options that have been made available to them. To that extent, government remains in a leadership role, where responding to the views and preferences thrown up in focus group discussions is an abdication of the responsibilities that go with government. Where government lacks a vision for the future, it has no option but to go along with the prejudices of focus groups and to push out surveys with loaded questions. If, on the other hand, it presented a picture of what kind of a transport system we might have in thirty years' time, it would give people something less vague to talk about and it would be possible to have a debate that the public could involve itself in. If the vision that emerged from such a debate was something that captured the imagination, support would be forthcoming and there would be a definite aim to move towards. If there was no support, the government would have to look in another direction. As it is, things will continue to drift.

Huge queue to get in to the London Dungeon

2007-10-31T00:11:00.001Z

London Dungeon Queue
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

The latest advert promotes a simulation of a hanging, and presumably this is the attraction. No doubt if public hanging was reintroduced, it would become a popular spectacle, possibly even more than football.

This raises an interesting possibility. If it were televised and streamed over the internet, the rights would be worth a fortune, so one could envisage hanging, drawing and quartering being put out to tender as a PFI initiative. It would probably be won by one of the US firm operating in Iraq, like Blackwaters. They might botch the odd execution but what the heck.

Northern Rock and its aftermath - missing the financial point

2007-10-25T12:13:00.000Z

The Bank of England and the financial commentators are missing the point about the recent Northern Rock crisis. The Guardian's commentator, Larry Elliott said today...

'The City risks financial turmoil on a renewed and intensified scale unless it learns the lessons from a catalogue of weaknesses evident in the run-up to this summer's credit crunch, the Bank of England warns today. The Bank says Britain's financial system is vulnerable to further shocks after ignoring repeated warnings about the "seriously flawed" model used by institutions to expand lending rapidly in recent years.

'It admits it would need to learn its own lessons from the handling of the three-day crisis at Northern Rock - the first run on a big UK bank in almost 150 years - but said there were already signs of a return to the lax lending practices that were the root cause of the freezing-up in financial markets, in Britain and globally.

'In its half-yearly Financial Stability Review, the Bank is critical of the way banks made risky loans and then passed them on to other institutions. "The 'originate and distribute' business model, which has facilitated rapid growth and strong profitability at major financial institutions in recent years, has been shown to have significant flaws," the FSR says. "These include inadequate information about the true credit risk underlying financial instruments; an excessive dependency on rating agencies, opaqueness about the distribution of risks in the financial system; over-reliance on continuous liquidity in financial markets; and inadequate liquidity risk management." '

Banks create money out of nothing. This can be for a perfectly legitimate purpose. Classically, it was for an enterprise such as farming, where the farmer had to survive between the time the seeds were planted and the crop was harvested and sold. The reality was that this credit enabled the farmer to live off previous years' production. The bank could be fairly certain that the credit would be repaid, unless some disaster intervened.

But when money is loaned for land purchase, things are different. Land purchase - usually wrapped up as house or other property purchase - is, in principle, nothing more than the purchase of a stream of rental income, real or imputed. The problem arises in the first instance because expectations of future increases in the rental stream are factored into the capital value. A further issue then comes into play, because land becomes a commodity to be traded in speculatively.

When loans for land purchase are secured on land prices in a market where speculative trading is going on, increasing amounts of money will become available for buying land, driving prices up higher and higher. Eventually, they will reach a point where returns on this "investment" fall to the point where, even with expectations of future income growth, the yield is unacceptable. At this stage, the market falters and crashes, with people who purchased at the peak finding themselves with large debts and an asset that is worth less than the amount borrowed. This then becomes a problem for the lenders whose loans are secured on a value that no longer exists. Historical evidence indicates that the process is cyclic, with a period of about 18 years.

Northern Rock's problems, which are related to a larger scale disruption in the USA, are an inevitable consequence of the financial system. Better oversight or control is not going to prevent these periodic financial disruptions.

If the right system of land value taxation were in place, the rental stream accruing to land ownership would be small or non-existent. Land would not be traded in the way that it is under the present arrangements which leave the rental income stream with the land owner. Land holders would be taking on the liability to pay the annual land value tax, which would still entitle them to use the land for whatever they wanted, just as leaseholders today are willing rent premises in order to use them for their business. There would be no point in holding land speculatively, however, as there would be nothing to speculate in, because the true rental value is always captured and land as such would effectively have no selling price.

The banks, deprived of the opportunity to lend on land purchase, would be limited to make their advances on the strength of the creditworthiness of the borrowers, without reliance on the shaky collateral represented by inherently volatile land values - as has been proved historically.

This change is a prerequisite for bringing about the necessary reform to promote good practice in the banking system.

Race and intelligence again

2007-10-23T17:58:00.000Z

Intelligence itself is a murky concept - the notion of using poison gas during the first world war was conceived by one of the most brilliant scientists of the time. But primarily, it is the ability to make high scores in intelligence tests, for what they are worth.

Intelligence tests arose through the need to predict future performance, and they are of some, though limited value. But even if they showed that individuals from particular ethnic groups had a tendency to score high or low, there are so many other factors involved that it would be difficult if not impossible to establish to what extent there was a genetic component.

In the case of people of African descent, possible non-genetic causes of low scores in these tests would be cultural factors, poor nutrition and childhood illness, and poverty, which can mean that parents are so busy trying to survive that they are unable to give their children the necessary time to promote their intellectual development.

In so far as low intelligence (whatever that means) is a poverty issue, it would be cruel to try, out of reasons of policial correctness, to pretend there is not a problem when there is, and which needs to be addressed.

Armed guard at US embassy

2007-10-21T23:11:00.001Z

Looks like Judge Dredd. I think it is dangerous to walk this way.

This used to be an open building. Now it has been turned into a fortress. It is hideous. And in a Conservation Area, too!

What has the USA done to make itself such a target?

Ethical Travel

2007-10-21T22:49:00.000Z

I saw an article today in a publication called "Ethical Consumer", about the benefits of travelling by rail. But having done so extensively over the past couple of years, it is easy to understand why so many people do not. It can take a lot of determination and effort to use the train instead of driving or going by plane.

Long distance (international) travel by rail is troublesome these days, mostly due to the difficulty of buying tickets. Some railways have confusing and awkward web sites. Others will refuse to sell tickets for other than the most popular routes and destinations or will not accept payment by foreign credit or debit cards. Poor computer systems are another hazard. It can take up to a quarter of an hour to buy a ticket from their Rail Europe shop in London as staff struggle with their terminals; there was a two-hour queue there recently. Yet another is being told that trains are fully booked when they are not, due to badly designed reservation systems which do not allocate the same seat to different passengers each travelling on only part of the route. I have travelled in "fully booked" trains which were never more than 60% full. A further difficulty is the inflexibility of having to travel on a particular train, and passengers are told that a train is fully booked when this is not so. Altogether, things are too complicated; If you succeed in booking a return journey to Stockholm, you will end up with two dozen tickets!

Earlier this year my attempt to travel to Sweden by train failed entirely. I was unable to book a return journey on Eurostar, as my return was too far ahead to be on the computer system and was offered a single ticket at an extortionate amount. Then the UK office of Deutsche Bahn was unable to renew my Bahncard, so I gave up on the idea of the train. Instead, for the same money I travelled to and from Denmark on the luxury cruise ferry, with my own cabin with sea view, and dinners and breakfasts. That got me most of the way with no trouble, on one ticket!

Conditions on the actual journey are often not what they ought to be either. Some trains, like the Danish IC3 and German ICE designs, are reasonably spacious and pleasant, with seats well placed in relation to the windows. But seating layouts on many trains are cramped and poor, and because it is common practice to book everyone into a particular seat, people often end up being allocated a place which is not to their liking; from many "window seats", all that can actually be seen is a bit of curtain. This happens even on a scenic route like Oslo to Bergen, which is like going to an opera and finding one's view blocked by a pillar. Then a game of musical chairs takes place with people moving from one empty seat to another, as and when they are available.

Luggage storage is often a problem. On older trains there is usually a good space between seat backs, which means one can keep one's luggage close by, but the vogue for airline style seating on trains means that these spaces do not exist. Thus, on busy Swedish trains, luggage just collects in a heap on the floor, while on the Thalys between Cologne and Paris, luggage sometimes has to be stuffed into the doorway and unloaded onto the platform at stations just so that people can get off the train.

Double-deck trains are another bugbear for people with luggage, as it has to be dragged up flights of stairs, again, with nowhere to put it. In Finland (picture), I found that an attempt had been made to deal with the problem by providing lockers by the doorways, but they were only big enough for medium sized cases.

If people are going to return to using rail in any numbers, there is a need to analyse and cater for passengers' needs, starting with the time they are planning their journey.

Observer Journalist advocates Local Income Tax

2007-10-21T18:51:00.000Z

William Keegan has been writing for the Observer for too long. He is an unreconstructed Keynesian, which means that while he is very good at putting his finger on economic problems, he almost never has anything useful to say about what should be done about them.

Today, he wrote a piece in support of the Liberal Democrats' proposal to fund local councils by means of a local income tax. Now, such taxes do exist elsewhere, so they are not completely impracticable. But the pages of technical papers like Computer Weekly report constant problems over computer software and large scale mistakes, and tax systems need to be simplified, not made more complicated. The tax system already costs about £25 billion a year to run, about 6% of what is collected, to say nothing of the £130 billion of lost production annually that results due to the way it kills off economic activity.

The administrative problem is this. Most people work for an employer, who will have staff working in different local authority areas. Under a system of local income tax, the PAYE system would become more complex as employers would have to deduct tax at different rates and the correct amounts would somehow have to be remitted to the different local authority areas. This means that somebody would have to keep track of people's addresses, to ensure that the were living where they said they were and not in some fictitious address where local tax was low. This is one of the problems that killed off the poll tax.

It gets worse. Apparently, investment income cannot be taxed in this way, and so it would not be related to ability to pay. And how would second homes be taxed? Or wouldn't they?

Advocates of local income tax never answer these questions. Which will not prevent some stupid politicians from persisting with the notion.

Watson and race

2007-10-21T18:33:00.001Z

James Watson, one of the team of four scientists who discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, has come under attack for suggesting that there is some connection between being African or having African ancestry, and having low intelligence.

He seems to be suggesting that there is a genetic component to intelligence which condition in Europe have selected for this attribute more strongly than in Africa, though it is not clear exactly what he getting, but that has not stopped people rushing to attack, and silence him.

The whole subject area is murky, with several strands to this debate. The first is what precisely does intelligence tests measure? The second is whether the whatever-it-measures has a positive, negative or neutral moral value? The third is to what extent it is inherited through DNA and how much is a result of environmental factors? The fourth is whether it fuels racism?

Friends who have worked in Third World countries in Africa and elsewhere relate stories about being in the bush and the resourcefulness of their drivers when things go wrong. The skills that they describe are not the kind of thing that ordinary pencil-and-paper intelligence tests would measure. So the tests themselves need to be regarded with suspicion.

As for the moral value of intelligence, it was Einstein who famously said, on hearing of the atom bomb tests, "I wish I had been a watchmaker". The generals and politicians, and their scientist servants, who hatched the immensely destructive wars of the twentieth century, would no doubt have scored highly in intelligence tests. The quality of a society in terms of the happiness of its members depends more upon the prevalence of positive moral values than on the intelligence of its members. Africa's problems seem primarily to do with the corruption of its politics, and this is largely to do with the way the government of those countries interact with western institutions.

Whether mental capacities are inherited though DNA or environmental factors would be inherently almost impossible to establish. Studies of identical twins are of limited value, as we now know that the ante-natal environment is critical. But poor maternal nutrition and illness will inevitably affect brain development both before children are born and in the early years of their life, whilst poverty itself tends to result in an environment where children are less stimulated by parents, partly, perhaps, for cultural reasons but equally, because they are too busy with just trying to survive.

Sadly but inevitably, to raise this issue is, on the one hand to fuel attacks the one hand from people who cry racism, and on the other, to give propaganda to racists. Ironically, white racists themselves appear to be of well below average intelligence, however measured. This comes to light in Britain when members of the BNP win local elections and often turn out to be unable to handle ordinary council business.

Perhaps white racists should be invited to demonstrate their intelligence by participating in tests? They might get a shock at their low scores.

Can we, together, lift one village out of the Middle Ages?

2007-10-20T16:42:00.000Z

That was the subject of an article in today's Guardian. The village was in Uganda, and the people who live there are plauged by malaria, flood, food shortage, poor medical services, inadequate infrastructure, chronic poverty.

Nice to know that something is being done, but we aren't told who owns the land, or why people stay in such a poor environment instead of moving to somewhere better.

It sounds as if these people are living in a marginal location, but if development is successful and lifts it above the margin, it is the villagers who will benefit or will the gains be claimed by the landlords through rent increases?

Sadly, the author of the article has neglected to highlight this important question.

Not this kind of cycle

2007-10-20T10:26:00.001Z

Copenhagen cycles
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

Although it was high tide when we went to swim this morning, we still had a long walk across the beach to get to the water. This is because today the tides are in their Neap phases, and there is only a 2 metre range between high and low water. In two weeks' time, we will be back to Spring tides and the range will be over six metres.

Everything is cyclic. Anyone who spends a lot of time out of doors or is involved with the sea will know this. The seasons, and the tides, for instance, are all cyclic. The sun rises and sets once every 24 hours. The tides come round roughly twice every 25 hours. Twice a month the tides cycle from Springs to Neaps. And this variation in tides changes with the seasons, and with other factors due to the inclination of the orbits of the earth and the moon. Then there is the 11 year sunspot cycle, which seems to have an effect on the weather. All these changes have astronomical causes.

There are some very long-term astronomical cycles of between 21,000 and 400,000 years, known as Milankovitch cycles, related to the way earth and moon wobble on their axes and move round each other, and round the sun, in orbits which are slightly eccentric. These appear to have an effect on the climate, though there the theory of how this might happen remains contentious. Beyond this, there may be even longer-term cycles as the solar system is in orbit round the centre of the galaxy, taking 225 million years to complete the circuit, with the possibility of encountering all sorts of objects on its way round.

There are also geological cycles. The present continents were formed from the break up of the supercontinent of Pangea, beginning about 200 million years ago. The evidence suggests that Pangea formed about 300 million years ago, and it appears that it came about from the collision of earlier contents, which themselves were the product of the break-up of an earlier supercontinent about 600 million years ago. And when the earth's land is clumped together in a supercontinent, the weather had a tendency to extremes of cold, heat and dryness, whereas when the land is separated into continents, the climate tends towards the wet and temperate.

On top of these cycles, there are biological cycles. Individual creatures and species seem to arise, flourish and decline with the passage of time.

It is also claimed that there are astrological cycles, based on the movents of the planets around the earth, but no-one has shown how the movement of distant and relatively lightweight planets could have a significant long-distance effect, or even that there is any real link can be detected. Possibly, planetary movements are a proxy for something else, but what?

There are economic cycles, too. The most familiar is the boom-bust cycle, of about 18 years. This manifests as a property price boom and bust, but in reality it is a land price irregularity. There have been two since the end of World War 2, with booms ending in crashes in 1974 and 1992. We seem to be heading for another, on schedule in 2010. But what could be the cause? There is a lunar cycle of 19 year, on which the Jewish calender is based. Its relevance is obvious to anyone calculating the dates of eclipses of the sun and moon, but what has that to do with the economy? Another suggestion is that it is related to the internal dynamics of the land market, but how, and why 18 years?

There is much that needs explaining.

More train trouble - French this time

2007-10-20T09:25:00.001Z

Montbard with TGV
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

I just want to buy a train ticket for a journey in France. I don't even want a reservation.

I went into the French Railways' Piccadilly shop and was told there is a two hour queue. That is nearly as long as the time it takes to travel from London to Paris! Their telephone service is under-staffed so callers just pay to wait and listen to their music. Online booking was useless as the web form will not come up with the station I am trying to go to and there was nowhere to type it in. It will only let you book to the stations on the list.

What is the use of spending all the money on sexy trains and expensive infrastructure if it is not supported by booking facilities and a sensible fares structure?

The problem seems to be Europe-wide.

Postscript - Eventually I got through to someone quite quickly who was very helpful and I got my tickets with nice discount and when I explained that my destination was not on the system they waived the booking fee.

Heresies

2007-10-18T10:07:00.000Z

What Is Heresy? Summarised from The Great Heresies (Catholic Anwers)

Heresy is an emotionally loaded term that is often misused. It is not the same thing as incredulity, schism, apostasy, or other sins against faith. Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith.

To commit heresy, one must refuse to be corrected. A person who is ready to be corrected or who is unaware that what he has been saying is against Church teaching is not a heretic.

A person must be baptized to commit heresy. This means that movements that have split off from or been influenced by Christianity, but that do not practice baptism (or do not practice valid baptism), are not heresies, but separate religions. Examples include Muslims, who do not practice baptism, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who do not practice valid baptism. [Thus, Belloc was technically incorrect when he described Islam as one of the great heresies.]

It is important to distinguish heresy from schism and apostasy. In schism, one separates from the Catholic Church without repudiating a defined doctrine. An example of a contemporary schism is the Society of St. Pius X—the "Lefebvrists" or followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre—who separated from the Church in the late 1980s, but who have not denied Catholic doctrines. In apostasy, one totally repudiates the Christian faith and no longer even claims to be a Christian.

The major heresies of Church history are.

The Circumcisers (1st Century)
The Circumcision heresy may be summed up in the words of Acts 15:1: "But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brethren, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.’"

Many of the early Christians were Jews, who brought to the Christian faith many of their former practices. They recognized in Jesus the Messiah predicted by the prophets and the fulfillment of the Old Testament. Because circumcision had been required in the Old Testament for membership in God’s covenant, many thought it would also be required for membership in the New Covenant that Christ had come to inaugurate.

Gnosticism (1st and 2nd Centuries)
"Matter is evil!" This idea was borrowed from certain Greek philosophers. It stood against Catholic teaching, not only because it contradicts Genesis 1:31 ("And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good") and other scriptures, but because it denies the Incarnation. If matter is evil, then Jesus Christ could not be true God and true man, for Christ is in no way evil.

Montanism (Late 2nd Century)
Montanus claimed that his teachings were above those of the Church, and soon he began to teach Christ’s imminent return in his home town in Phrygia.

Sabellianism (Early 3rd Century)
The Sabellianists taught that Jesus Christ and God the Father were not distinct persons, but two aspects or offices of one person. According to them, the three persons of the Trinity exist only in God’s relation to man, not in objective reality.

Arianism (4th Century)
Arius taught that Christ was a creature made by God. By disguising his heresy using orthodox or near-orthodox terminology, he was able to sow great confusion in the Church. He was able to muster the support of many bishops, while others excommunicated him.

Arianism was solemnly condemned in 325 at the First Council of Nicaea, which defined the divinity of Christ, and in 381 at the First Council of Constantinople, which defined the divinity of the Holy Spirit. These two councils gave us the Nicene creed, which Catholics recite at Mass every Sunday.

Pelagianism (5th Century)
Pelagius denied that we inherit original sin from Adam’s sin in the Garden and claimed that we become sinful only through the bad example of the sinful community into which we are born. Pelagius stated that man is born morally neutral and can achieve heaven under his own powers. According to him, God’s grace is not truly necessary, but merely makes easier an otherwise difficult task.

Semi-Pelagianism (5th Century)
After Augustine refuted the teachings of Pelagius, some tried a modified version of his system. This, too, ended in heresy by claiming that humans can reach out to God under their own power, without God’s grace; that once a person has entered a state of grace, one can retain it through one’s efforts, without further grace from God; and that natural human effort alone can give one some claim to receiving grace, though not strictly merit it.

Nestorianism (5th Century)
This heresy about the person of Christ was initiated by Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, who denied Mary the title of Theotokos (Greek: "God-bearer" or, less literally, "Mother of God"). Nestorius claimed that she only bore Christ’s human nature in her womb, and proposed the alternative title Christotokos ("Christ-bearer" or "Mother of Christ").

The Church reacted in 431 with the Council of Ephesus, defining that Mary can be properly referred to as the Mother of God, not in the sense that she is older than God or the source of God, but in the sense that the person she carried in her womb was, in fact, God incarnate ("in the flesh").

Monophysitism (5th Century)
Monophysitism originated as a reaction to Nestorianism. The Monophysites (led by a man named Eutyches) were horrified by Nestorius’s implication that Christ was two people with two different natures (human and divine). They went to the other extreme, claiming that Christ was one person with only one nature (a fusion of human and divine elements). They are thus known as Monophysites because of their claim that Christ had only one nature (Greek: mono = one; physis = nature).

Iconoclasm (7th and 8th Centuries)
This heresy arose when a group of people known as iconoclasts (literally, "icon smashers") appeared, who claimed that it was sinful to make pictures and statues of Christ and the saints.

Catharism (11th Century)
Catharism was a complicated mix of non-Christian religions reworked with Christian terminology. The Cathars had many different sects; they had in common a teaching that the world was created by an evil deity (so matter was evil) and we must worship the good deity instead.

The Albigensians formed one of the largest Cathar sects. They taught that the spirit was created by God, and was good, while the body was created by an evil god, and the spirit must be freed from the body. Having children was one of the greatest evils, since it entailed imprisoning another "spirit" in flesh. Logically, marriage was forbidden, though fornication was permitted. Tremendous fasts and severe mortifications of all kinds were practiced, and their leaders went about in voluntary poverty.

Protestantism (16th Century)
Protestant groups display a wide variety of different doctrines. However, virtually all claim to believe in the teachings of sola scriptura ("by Scripture alone"—the idea that we must use only the Bible when forming our theology) and sola fide ("by faith alone"— the idea that we are justified by faith only).

The great diversity of Protestant doctrines stems from the doctrine of private judgment, which denies the infallible authority of the Church and claims that each individual is to interpret Scripture for himself.

The doctrine of private judgment has resulted in an enormous number of different denominations. According to The Christian Sourcebook, there are approximately 20-30,000 denominations, with 270 new ones being formed each year. Virtually all of these are Protestant.

Jansenism (17th Century)
Jansenius, bishop of Ypres, France, initiated this heresy with a paper he wrote on Augustine, which redefined the doctrine of grace. Among other doctrines, his followers denied that Christ died for all men, but claimed that he died only for those who will be finally saved (the elect).

Tax woes again

2007-10-18T10:05:00.000Z

Yet again, Computer Weekly reports troubles with tax. This time (9 October) the story is of firms being wrongly fined. But nearly every issue of Computer Weekly carries a piece about some tax problem or other.

The article mentioned the cost without putting a figure to it. At a conservative estimate the tax system costs around £25 billion a year. This is to pay for the government departments involved, plus compliance borne by the private sector, such as administration, accountancy and legal services. But this figure is overshadowed by another - the deadweight loss to the economy. This is wealth that is never created because of the disincentive effect of tax; according to the best estimate, this amounts to a staggering £138 billion a year (Harrison, "Ricardo's Law", published 2007).

There is an urgent need to reform the tax system and relieve the wealth creation process of this crippling burden. There is a perfectly viable alternative - to raise revenue from a charge on the rental value of land. The land value component of every piece of real estate would be assessed and an annual charge levied on that value. Given a realistic time scale for its introduction, implementation would be a smooth transition, as developed land is already assessed either for Council Tax or Business Rates. To assess site values alone would be simpler as there would be no need to take account of buildings or other structures and improvements. And as present taxes were phased out, the reform would initiate a benign cycle.

Unlike present taxes on the wealth creation process, with such a system, there would be no deadweight loss.

Given the present state of Geographical Information Systems (GIS), this form of land value taxation, combined with a reliable register of land ownership and billing system, would be straightforward to implement and keep up to date. If the former rating system is any guide, once it had bedded-in, costs should be less than 1% of the amount collected.

In this age of IT and globalisation, where everything moves but the land, LVT the only logical and effective system.

Planning Gain Supplement ditched

2007-10-17T17:18:00.000Z

The government has for some time been concerned about the windfall gains that accrue to landowners following planning consents. It has also been hoping to try to increase the supply housing, especially in London and the South East, and to this end appointed a committee chaired by Kate Barker, with the idea that they would come up with suggestions. After several years of deliberation, Barker proposed a "Planning Gain Supplement" (PGS), a levy on the difference in land values before and after the consent had been granted. There was severe criticism from various experts who pointed out that something similar had been tried three times before, and failed. Land value taxation was put forward as an alternative means of collecting not just land value enhancements following planning consents, but of land value in its entirety.

But the PGS met with approval from the government and more consultation followed.

Now the proposal has been dropped. How much has all this cost? And should landowners be able to pocket the increased value resulting from a decision by a committee charged with protecting the public interest?

Comment is not so free - is The Guardian trying to suppress debate?

2007-10-17T11:02:00.000Z

I began posting when I was away from the UK during the summer. If you have followed these blogs, you will know that my main interest is not religion but the environment, transport, economics and taxation. A consistent theme amongst their journalists in those subject areas is an excellent and penetrating description of an issue, let down by a failure in analysis, often leading them to advocating policies which would be ineffective or indeed counter-productive.

Occasionally, there are flashes of insight in the responses, but sadly they are rare. Given that most people would agree that there is hardly an area of public policy in Britain which can be regarded as an unqualified success, this lack of insight is worrying, and frankly I fear for the future of this country to the extent that I am seriously considering emigrating, to one of the Scandinavian countries.

Which of course naturally leads to the issue of religion. The Scandinavian countries have received large numbers of immigrants from the Middle East, from Lebanon, Palestine and more recently Iraq. Of these, the Christians have integrated quite well in the circumstances, but a substantial proprtion of Moslems have not, and in fact despise the countries in which they have taken refuge. Rosengård, a suburb or Malmö, has become a virtual no-go area and would merit a feature in its own right. Article about Rosengård

All this has tested the traditional tolerance of the Scandinavians to beyond breaking point and is the motivation behind the recent Danish and Swedish cartoon incidents, which echo what has become a widespread sentiment.

The comment on the evils of the Catholic Church was intended as parody which was obviously too subtle too be noticed, but was essentially the message intentionally put out by around 20% of the posters responding to the article by Conor Foley, as well as the original article by Conor Foley, which was quite frankly offensive, as is the lie that the Catholic church is the cause of people dying of Aids, when it is in fact the largest provider of care for people with this illness.

I was open minded about Islam until I picked up some literature, together with the Koran, from a group which was visiting Brighton. The content and threatening tone of this literature and of the Koran itself are offensive to Christians and Jews. So, given the reluctance of many of those whom the Guardian gives editorial space to talk about the offensiveness of Islam's foundation texts, the question - "What is Islam for?" is a valid one. Evidently it is one that can no longer be asked in public. The 7th century origins of Islam also need to be examined and not brushed away from discourse. Where does the Koran come from? Is it a divine revelation, somebody's voices in the head or a fabrication? How can it condemn idolatry when the most important action in Islam, the Haj, involves processing round what is probably a meteorite which was long venerated by the pagans who lived in the area before Islam came to prominence? Then there is the record of the religion's founder, a cruel warrior who personally directed the massacre of hundreds of Jews. One must surely ask what kind of person would follow anyone capable of doing such a thing?

Jews can legitimately ask what the subsequent religion of Christianity is about and will receive an answer, which of course many will find unacceptable, but there should be no reason why both should not get along amicably together. Likewise for Buddhism as an offshoot of mainstream Hinduism.

The two principal offshoots of orthodox Christianity, Islam and Protestantism, on the other hand, can only justify themselves by denying some elements of Christian teaching. This is inevitably a recipe for potential conflict. Protestants will normally give a polite answer stating what it is in orthodox Christianity that they find objectionable and it is possible to conduct a discourse. Moslems, asked the same question will seemingly just cry "foul". Of course the Guardian has a perfect right to suppress discussion, but what will the effect be?

The final point about the effect of giving such a lot of editorial space to Muslim apologists, is that it stirs up hostility, as anyone can see from responses to such articles in Comment is Free. If the aim is to build up good relations, it is counter-productive.

My own personal experience of Muslims is, like most people's, through everyday encounters. I was perfectly happy to put my life in the hands of a Muslim anaesthetist a few year ago, and have no problem about visiting the new local grocery emporium which has opened near where I live, obviously run by devout Muslims.

But when I read the history of this religion, and the present day activities of some of its adherents, or its foundation texts, wariness seems the most appropriate response.

Why I was banned by the Guardian

2007-10-17T11:00:00.001Z

This is what the Guardian told me. The parody was too subtle to be recognised for what it was...

You had your posting rights removed after you wrote posts such as this:

"But everyone knows that the Catholic Church is a continuation of the Nazi Party and the Pope is the sucessor to Adolf Hitler. And all priests are paedophiles.
So it was a good move of Amnesty to come into the open and shake off this evil reactionary organisation.
Why the surprise that it has responded precisely as it did when Amnesty took the principled stand it did.
Abortion is a basic human right. Everyone has a right to be aborted."

and

"We seem to be getting defensive articles about Islam two or three times a week. Judging by the comments, their main effect is to stir up hostility. In which case silence might be more productive. As an aside, what precisely is Islam for? When Islam came into existence, thre were already two perfectly good religions for people who want to believe in God - Judaism and Christianity. If consequences are anything to go by, Islam adds absolutely nothing positive and much that is negative.
Since nobody is forced to remain in the religion they inherited from their parents, why are Muslims so resistant to considering the alternatives? Do they have lazy minds or what?"

I am not sure whether you were trying to be funny, or merely trying to provoke other users, but your posts were offensive in the extreme. You also display prejudice towards Muslims, which we had several complaints about. In order to post on CIF, you first agree to abide by our talk policy. You have breached this, and are therefore no longer allowed to post.

Banned by the Guardian

2007-10-16T14:49:00.000Z

I have been banned from posting on The Guardian's "Comment is Free" website. I have not yet found out why.

Since the both the site and the paper will freely allow almost unlimited licence for vituperative attacks on Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular, I eagerly await the explanation, if any. I wonder what I have done to deserve this honour.

Presumably what I have been saying detracts fom their anti-Catholic/anti-Christian campaigning.

That letter from the Moslem academics

2007-10-16T10:30:00.000Z

136 Muslim academics have written to the Pope, asking for dialogue. Now the idea that Muslims and Christians should get together and emphasise the common essentials of the two religions is an interesting one.

Some years ago Muslim missionaries from Birmingham set up a stall locally for a few weeks, with literature promoting Islam and attacking Christianity. What was said in the anti-Christian books demonstrated that the authors had only the haziest notions of Christian theology and what they were attacking bore little resemblance to Christianity as it actually is.

The same applies to the anti-Christian references in the Koran itself; since Islam largely defines itself by spelling out its differences from an imagined version of Christianity, it is curious that there should now be a desire to emphasise the similarities.

Can we therefore expect the signatories of the petition to start by taking instruction in Christianity so that they understood what it was actually about?

Green Party imposes candidate from outside

2007-10-15T08:29:00.000Z

Brighton Pavilion is considered to be one of the best prospects for a Green MP at the next General Election. We have long had an excellent Green councillor, Keith Taylor, and it had been assumed that he would be given the opportunity to stand as MP. And if not him there were a couple of other local people who I would have been happy to vote for.

But now, the MEP Caroline Lucas has been imposed on the constituency. I had a thoroughly unsatisfactory correspondence with her recently, worse even than any I have had with David Lepper, the present Labour MP. This is saying a lot as he does little more than forward letters to ministers who send them to civil servants who draft a stupid reply that makes out that what the government is doing is the best possible in the best of all possible worlds.

Lucas is infinitely worse. Her PA flatly refused to discuss the matter, which was a non-contentious matter about the EU regulations as they affect Brazil Nuts.

If one cannot communicate on a matter such as that, what kind of MP would she make? I could not possibly vote for her. And this affair also raises questions about the nature of the Green Party, which, now that it is within a whisker of gaining a voice at Westminster, is showing itself to be no better than the others.

The benighted Middle Ages

2007-10-14T16:33:00.001Z

Chartres Cathedral in Chartres, France (Southern facade)
Originally uploaded by Merowig.

Why is it that the Middle Ages are used as a shorthand for a time of darkness, cruelty and superstition dominated by religion, which at that time was orthodox Christianity?

In Europe, it was a period of moral and technological advance. Serfs became free men. Wars mostly affected only those who were actually in the armies. The rule of law prevailed. Universities were established. Until the Black Death, there was prosperity and growth. All sorts of inventions had their origin in the Middle Ages.

Another feature of the Middle Ages, feudalism, also has an undeservedly bad press. It is a system of land holding in a chain from the monarch, in which each land holder has duties to his superior in the chain.

Nowadays the predominant system of land holding is one of outright ownership without obligations, which, it can be shown, lies at the root of the economic and social divisions in Western societies. Which is the benighted system?

The real cruelty began in the sixteenth century with the post-Reformation religious persecutions. The seventeenth century saw devastating wars throughout the continent. The eighteenth and nineteenth saw the growth of the slave trade, the peasantry driven off the land and into the industrial slums, the excesses of the French Revolution and subsequent wars, and the great land robbery that was colonialism. The twentieth gave us murderous ideological regimes and wars on an unprecedented scale.

In the light of subsequent events, do the Middle Ages not stand out as a beacon of enlightenment?

Two hour queue to buy a train ticket

2007-10-12T20:46:00.001Z

TGVs
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

I went into the French Railways shop in Piccadilly to buy tickets for a journey next month. I was told to book by telephone as there was a two hour queue, even though there only seemed to be a few people waiting and there were several staff selling the tickets. But considering that it usually takes 20 minutes to buy a train ticket there, the wait was less surprising.

Why has buying train tickets become so complicated?

The root of the problem seems to be something called "Yield Management", which is about getting as many seats as possible occupied to maximise the load factor. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, as it not sensible to run half-empty trains. There is nothing new about it. Almost since the begining of railways there have been cheap fares for travel at less popular times. But things changed about thirty years ago. Before that, railways used to keep a reserve fleet which were used to carry the extra people who wanted to travel during the rush hour and in the holiday season. These were old vehicles which could be added to trains to provide extra seating, or for running extra trains.

But from the 1970s the fixed formation train - like the British Inter City 125 - became the vogue. Such trains cannot easily be lengthened to provide extra seating and so it became more important to match demand to supply by having different fares for travel at different times.

Making matters worse is the high cost of rolling stock, which is many times higher, in real terms than it was fifty years ago and continues to rise. A mark 1 coach cost around £6000 in the mid-1950s. The equivalent today will cost around £800,000, which, allowing for an inflation factor of around 30, is over four times the price. Compare this to the price of a car, which has gone from around £600 to £12,000, a fall in real terms.

There are many reasons for this. There are few train manufacturers. Trains are not mass produced like cars. But perhaps the main issues are the complexity and inflexibility of modern trains, together with the tendency to have self-powered trains instead of individual locomotives.

However, the problem is compounded by the booking systems in use and the practice of booking each passenger into a particular seat. Some systems seem unable to allocate the same seat to different passengers travelling on different legs of the journey, and report that a train is full when it is not. I came across this on the Bergen to Oslo line, when a supposedly fully booked train was never more than one-third full, and again on a Stockholm to Malmö service when a passenger was advised to get on the "fully booked" train and just move from one empty seat to another if anyone turned up to claim their booked seat.

In any case, the whole exercise of booking passengers into particular seats can be counter productive for the passengers. Many so-called "window seats" are nothing of the kind but give their occupants a fine view of a plastic panel or piece of curtain. Finding such a seat not to their liking, the passengers then go and sit somewhere else until the passenger who has reserved that seat turns up, when they move. The Hamburg to Köln express seems to run on that principle, with a game of musical chairs going on after every station stop. It isn't good, and moving seats is a way of losing one's belonging.

There are all sorts of issues entailed here, from the seating layouts inside the trains to the way that traffic is managed to match supply and demand.

If the aim is to get passengers to travel by train instead of by plane, it is something that needs to be looked at.

Modernism and church architecture

2007-10-12T17:41:00.001Z

inside church of st. joseph
Originally uploaded by lomokev.

There is a view around that the Modern Movement had a disastrous effect on church architecture. The argument is that it has driven out the sense of the sacred.

This church designed by August Perret proves that this is not the case. So many Catholic churches built since the 1960s do indeed lack a sense of the sacred, but the causes lie elsewhere and have more to do with the clients than the architects.

Poor Palestinians

2007-10-11T15:27:00.000Z

The subject came up over coffee this morning. Someone said that we would not have had Al Quaida and terrorism if it were not for Palestine.

Now I do not support what the Israelis are doing these days. However, the Palestinians have no-one to blame but themselves for their predicament. People seem not to be aware of the recent history of this conflict.

Jews began to settle in the country then known as Palestine from the 1880s when it was part of the Ottoman empire on land they had purchased. At that time the population was small.

About a year before the end of the First World War, the British Government issued the following statement known as the Balfour Declaration.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country"

In the post war settlement, Britain was given what was called a "Mandate" to govern the country. Jewish settlement continued on land that had been purchased. Opposition from Arabs developed, with incitement from Moslem religious leaders, principally Haj Amin el-Husseini. There were pogroms in 1920, 1921, 1922, 1929 and 1936.

During the Nazi period in the years before the Second World War, and again, immediately afterwards, Jewish immigration to Palestine continued, and after the war, inter-communal violence grew. In 1947, a United Nations Commission advocated partition, with the predominantly Jewish areas to become part of a Jewish state. On the withdrawal of the British, a state of Israel was declared and was immediately attacked by five Arab countries whose aim was to eliminate Israel. Fighting continued for about a year and ended with a cease-fire but no agreement, on borders which were determined by the armistice line; this resulted in Israel having more land than originally allocated, and with large numbers of Arabs becoming refugees. Arab leaders would not negotiate with the Israelis as they did not recognise its existence; thus, a formal state of war remained.

In the immediate aftermath, large numbers of Jews took the opportunity to escape persecution in Arab countries and to leave for Israel, so that about 40% of the present population of Israel consists of Jews whose ancestors lived in places like Morocco, Algeria, Iraq and Yemen. In the meantime, the Arab countries made no attempt to settle their refugees but kept them confined in camps in places such as Ramallah and Gaza. Neighbouring Egypt and Jordan absorbed those areas of Palestine which remained. Parts of Jerusalem, including the old Jewish quarter and the holy sites, ended up under Jordanian occupation and Jews were denied access.

Sporadic attacks from Arabs continued in the 1950s, with occasional punitive retaliation from the Israelis.

The next major event was the war of November 1956, carried out with British and French co-operation, the latter two countries wishing to regain control of the Suez Canal which had been nationalised by Egypt under Nasser. This ended with Israel being made to withdraw to the previous armistice line, and with a United Nations peacekeeping force being placed in Gaze between Egypt and Israel.

Over the next decade, with Soviet support, Egypt built up its army with the intention of attacking Israel from its postion in Gaza. By June 1967 it was ready, the UN force was asked to leave and the army brought up to the border. The situation became increasingly tense and the Israelis appear to have made the first move with an air strike on Egyptian air fields. The Egyptian campaign ended with the Israelis in occupation of land all the way to the Suez Canal and in the Sinai desert as far as Sharm-al-Sheik. Jordan and Syria joined in and these two interventions also resulted in land being lost to the Israelis. Thus Israel came to occupy the West Bank and Gaza, with large Palestinian populations.

This was entirely unexpected. Nearly everyone, including the Israelis themselves, had expected that the better armed Arabs would lose the conflict. Israel ended up with a large population of Arabs under its control. Its first initiative was to try give up this land in exchange for recognition, but no Arab leaders would talk to them. Rather than go into a conference room with the Israelis, the Palestinian response was to form the Palestine Liberation Organisation under Yasser Arafat and adopt guerilla tactics instead.

Eventually, after the 1973 War, the Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israelis and the Israelis withdrew from all Egyptian territory. But Sadat was assassinated for his efforts.

In the 40 years since the 1967 War, the Israelis have changed. Their leaders are no longer the kind of social democratic moderates like those who run countries such as the Netherlands. Palestinians are now having to deal with Israeli leaders of a tougher and less compromising cast of mind. They missed their big opportunity.

Other opportunities have presented themselves subsequently but time and time again the same thing has happened. And a conciliatory Israeli prime minister also fell to an Israeli assassain.

It is a hopeless situation. If there are people to feel sorry for, how about the Tibetans, the Kurds and the people of Darfur? Or the continuing Russian occupation of parts of Finland? Who protested about the brutal occupation of the Baltic states by Soviet Russia until 1991? Given the selectiveness of the sympathy, I cannot help suspecting that those who affect support for the Palestinians are either naive or motivated by anti-semitism.

And what of the link to Muslim terrorism today? If Israel vanished into thin air, it would continue. After all, there is Muslim terrorism in countries like Thailand and the Phillipines. What has that to do with Palestine? If one wants to look for a cause, surely it is the US involvement in Saudi Arabia which has gone on since the 1920s?

Taxing the Family Silver

2007-10-11T15:09:00.000Z

Much nonsense has been written during the current debate on Inheritance Tax.

Those who are opposed to the tax say that people have already paid huge amounts of tax out of their hard earned wages and are entitled to pass on the fruits of their labour to whoever they want. Together with the family house. And in any case, the money is likely to be wasted or spent on wars.

The main argument of those in favour argue that inheritance enshrines privilege and inequality.

These two opposing positions appear irreconcilable but this is not so. Most of the value that is being hit by IHT is actually land value, and speculative land value at that. It is not the family house that is at issue, it is the land the family house is standing on. As anyone who owns one will know, an old house is a wasting asset; the walls crack and let the damp in, the roof leaks, the timber goes rotten, the heating system wears out or becomes obsolete and the decoration must be regularly renewed. So the reality of inheriting a house is the gift of a liability. In the meantime, the land underneath usually goes up in value quite steadily, a process boosted by by the actions of government.

So the opposing positions can be reconciled by separating out that proportion of property value that is actually land value. But there is a third voice which has been little heard in the debate, which says that the concern should not be about taxation of the dead but taxation of the living.

Taking the three together, a satisfactory policy is achievable: that taxation should fall not on people but on the land they occupy. That way, people could get to keep all their wages and pass what they have earned to whoever they like. Land, being a tax liability, would not be worth buying, selling or inheriting.

Stealing one another's policies

2007-10-11T13:16:00.001Z

There is nothing wrong in with one party adopting the policies of another, since it shows that democracy is working.

The trouble is that the policy concerned is a bad one. Unfortunately, the in question is surrounded by a thick fog of confusion, as was evident from almost every comment made on the subject by politician, journalists and the public at large in forums such as Comment in Free.

No sensible policy could have possibly have emerged from the public debate in the terms that it was being discussed and what this affair shows is that our democracy is working badly.

For it to work well would demand that the public raise its level of understanding on matters of principle.

More on Inheritance Tax

2007-10-08T09:19:00.000Z

Some commentators are saying that the Conservative proposals on Inheritance Tax tipped the polls to the point that Labour backed off from having an election in November. Perhaps. But nearly all the politicians and commentators are missing the point. There is a need for clarity.

Inheritance tax should be zero. Nil. Zilch.
Taxes on wages, goods and services should also be zero. Nil. Zilch.

People should be allowed to keep everything they earn from work and pass it on to whoever they want. Governments have no business getting their hands on it.

What needs to be taxed is land values. 100% of the rental value of land and the land element of all property. Why? Land value is created by the presence and actions of the communty. It is not earned. It is a public value and the government should collect it. Some of this revenue should be used for the essential purposes of government ie administering justice, defence (not attack), highways and emergencies. What is left over should be distributed equally to every citizen in the land as a national dividend, sometimes referred to as Basic Income.

Under such a tax regime the price of land would fall to zero. There would be nothing to tax. Windfall land value bubbles would not occur in the first place. Inter-generational injustice is almost entirely related to the inheritance of land, not that vague and ill-defined entity referred to as "wealth". Only land has an enduring value. Everything else wears out, decays or become obsolete.

Land value taxation is a prerequisite for justice from one generation to the next.

Tory tax plans are a nonsense

2007-10-07T21:40:00.000Z

The Conservatives announced they they would raise the Inheritance Tax threshold and abolish Stamp Duty for first time house purchasers.

Both policies are cynical or nonsensical or both.

Inheritance Tax has become a problem for many people in London and the South East as a consequence of the house price bubble, in reality a land price bubble. If it was not for that, it would not be an issue. Since the land price bubble is also a problem for house purchasers, surely that is what needs to be addressed?

Cuts in Stamp Duty will not help first time buyers. The effect will simply be to drive up house prices or prevent them from falling. The beneficiaries will be the house sellers. To propose a cut in Stamp Duty to help purchasers demonstrates a worrying failure in understanding of economics. That said, there is no justification for taxing property transactions per se. This merely discourages people from moving or selling, and creates shortages. Stamp Duty should be no more than is needed to cover the costs incurred by the Land Registry.

The appropriate way to tax land is through the right sort of land value taxation.

This would enable a Chancellor to make substantial cuts in other taxes. It would also address the problem of high land prices and then IHT could be allowed to wither on the vine.

As worrying as the Conservatives' lack of economic understanding is the corresponding lack of understanding on the part of journalists and media commentators who also seem not to appreciate what the effects of the proposals would be.

Back in Brighton

2007-10-06T21:46:00.000Z

Picked my way through the rubbish past the homeless people living in shop doorways this morning. Isn't it nice to be back in Britain.

Brighton Trail of Squalor

Crossrail gets the go-ahead

2007-10-06T17:04:00.000Z

This is sort-of good news but the project as proposed sounds like bad value for money and could cause other problems.

It appears that the main services will run from Shenfield and Abbey wood in the east to Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west. Why Maidenhead? No good reason but they cannot go on any further to Reading as there is not enough capacity there. On the east side, it should take some pressure off Liverpool Street. But to the west, it will use up the capacity on the GW main line and there have been concerns that there will be no room for freight services. Surely a better destination would be Hammersmith, which would take pressure off a busy section of the Circle Line and allow improvements in services in the North Kensington area?

Then there are the trains themselves. Illustrations show they have two sets of doors on each side of each vehicle. Surely this is not enough and will cause excessive station dwell times? And surely the most appropriate stock is an AC version of that being developed for the LUL surface lines? Which has three sets of doors per side.

This of course raises the question of the suitability of the stock for longer journeys, which is a problem with Thameslink where passengers end up travelling for over an hour on trains that are of necessity meant for short distance crush loading routes. Perhaps it is a mistake to have long distance services running through Central London.

Finally, there is the matter of the money. One third of the £16 billion will, the government claims, come from the private sector, but nobody seems clear how this contribution will be collected. Of course, with the right system of land value taxation in place, the contribution would flow into the government's coffers without the need for further action.

What housing crisis?

2007-09-21T07:09:00.000Z

The Chief Executive of Shelter has written an article in today's Guardian about the housing crisis and the need to build more.

It is not a crisis. The situation has been much the same since the end of World War 2. The problem is chronic. Houses are affordable. What is not affordable is the land the houses stand on. Land value taxation is an essential element in any solution to this.

But where are all these new houses going to go? And if they were all built, how would their occupants get to work? And where would their children go to school? And what about all the other services they will need? The problem cannot be considered in isolation.

A major factor in all this is regional imbalance. 85% of the UK population live within an area bounded by Leeds, Dover, Bournemouth, Bristol, Birmingham and Liverpool - about one third of the total land area. And most of that within a 100 mile circle centred on Oxford. This is due to decades of economic mismanagement. A major factor is our tax system which ignored the benefit of location. Thus, fringe areas such as Devon and Cornwall, and most of Britain north of Manchester, are marginalised, as the higher costs of production in those areas, due, eg to transport, are not compensated for in any way. So the drift to the South East goes on as it has for the past fifty years.

To keep on building houses in London and the South East is not a policy. A policy must include tax reform so that the amount paid reflect location value - ie land value taxation again, which effectively creates tax havens precisely where they are most needed. This will help to redress regional economic imbalance and revive those parts of Britain remote from London and the South East.

And it need major infrastructure improvements such as a new high speed rail link with full size trains (not the mini-trains they run at the moment), a shift of freight on to rail and urban light rail/tramway schemes to provide adequate feeder for long distance travellers. And land value taxation must be part of the policy for infrastructure improvements, because without it, the benefits of the enhanced values are just picked up by landowners who happen to win out and the Treasury has to fork out but gets little in return.

The issue is one of land use and fiscal planning. And it also needs vision, a commodity that seems to be in short supply in the UK at the moment.

It is alarming that the Chief Executive of Shelter does not appear to appreciate the big picture which forms the background to the problem they are concerned with. Really, one despairs.

I look around me in Scandinavia and see that people generally are enjoying a markedly higher quality of life than in the UK, both in their own private spaces and in the public environment. Yet these are poor countries with small populations on the fringe of Europe. If they can afford it then the big wealthy UK can.

Swedish house prices

2007-09-17T09:46:00.000Z

Swedish house prices in millions of SEK.
Stockholm: 3,4 mkr (+15%)
Skåne: 2,1 mkr (+11%)
Halland: 2,0 mkr (+8%)
Uppsala: 1,9 mkr (+9%)
Västra Götaland: 1,8 mkr (+12%)
Gotland: 1,6 mkr (+15%)
Södermanland: 1,6 mkr (+9%)
Östergötland: 1,6 mkr (+8%)
Västmanland: 1,5 mkr (+7%)
Blekinge: 1,2 mkr (+5%)
Jönköping: 1,1 mkr (+3%)
Kronoberg: 1,1 mkr (+8%)
Örebro: 1,1 mkr (+6%)
Västerbotten: 1,1 mkr (+12%)
Jämtland: 1,0 mkr (+16%)
Kalmar: 1,0 mkr (+9%)
Värmland: 0,9 mkr (+9%)
Gävleborg: 0,9 mkr (+8%)
Dalarna: 0,9 mkr (+6%)
Västernorrland: 0,8 mkr (+10%)
Norrbotten: 0,8 mkr (+8%)

Storstadsområdena

Stor-Stockholm: 3,4 mkr (+15%)
Stor-Malmö: 2,7 mkr (+10%)
Stor-Göteborg: 2,6 mkr (+11%)

Source: Källa och defenitioner: Statisktiska Centralbyråns småhusbarometer. Siffran i parantes anger prisförändringen jämfört med samma period 2006.
Figures in brackets are increase compared with 2006. One million kronor is about £75,000, which is roughly equal to the value of the building.

This is very interesting. The prices look dirt cheap compared to the UK. A typical house - about 90sq metres floor area, in SE England is 4,000,000 SEK and that will be in quite a poor area with rotten public transport. And in Greater London nearer 6,000,000 SEK.

Of course, most of that is land value. The value of the actual bricks and mortar is around 1,000,000 SEK which shows that the land value outside the main cities in Sweden is very low.

Since the division in Britain is primarily between those who own property (land) and those who do not, this could go a long way to explaining why Sweden does not have the inequality problem that Britain suffers from. And why Swedes seem to enjoy a higher standard of living. They are not burdened for half a lifetime with huge debts to pay for the land their homes stand on.

Liberal Democrat Conference

2007-09-17T05:32:00.000Z

For the first time for years, I will be away from Brighton during the LibDem conference. I like the LibDems. They are nice people, generous, worthy and well-intentioned. They are not greedy, or envious or bitter or over- ambitious. They are polite, they will listen and they are generally open to new ideas. They are exactly the kind of people who ought to be running the country. And with the largest number of LibDems in parliament since the end of World War 2, they might have been expected to make a big impact on the British political stage. Sadly they do not. Why could this be?

It seems to me that the Liberal Party lost its soul when it joined with the Social Democratic Party.

Liberalism was once a coherent political philosophy. It did not stand at a half-way point between the Left and the Right but in a triangular relationship to them. This was a good place to be. If you believe both Left and Right to be wrong, then a judicious mixture of the two is unlikely to be right. But that is what the Liberals espoused when they amalgamated with the Social Democrats, although this merely confirmed a tendency which had been gathering force since the end of World War 2.

The best thing the Liberal Democrats could do, both for themselves and the country, would be to examine the philosophy of their late nineteenth century predecessors and reflect on its relevance to our present troubles. It is just 101 years ago when a genuinely reformist Liberal government introduced a package of radical measures, including land reform, which would began the transformation of the country into a fairer society. Sadly, the First World War destroyed those hopes.

On the rocks

2007-09-16T05:18:00.000Z

There is lots of comment on the Northern Rock affair again today in the Sunday papers. Now there are calls for regulation.

The next great crash is unstoppable. It will probably come in a couple of years' time. It is too late to do anything about it. The time to have acted was some time between the previous one of 1992 and 2005. The best analysis of the process is by Fred Harrison, who successfully predicted the crash of 1992. Harrison has now demonstrated that the boom/bust cycle, which recurs about every 18 years, is due to the interaction of the land and financial markets. Harrison's prediction is for 2010. Read Harrison on the next great crash

The Northern Rock affair shows the process in actions. Their imprudent loans have been helping to stoke up house prices. But, and this seems to go unremarked by the politicians and pundits, it is not house prices that have been stoked up. What has been stoked up is the cost of land. And the stupid lenders imagine that land is solid wealth and safe collateral.

LAND IS NOT WEALTH. Everyone needs to understand this: politicians, economists, people who work in finance, journalists, and the man in the street.

This is indeed an area where governments should intervene. Lenders should not be allowed to advance loans using land as collateral. But a direct prohibition is not the way to do it.

The whole process which causes these cycles and the associated problems could be prevented through the right tax reform. If land was subject to an annual tax based on its rental value at market assessments, the entire crazy roller-coaster of land-price boom and bust would come to a stop.

How to tax land values

Thatcher takes tea with Gordon Brown

2007-09-15T22:56:00.000Z

I noticed an article on the subject in the Guardian. It is worrying that anyone should even read anything into this event, let alone write an article about it. It was basic good manners. Have the Guardian's commentators nothing better to think about?

What makes matters worse that the space could have been used for a biting analysis of Brown's economic policies since 1997. The Northern Rock problem is the harbinger of the great collapse which can be expected around the year 2009 and which is now unstoppable. Had Blair acted any time between 1997 and around 2004, the coming disaster could have been avoided.

FOR AN ANALYSIS OF THE BOOM/SLUMP CYCLE

Rock on

2007-09-15T05:52:00.001Z

9 minutes to 3
Originally uploaded by ne15.

I had long invested in Northern Rock term bonds as they give a good rate of interest. But a year or so ago, when I saw their lending offers - I began to have my doubts and did not reinvest. They were offering silly loans, annual incomes multiplied by an absurd figure. All of which helped to stoke up house prices.

Only it is not house prices that have been stoked up. Builders' wages and the cost of building materials have hardly risen. What has been stoked up is the cost of land. And the stupid lenders imagine that land is solid wealth and perfect collateral for loans.

But when I was taught economics it was drummed into me that LAND IS NOT WEALTH. Every bank manager should have that slogan facing his or her desk.

This is an area where governments should intervene. Lenders should not be allowed to advance loans using land as collateral.

Fruit and veg handouts

2007-09-14T08:46:00.000Z

Zoe Williams, writing in today's Guardian (Wednesday September 12, 2007), criticises the government over its policy to give all pregnant women £120 towards fresh fruit and vegetables. Her criticism is that the money will go to everyone and not just the needy. It is a pity that she did not dig deeper into this issue. She is right about questioning handouts for fruit and vegetables and baby bonds, etc, but wrong on the matter of means testing.

Much of the whole relationship between the state and the individual is means-tested. This is true of the entire tax and benefits system and it is part of the problem. Not only does it give no incentive for people to move out of the underclass - it helps to keep them in it. In this context these fringe benefits are marginal to the issue of what to do about Britain's growing wealth gap and the growing hereditary underclass.

If one takes a long view, it can be seen that the underclass first arose in England (Scotland has a different history) in the late middle ages. It was related to the break-up of the feudal system of land tenure following the Black Death, when land was enclosed for sheep and was no longer available for people to work.

The next stage came following the Reformation, when more land was enclosed and people were driven off.

The final stage was the period of agricultural enclosure in the years 1760 to 1840 when the last of England's peasantry was driven off the land. In Scotland, the Highland Clearances achieved the same purpose.

Once people were driven off the land they had no option but to work as agricultural labourers and live in dirt-poor circumstances or to move into cities, live in slums and work for subsistence wages. This was the situation that Marx formed his theories upon, but that is incidental since his analysis was faulty and could produce no lasting solution.

Successful welfare socialism in the years after World War 2 enabled most people to move out of the underclass and better themselves, but in the seventies and eighties, economic circumstances and government policies promoted the collapse of traditional British industry and the underclass is back. But the underclass has been an enduring feature of the British economic landscape for centuries. The thirty years after World War 2 were exceptional. Welfare socialism proved to be no more than a palliative that could not survive changing circumstances. It has lasted longer in some other countries but is under pressure there too. Other solutions are needed.

In this context, handing out potato vouchers is risible. What a pity that Guardian journalists fail to see the bigger picture.

Public Sector pay row resurfaces

2007-09-13T08:25:00.000Z

I see this hardy perennial has come up again.

Nobody seems to mention how public sector labour costs are distorted by our tax system. One might have expected someone - commentators, union representatives, journalists, politicians, economists etc - to have referred to this. But it does not happen. In the face of this kind of blindness, problems are insoluble and all we get is strife.

Real wages are the goods and services that can actually be purchased in exchange for labour.

Owing to the way the tax system is constructed, it costs an employer over £1.80 in order to leave the employee with £1 of actual purchasing power. This is how we have achieved the seemingly impossible - the low wage, high labour cost economy.

In the public sector or course, where the labour costs are paid by the taxpayer, the money is given with one hand and taken away with the other. This is called churning. It is an expensive administrative exercise which produces nothing and achieves nothing, apart from deceiving most people about what is actually happening.

But the reality is that over 40% of the public service labour costs are actually tax which is paid straight back to the government. Lunacy or what?

Catholic Superstition

2007-09-12T05:46:00.001Z

Ängelholm pilgrimage 028
Originally uploaded by [florestan].

This illustrates the core of Catholic superstition. The priest is holding up what is known as the Blessed Sacrament. It is just a piece of bread that a Catholic priest has pronounced the words of consecration over. According to Catholic doctrine, it has become the Body of Christ, that is, God.

My nice rational friend told me that, chemically, it is unchanged. I suggested that it cannot be proved that it is still in the same quantum state. I have not received a response.

Chemical states, quantum states or whatever are, in truth irrelevant. I am happy to accept the Catholic doctrine on this matter. There are some things one knows, like relationships, for example, without having to have them explained by rational argument. This is one of them.

Britain's growing wealth gap

2007-09-11T09:55:00.000Z

The TUC conference has prompted a lot of comment, for example an article by Polly Toynbee on the growing wealth gap. There is talk of a commission, and giving the unions more power.

A commission will not solve anything. And the unions can only exert power in economic circumstances that are favourable to them. In harsh conditions they are irrelevant. And if work is plentiful they are superfluous.

What we are seeing is a re-run of what happened in the early part of the nineteenth century. During this period, an enormous increase in productivity following the Industrial Revolution had, paradoxically, produced a small class of wealthy people and a huge class of the wretchedly poor. The extra wealth had not been distributed.

Marx tried to analyse what had happened and his view remains generally accepted even though it will not stand up to close examination. But an American economist Henry George, who also looked at the problem, came up with an altogether more convincing explanation. This was explained in his book called "Progress and Poverty", published in 1880 and still in print. George proposed some simple and liberal measures to ensure that wealth was fairly distributed. No bloody revolutions were required, or even great upheavals to the system.

Unfortunately, the Marxist analysis prevailed. This was defective, but because it was widely followed throughout the twentieth century, the result was megadeaths, tyranny and no progress.

The past forty years have seen further increases in the productive power of labour, due to, first, the electronics revolution, then information technology and most recently, the communications revolution. These far outstrip the increases due to the industrial revolution.

In the absence of the measures proposed by George, it was inevitable that there would be a widening in the wealth gap, one indicator being the huge increases in land values that occurred in the nineteenth century and has happened again in the past 15 years.

So if anyone is seriously interested in addressing the problem, they need to start with Henry George.

Two strange things about Sweden

2007-09-11T08:26:00.000Z

SWEDISH DOGS are a special breed. They have no rear-end orifice. I have not seen any deposits since I arrived and can only conclude that is the explanation.

SWEDISH TEETH are funny too. It could be because of the Swedish style of dentistry. Anyway, the Swedes can't suck them as in ssssssssssssst, can't do that, it'll cost you. If they can help you, they normally will and won't make a big thing out of it. Often they will help more than they need or one would reasonably expect.

Cutting the pay gap

2007-09-10T06:18:00.000Z

"Nearly 85% of Britons want a smaller gap between rich and poor, with just 34% believing Britain became fairer under Tony Blair, according to a poll of 3,000 voters conducted by YouGov for the Fabian Society. It found only 2% believed much progress had been made in narrowing the gap between rich and poor in the past 10 years. The poll is one of the best indicators of the public mood as Gordon Brown makes his strategic choices for the spending review. The findings show the public believes it is possible to reduce the gap between poor and rich significantly without damaging the economy, but there is support only for targeted tax increases. Nearly 80% thought taxes could be raised on big company profits and 67% supported a rise in the top rate to 50% for those earning over £100,000 a year."

The widening gap between rich and poor in Britain is obviously something that a lot of people are worried about, but the statistics about wanting higher taxes on big company profits and people earning over £100,000 a year sounds as if it has come from asking people leading questions.

The depressing thing is that a respected body like the Fabian Society cannot break away from the old assumptions that amount to nothing more than "Soak the Rich". Even within the accepted framework of thought, they could, for instance have asked questions like "do you think that tax thresholds should be raised so that poor people pay less tax?" Or "do you think that VAT should be cut?"

The problem with asking any such questions is that almost nobody bothers to think through the ultimate effects of what they are being asked to give an opinion on.

"Soaking the rich" is a notion based on emotion, principally that of envy. It is a bad starting point. It ignores the fact that people become rich in many different ways. If people have earned their wealth from hard work and the application of their intelligence, why should they not keep all of it? I have become quite rich because many years ago I bought a house, an ex-slum, in a town which subsequently became fashionable and was at the receiving end of a lot of public investment. I am just small fry but in Britain the way to become seriously rich is not through hard work and the application of intelligence, but through playing the property market, with the help of some good luck. Sadly, the think tankers who work for the Fabian Society and similar bodies are unable to grasp the fact that there are different routes to becoming rich, some of them legitimate and others merely parasitic.

The end result of soaking the rich is that they just arrange their affairs to avoid their tax liabilities. The tax system is full of loopholes - it is, indeed, a construction of loopholes, like a string bag. "The Rich" can well afford to pay for the advice needed to escape the net. Companies can do even better. They set up operations in different countries and with clever internal accounting the profits magically pop up where tax rates are lowest.

It is depressing that the people who could shift the terms of public debate can do no better than keep on recycling the same tired old concepts and ways of looking at the world. And why is this? Think tanks are a popular place for freshly qualified graduates to work and they have the pick of the bunch. But most of them have never even had a Saturday job at a market stall and know nothing about the way the economy works on the ground. And they will have have been taught by the most brilliant of the previous generation who have gone straight into the world of academia and also know nothing about the way the economy works on the ground. Yet this is the source of the body of "knowledge" on which governments base their policies.

The Pilgrimage to Vadstena - 8 September 2007

2007-09-09T06:58:00.001Z

Vadstena_1710.jpg
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

On the way back to the coach. People from different places had different flags to follow so they would not get lost. This is the recently invented flag of Västgötaland. The papal colours with the blue of Sweden.

There were a lot of regional flags being waved, which made for a colourful occasion despite the grey sky.

The Pilgrimage to Vadstena - 8 September 2007

2007-09-09T06:52:00.001Z

Vadstena_1700.jpg
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

In the afternoon there was a Blessed Sacrament procession from the modern Brigittine nuns' church to the original fourteenth century pilgrimage church where St Brigit's relics are kept. The heavens opened and people got their feet wet. There was Benediction in the church. The picture was taken afterwards.

I think it is good that the protestant Church of Sweden allows its buildings to be used for Catholic services. It is as if Glastonbury Abbey had not been destroyed and was being used by the Church of England and the C of E let the same thing happen there.

The Pilgrimage to Vadstena - 8 September 2007

2007-09-09T06:44:00.001Z

Vadstena_1698.jpg
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

Bishop Arborelius saying Mass.

The Pilgrimage to Vadstena - 8 September 2007

2007-09-09T06:43:00.001Z

Vadstena_1695.jpg
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

The Brigittines again.

The Pilgrimage to Vadstena - 8 September 2007

2007-09-09T06:42:00.001Z

Vadstena_1691.jpg
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

Some of the congregation, with the Brigittines in the foreground.

Mass in the Castle at Vadstena

2007-09-09T06:40:00.001Z

Vadstena_1689.jpg
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

People came from all over Sweden to attend Mass in the courtyard of the castle at Vadestena. This was when people where just starting to arrive - eventually the space was full up.

Does Britain really need a new high speed railway?

2007-09-06T09:39:00.001Z

Red
Originally uploaded by iwouldstay.

I have been pondering this further. What actually is the aim and purpose of a long distance high speed rail link? And how might such a link be tied into Britain's sub-standard infrastructure? And what might be/needs to be done to upgrade that?

There are obvious gaps in electrification. London to Bristol and Cardiff/Oxford/Banbury/Birmingham, Bristol to Birmingham, Leeds to Manchester come to mind and there are probably others. And capacity improvements can be achieved by grade separated junctions, signalling schemes, platform lengthening, upgrading of alternative routes. As well as improved design of rolling stock; replacement of slam door stock actually resulted in a loss in seating due to poor design.

Then the Channel Tunnel High Speed line needs to be brought further into the country, as much for freight as passenger services. Since this runs on the east side of England, much of which is flat and relatively undeveloped, it might be possible to construct a new route northwards, perhaps parallel to the East Coat Main line for some of the way.

The problem zone is in the Leeds - Manchester - Dover - Bournemouth "box" where 85% of the population live and generate most of the journeys, too many of which are by car rather than any form of public transport. The comparable area on mainland Europe is not France with its TGV but Belgium, Holland and the Rhine-Ruhr conurbation north of Cologne. The most important routes there are served not by high speed trains but by double-deck regional expresses, which are efficient peoplemovers and run at a top speed of about 160kph. It is just possible that the former Great Central alignment could be used as a spine route for this purpose. If some way of linking it to the Channel Tunnel, this too would be a good thing, primarily as a freight distributor. Which if I recall was the Central Railways plan, which the government knocked on the head.

So that is a programme in itself. As for the 300+ mile journeys which people are tending to make by air, perhaps we should not worry unduly as the numbers involved are relatively small and in any case the problem will solve itself as the cost of air travel rises.

If the aim is to promote regeneration of the north and Scotland, there are other ways of doing it than putting in expensive infrastructure, most importantly, through the tax system which at present fails to take account of geographical disadvantage.

For LVT geeks - Capital or Annual Values

2007-09-06T08:22:00.000Z

There has been a email discussion on this for the past couple of weeks. A lot of US supporters of land value taxation advocate Capital Value (CV) lists as the basis of assessment. The argument against is that the tax erodes its own base and is arithmetical nonsense once the rates get high. I quoted a figure of 5% as the most that could be raised without knocking CVs down to the point they would be meaningless as a revenue base. And a response came back like this...

New Hampshire has ad valorem rates of 4%, and no problems. Kiaochow, which probably recovered the highest fraction of land rent in history, used an ad valorem rate of 6%. You appear not to understand the effect of an increase in the ad valorem rate on capital value.

Yes. It knocks it down. Unless other taxes have come off at the same time or there are other factors pushing up the price.

If you are taxing 6% of assessed capital value, then the capital values must be around 45% of what they would be in the absence of the tax. Try a worked example.

If assessed capital value is £100,000 then the tax is £6000. Using a 20 years' purchase (YP) figure, this means that the true CV is £220,000 (what it would be in the absence of the LVT) and its AV is £11,000. And you are actually collecting 55% of the land rent (£6000/£11000) and 2.7% of the real CV. Which is a good figure. And isn't it good to know precisely what is going on, which you can do when the thing is annualised.

But note how using CVs means that what is actually going on is less transparent than using AVs.

Now see what would happen if 80% of land rent is collected. 80% of £11000 is £8800. £2200 is now left with the land owner and so the CV has dropped to £44,000. Which is good in itself but the problem is that this would mean levying a 25% rate on this discounted value, which is what the value for assessment purposes would be to collect what is really 80% of land rent. It just obscures what is going on. And if somebody tried to collect 100% of land rent, the land bwould have no capital value and the revenue raising would have to be on a list consisting of a string of zeros! Whilst the rental values would have remained intact.

A system running on CVs can obviously remain as it is until an opportune moment arises or there is a desire for real tax reform in which LVT is the principal source of public revenue. But where CV assessments have caused problems, or where AVs are used already, and in new schemes, where there is a bubble element in the price of land, they are not a good idea and it is better to adhere to the original concept of taxes on the rental value. Especially where there is some property taxation already in place which affects capital values and makes it difficult to determine what the capital values would be in the absence of the tax.

Measuring land values

2007-09-06T05:37:00.000Z

There is a massive rental market in both residential and commercial sectors. This makes it easy to calculate land rental values by the residual method.

eg a 100 sq metre flat in Hove lets for £12000 a year. This has been the case for the past five years at least. Council tax is another £1000. ie Gross value is £13000. Maintenance is £2000. Administration et is £2000 a year. So AV is £9000. Building value is £90000 at a building cost of £90 per square metre. To convert this into an annual figure, say 5% (OK, it might be between 4% and 6%) of that is £4500 ie within the range £3600 and £5400. The balance is the annual value of the land AV (land), £4500 (land rental value range is £5400 to £3600).

At the £4500 figure, if the initial rate of land rent charge is 22%, they will be paying the same and will not complain. In fact, they are used to increases of up to £150 a year and would probably only grumble a bit if the initial rate was 25%, which would come to £1250. However, because there are some very high land value properties within the administrative area, as well as some vacant sites with planning consent, this rate of tax, which is probably what the median resident pays, will yield substantially more revenue. Which is sorely needed. Obviously the well-heeled of Withdean are going to complain. And if it came with a tax cut somewhere else, eg income tax allowances, then it would sugar the pill nicely.

And with 40 flats in the block, this gives a site value of £180,000 per year. And with the area known - say 1000 square metres, an annual value of £180 per square metre is established. Now do the whole street and even them out. In any case it matters not at all if they are up to 10% wrong as what counts are the relativities, which is why the choice depreciated interest rate for the building value is not critical.

Why capital value assessment is unsuitable for Land Value Taxation

2007-09-06T05:22:00.000Z

The problem surfaced in a land valuation study carried out in West Oxfordshire. The aim was to see what would happen if the same revenue was raised from the same area using land values as the basis of the assessment. In effect, it was a notional pilot study.

Residential property is subject to the Council Tax, a relatively small charge locally determined and based on banded selling prices.

Commercial property is subject to the National Non Domestic Rate (NNDR or UBR) which is a relatively larger charge based on rental values. The same property will be subject to much higher charges if it goes from residential to commercial use, which distorts the property market and patterns of land use in the UK. This differential has the effect of depressing the price of property, actually the price of land, in commercial use.

The valuation was on capital values. The valuer applied a correction to strip out the hope values. But no correction was applied to adjust for the differential taxes currently being paid. This made the aggregate residential values appear artificially high and the study showed that to raise the same amount from LVT as from the present taxes, some residents would have ended up paying more, which promoters of the scheme thought could be electorally bad. And so all sorts of compromises and complications were suggested.

There had been two further problems here due to the nature of the study. First was the choice of the study area, which was largely residential. In an LVT situation the collection would be nationally and would lump together areas of high land value in city centres in SE England and areas of low land value in remote parts. The study could not not even draw in the areas of high land value in central Oxford and the assumption of trying to raise the same revenue over such a small area was an artificial one.

LVT assessments using rental values should initially be current use value except where there was an actual planning consent for development. Nobody can be asked to pay tax on the basis of a value that could not actually be realised there and then. With selling prices as the basis, the introduction of the LVT would promptly hit those prices. But it would have no effect on land rental values.

How to measure the rental value of land

2007-09-06T05:15:00.000Z

Over the past few years the idea seems to have grown up amongst supporters of land value taxation that it is impossible to determine the rental value of land. It has apparently come from the USA. They claim that it is irrelevant how the valuation list is done, but that it is too difficult or politically problematic to measure rental values.

To assess the rent of land from capital values by the residual method on a developed site, in principle this is the process.

1. deduct the value of the structures on the site.
2. deduct hope value.
3 decapitalise this value using an agreed figure of probably around 5%.
4 add in all property taxes actually being paid at the time of valuation.

To assess from rental values of a developed site the process is.

1 deduct the decapitalised value of the structures.
2 add in all property taxes actually being paid at the time of valuation.

Site values as determined by a variety of methods are then "smoothed". The first valuation is obviously the most difficult. After that the process is iterative. But with rental values as the basis of the tax, as existing taxes come off, yields will rise even at a fixed rate of LVT. Essentially, the whole exercise is a tax shift. Vic Blundell, an expert on the subject in the immediate post-war period, compared it to rearranging the load on a pack horse. If the load is tied to its feet the beast cannot move. If it is put on its back then it can carry the load all day long.

Owing to the way LVT has been promoted and applied, it seems as if too many of its advocates are proposing capital valuation and assuming that this deviation from the original concept is just a detail and that people who make an issue of it are niggling. They are not. It is critical for the long term success of LVT.

More on high speed rail - does Britain need it?

2007-09-06T04:59:00.000Z

There was a long discussion thread this week on the Guardian's web pages, following the test run of the Eurostar train over the newly finished route into London.

First. The entire conventional rail network in the UK is sub standard. Britain has a narrow gauge railway running on standard gauge track, with sharp curvature. This precludes double deck trains entirely and results in all other trains being cramped and uncomfortable. Compare Eurostar with the TGV to see the difference.

Therefore to get proper value out of new high speed lines, they cannot use existing routes into city centres, though there may be some alternatives such as the line into London Marylebone.

Second. What counts is door to door journey times. Within the UK, people are concentrated into an area bounded roughly by Leeds, Manchester, Bournemouth and Dover - over 85% live and work there. But within that area they are quite dispersed - it is a pattern of development that cannot be served efficiently by public transport. But it means that a high proportion of journey times are both too short for significant savings to be made by high speed rail and are not in any case city-centre to city-centre.

Third. The same reasons also make it very difficult to define acceptable routes especially in the approaches to cities, and when a route is established, land acquisition costs are vast.

Fourth, there is the general and unresolved question of paying for infrastructure. If it is worth having it will result in an overall enhancement of land values. But the government has no mechanism for capturing land values and so, unsurprisingly, the Treasury is lukewarm.

But assuming money were to become available for public transport investment, probably the best priorities would be (1) local transport improvements (2) gauge enhancement and platform lengthening and grade separation of junctions to improve passenger and freight capacity; it is absurd that, eg the busy junctions at Reading and Didcot are still flat and not flyovers.

These are in any case essential preliminaries in order to make effective use of high speed trunk routes, which come third in any sensible list of priorities. And at the same time the government needs to switch to a system of land value taxation so that the return on the investment does not end up in the pockets of landowners who happen to have owned property in the right location. Just watch Folkestone as an example of the process at work.

Eurostar record breaker

2007-09-04T20:53:00.001Z

milf eurostar train paris
Originally uploaded by candidphoto.

The Eurostar was due to make its record-breaking test run over the new route today.

Whether this investment was actually good value for money is a moot point. There may be a case for a high speed rail link to the north but most journeys are local and urban, not between cities hundreds of miles apart. It would probably be better to spend the money on local transport instead, for example on urban tram systems. And also on electrification and upgrading of existing routes.

Due largely to decades of economic mismanagement, around 85% of the population of Britain live in about one-third of the land area, roughly speaking within a radius of about 150 miles from Coventry. This means that inter-city journeys are typically a lot shorter than they are on mainland Europe, and so higher speeds do not give such useful reductions in journey times. Bearing in mind that costs rise exponentially with speed, and that there is an optimum speed for trains of around 160 km/hour, and the case for high speed lines in the UK looks a bit shaky.

In addition, it is essential to remember that what counts are door-to-door journey times. There is no point in spending £5 billion so that passengers can get from Paris to London half an hour faster, only for them to be delayed in traffic jams outside the station, or, for that matter, in pre-travel check-in delays.

Not only would investment in urban and local travel be of benefit to far more people, it would also reduce actual long-distance journey times as well.

It is unfortunate that rail commentators focus on things that look good on the headlines.

And incidentally, Eurostar should update their computer sytems; they could not book me a return journey for a three-month stay away, so I ended up taking the ferry. This proved so pleasant and inexpensive that I will travel the same way again in the future.

Engineering for safety

2007-09-04T18:33:00.001Z

Plaxton Premiere Volvo B10M
Originally uploaded by inglian.

Yesterday there was a report about a coach overturning due to dangerous driving - the driver was arrested on suspicion of being drunk. Earlier in the year, another coach overturned. And ten years on, there is still discussion about how Princess Diana was killed. Was it dangerous driving or was there a conspiracy?

What does not seem to get much of a mention is the contribution of engineering design towards safety or the lack of it.

Princess Diana's car could not have ended up running into a concrete column in Britain or other countries where potential hazards are protected by ARMCO barrier. This is the corrugated steel strip used in the centre reservation of motorways and can be seen in the left of the picture.

And now take a look at the coach, which is a standard contemporary design with a high floor.

Single deck buses and coaches from the 1940s and earlier had low floors with the engine at the front. But then came the underfloor-engined single-decker with a higher floor. This was also an essentially sound design as the heavy engine was mounted low.

But for the past couple of decades, coaches have had high floors with a luggage space beneath, and often a toilet as wall. This is obviously an advantage to passengers and operators, but it must inevitably raise the centre of gravity, making the vehicle less stable on curves and in cross-winds, and more easily overturned.

Is this something that needs to be examined?

Mass at Ängelholm

2007-09-03T19:13:00.000Z

This was a surprise. There isn't a Catholic church there, so the priest comes from Helsingborg and says mass on Sundays at 2.00 pm in the Rönne Church (Baptist).

What did we get? A very well attended service, with a full church. The mass was in Swedish and the Ordinary was sung in Latin, Gregorian Chant, Mass VIII. And as usual in Sweden, the congregation was from a diverse range of places. All the same, everyone joined in the singing.

They are hoping to get a church of their own. There is a lesson in this.

Something I had never seen before

2007-09-03T19:11:00.001Z

trauermantel
Originally uploaded by HaPe_Gera.

Camberwell Beauty - I saw one when I was staying on Åland.

Other creatures I have seen for the first time were a tawny owl. a grass snake and an adder.

Thoughts prompted by looking out of the train window

2007-08-30T20:12:00.001Z

Öresundtåg
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

Coming back on the train after a day out in Lund. The standard fare for the return journey was a bit less that a similar length journey in the UK after all the rebates and my railcard discount.

The train is nice and comfortable, with plenty of space and you can see out of the windows.

Out of the windows you can see things like wind generators and lots of freight trains, and not just trains for shipping containers and oil.

Something is different here.

The Atmospheric Railway, Starcross, South Devon

2007-08-16T19:55:00.003Z

Brunel's Pumping House
Originally uploaded by budgie2007 / Rich B..

Opened in 1847, Brunel's Atmospheric Railway did away with the need for a separate locomotive on each train. Instead, there were pumping stations such as this one at Starcross. It was unsuccessful but the principle was sound. No doubt Brunel would have jumped at the chance to power his trains by electricity from a fixed power station. That would have solved his problem but the technology was not to come for another thirty years. Seemingly the British government has not yet grasped what the benefits are. What is it with the UK government that they are so often unable to make sound decisions where matters of technology are involved?

More twaddle from the British government

2007-08-16T19:00:00.000Z

Earlier this year I signed the petition for a fresh electrification programme for Britain's railways.

This was the wording of the petition.

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Instruct the Department for Transport to, within six months, update the 1981 joint Department of Transport/British Rail 'Review of main line electrification' to take into account current installation and energy costs and rail traffic levels; and, if the positive conclusions of the original report still stand, revive the proposals for a rolling programme of main line electrification in Britain."

Details of Petition:

"The 1981 Joint Review concluded that: 'On the assumptions made a substantial programme of main line electrification would be financially worthwhile. All the larger electrification options examined show an internal real rate of return of 11%; the faster options give the highest net present values'. These conclusions were endorsed by the Joint Chairmen of the Steering Group, BR Vice Chairman Rail David Bowick and, DTp Under Secretary Rail John Palmer."

And this is the government's reply...

The 1981 "Review of main line electrification" established a business case for electrification based on the then prevailing assumptions about the difference between diesel and electric in terms of railway cost and performance.

The Government has just issued the White Paper "Delivering a Sustainable Railway", defining the outputs that the railway has to deliver over the period 2008 to 2014 in the context of a longer term strategy for meeting national needs. The need for electrification was taken into account in the development of the White Paper. Electrification can deliver reductions in operational carbon emission and can contribute to increased capacity, but is very expensive and also vulnerable to the development of low carbon alternative fuels during its long asset life. Over the period of the High Level Output Specification (HLOS) there are better value solutions to the need for additional capacity, mainly in the form of train lengthening. The White Paper does not preclude further electrification in the longer term, but this needs to be considered route by route on the basis of business need, rather than being driven by a national strategy, and must pay back within a period of 10-15 years in view of the potential for development of alternative low carbon forms of traction.

There are fundamental flaws in this response which will no doubt be examined in detail by Roger Ford in one of his Informed Sources articles in Modern Railways.

Two points stand out. Electricity is not a fuel. It is a system of power transmission. Far from being vulnerable to the development of low-carbon alternative fuels, railway electrification makes it possible to use whatever fuels or other means of electricity generation become available, such as wind or tidal power.

The second issue is related to the first. With electric traction, there is no need to convert the chemical energy in the fuel into mechanical energy on the train itself. This process takes place in a fixed power station. The benefits of converting chemical energy eg from coal, into mechanical energy, at a fixed location instead of on each train, were recognised by Brunel in the 1840s when he devised the Atmospheric Railway which ran from Exeter to Newton Abbott.

The most efficient form of "prime mover" traction is probably diesel, but a diesel train typically weighs 25% more than a comparable electric train. Effectively this is dead weight which is having to be moved around unnecessarily, adding to energy consumption and wear and tear on just about everything, including the much larger number of moving parts compared to an electric traction unit. Worse still, the engine has to be big enough to deliver the maximum power output on starting even though it may spend two-thirds of its time throttled back when the train is running at constant speed. [this is incidentally, a disadvantage which does not apply to steam locomotives where the conversion of chemical energy into mechanical energy takes place in a separate device and the boiler acts as an energy reservoir].

All of which makes nonsense of the government's policy of increasing capacity by running longer trains. No satisfactory diesel traction unit exists which can deliver the power to run a cost-effective and long train. The Virgin Voyagers and similar types of train are cost-effective for up to five cars in length. Nobody makes a high-speed passenger locomotive capable of delivering the 5500 hp needed to run long trains at speeds of 125 mph. Within the restrictions of the British loading gauge,the technology does not yet exist. The government's claimed objectives, and reasons for not going ahead with further electrification, cannot be achieved without electrification.

Considering that the petion was signed by a whole phalanx of people whose knowledge and understanding of the railway industry in Britain is second to none, a reasonable response might have been on the lines that the government will consider reopening the issue. But no, the official line is pushed out. If the government will not look favourably on a modest and well-argued petition like this, then what is the point of the petition process? It looks as if it is no more than another window dressing exercise. But that is how things are done in Britain.

Why not travel by train?

2007-08-12T14:42:00.000Z

Interesting article in todays Observer about the need to encourage people to travel by train and improve Britain's railway system. The picture shows the 24 tickets you need for a return journey from London to Stockholm. This demonstrates the problem.

I travel all over Europe by train and in my experience the British system is the worst – even Estonia's is better, in its modest little way. The UK now has the very worst rolling stock. This is partly for historical reasons, because the carriages have to be made narrower and shorter than they are everywhere else but they try and fit in the same number of seats.

But the main problems affects all the railways in Europe, not just Britain's. Huge amounts have been spent on technology but it does not produce a more comfortable seat or a decent amount of space for people and their luggage. The only really pleasant modern trains (less than 15 years old) are the Danish IC3, followed by the German ICE trains.

Because these ultra high-tech trains are so expensive there is a shortage of carriages and the seats have to be stuffed in.

You can get horrors like the Thalys between Cologne and Paris where the seats are crammed in so tightly that all you can see is a bit of curtain and all the luggage sometimes has to be stuffed into the doorway and unloaded onto the platform at stations just so that people can get off the train.

The overall shortage of seats results in having to book everyone into a seat and is really the cause of the crazy pricing systems which are not just a British quirk. I have been booked into seats for 20 minute journeys in Sweden. It is crazy because it makes it difficult to buy tickets. The high capital cost of the trains is the reason why the train companies have no leeway so they try to book all their passengers into a particular seat on a particular train.

The continental railways are slightly better because they run more older trains which means eg Stockholm to Uppsala has plenty of carriages though they are old, with an old locomotive at each end, so that train always has plenty of really comfortable seats, better than, say, first class on Virgin. But in Britain all the older carriages got scrapped because of the safety panic, which was entirely unjustified on the basis of actual statistics.

Why are trains so expensive now? That is an interesting question. The manufacturers (there are only three in Europe) have a vested interest in selling all the technology. Modern railway managers think they cannot do without it. High labour costs, largely due to the shape of the tax system, encourage the replacement of labour by high tech gadgetry. And there is the partly irrational pressure for higher speed. The faster a train has to go, the more it costs and the more the track and signalling costs. It will cost between two and times as much to run a railway with trains going at 140 mph than at 90 mph. But the time savings are not always commensurate. This is especially true in Britain where 85% of the population live within 150 miles of, say, Leicester (why this is so is itself an interesting question). The median long distance train journey is less than 100 miles and high speeds save little time.

This is even more the case when considering door-to-door journey times, because the time taken to get to and from the station is important. This is why trains. compete badly with cars for so many people's journeys.

Perhaps the real answer is to invest more in local journeys eg by constructing more tram systems.

Long distance (international) travel by rail is so troublesome, mostly due to the difficulty of buying tickets, that my preference is to use the ferry. You can go all the way to Denmark
on the luxury cruise ferry, with your own cabin with sea view, and two nice meals, for less than it costs to go by train, and it gets you most of the way there with no trouble, on one ticket!

What are governments actually for?

2007-08-11T22:42:00.000Z

And now for a bit of fundamentalism. Most discussion of politics seems not to start from an agreed set of assumptions. This is apparent from those blog discussions run by newspapers. So try this.

The functions of the state are

(1) To defend the realm
(2) To administer justice
(3) To deal with emergencies
(4) To make land available to the people so that they can support themselves and their families.
(5) To collect the rent of land.

These are minimum requirements. (1) is normally accepted but states go well beyond this to become aggressive; (2) is perverted so that courts are engaged in applying laws which may or may not be just; (3) European states are quite good at dealing with emergencies, but few others are; (4) the whole concept of giving everyone the opportunity to support themselves is not properly understood and (5) governments everywhere fail to collect most of the rent of land and have to rely for their revenue on charges on labour and capital.

Cradle-to-grave socialism does not fit into this scheme of things and ought to be unnecessary but a handful of countries have nevertheless been making a reasonable job of things for many years. As a general rule, countries with small populations seem to be best at the task, especially those with a low population density. But it is not the way to go.

Believing in the Bible

2007-08-11T22:37:00.000Z

The revival of Evangelical or Bible-Believing Christianity is a menace second only to the rise in Fundamentalist Islam. As a Catholic I find myself agreeing with the atheists and agnostics in discussions about believing the bible and regarding evolution as nonsense, or "just a theory".

The bible is a collection of texts that were adopted by the Catholic Church as being worthy of study and for the purposes of contemplation. The Catholic Church has always taken the view that it is the authority when it comes to the interpretation of these texts. The main point is that the New Testament takes precedence over the old. The rest is primarily theological. Evangelical Christians have taken these texts and given them all sorts of interpretations, often weird and wacky

Anyone who interprets scripture literally is either naive or mischievous, or both.The New Testament is essentially a narrative to help understanding of the theology of the Catholic Church. It is not in itself meant to be regarded as authoritative.

As for the Old Testament, this was originally written in Classical Hebrew. Until modern archeological finds, the oldest text was the Septuagint which was made from Hebrew about 200BC, if I recall. This is a translation from Hebrew with all the implications it has for loss in accuracy. The King James bible was from the Hebrew but this was from a late version which is obviously different from the Hebrew version the Septuagint was made from.

But the major problems for people who want to interpret it literally are

(1) Hebrew is written without vowels and there are many words that are written the same but are actually different. eg it is like trying to decide what B*G actually is.

(2) The bible was written down before 200, possibly a long time before. Over such a long period both the meaning of words and their usage changes. So it is arrogant and stupid to claim to know exactly what it all means.

(3) The overall style of writing is poetic and metaphoric. So it is even more silly to claim to be able to interpret it all "literally".

Those who are attacking bible-believing Christians, should just remember that there is a lot more to Christianity than the sort of half-baked tosh they keep on coming up with, which is giving religion a bad name. In fact, it really has almost nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity as traditionally presented.

I am a Nazi

2007-08-08T20:02:00.000Z

Of course not, but I have been accused of being a racist several times recently. Why, and by whom?

I have suggested that Islam is problematical. Not Muslims. I don't know many but the ones I have met personally seem pleasant enough and when I had an operation a few years ago I had no qualms about putting my life in the hands of an anaesthetist whose name pointed to a Moslem background. But to question Islam is no more racist than to question Communism or a political party manifesto. Múslims are not a race. They are people who follow a particular creed. They may be born into that but when they are adults, it can be taken that they are continuing to follow it out of choice. Unlike Jews, for example, who may become atheists, Catholics, Buddhists, or Muslims, but remain Jews. (Incidentally, the Jewish Cardinal Lustiger, former Archbishop of Paris, died last week, a piece of news which I was sorry to read).

Now if one had a religion whose text was Mein Kampf, one might expect problems from some of its followers. I am not going to quote from the Koran, but if anyone thinks it is a suitable text for a religion of peace, they should do a search on "Jews, Christians, kill" and look at what it says. It is little better than Mein Kampf. Some of its sayings are reminiscent of Hitler's. On these grounds the Koran could be regarded as an incitement to racial hatred and its publication in breach of British law. Of course there are different ways of interpreting the Koran, but in the absence of any authoritative body or figure to say how this should be done, it is inevitable that some people will take it literally.

It has been in discussions with "liberals" that the accusation has come up. In my experience, liberals are as intolerant of others' views as the most hardened reactionaries, but the irony here is that they are defending something that stands in direct opposition to their values and whose followers, if they got the chance, would quickly do away with all that they hold dear.

As the discussion goes on, it usually then turns into an attack on the bloodthirstiness of the Bible and the warlike behaviour of Christians. Now Christianity was indeed a religion of peace until around 1000AD. It turned warlike with the Crusades but these began as a defensive action, following 400 years of Muslim aggression. The trouble was that things got completely out of hand, with attacks on Jews and then on fellow Christians in the Byzantine empire. This was the start of the disgraceful and indefensible treatment of the Jews during the Middle Ages, sanctioned by the Catholic Church. The goings-on in South America were essentially a colonial action involving the theft of land and precious metals. But conversion to Catholicism at least, has on the whole been a peaceful affair. I cannot comment on Protestantism, but it is unfortunate that the two branches of Christianity are lumped together as they are indeed very different, with different attitudes to proselytisation; indeed, some branches of Protestantism have close affinities with Islam both in their rigid adherence to a text and their aggressive approach to conversion.

What of the Bible? It is essential to remember that the Bible is the foundation text of the Catholic Church, which defined it in its early years. So bible-believing Protestants are just taking the Catholic Church's book and leaving part of the rest of its teaching, a curious, illogical and inconsistent thing to do but that is their choice. The Catholic Church, through its body of tradition, lays down how the bible is to be interpreted. The essential point in this connection is that the New Testament takes precedence and supersedes the Old. So when people describe the Bible as being as bloodthirsty as the Koran, it is necessary only to ask them if they can find any bloodthirstiness in the New Testament, as interpreted by the Catholic Church? They will not find any.

What to do? We need to go out of our way to treat our Muslim neighbours well and not to let our attitudes be coloured by prejudice. But we should also be on our guard and in no doubt they they subscribe, with more or less commitment, to a creed that is pledged to destroy all that is good in the European way of life.

And I will make a prediction. The British will tolerate one more terrorist incident resulting in loss of live. The incident after that will trigger communal violence which will prove impossible to stop. Decent people will end up protecting people who would do away with them if they had the power. When the mosques have been attacked it will be the Christian communities who will be letting Muslims use church halls for their services. Strange times are approaching.

The growing gap between rich and poor

2007-08-08T15:42:00.000Z

A frequent topic for discussion is the widening gap between super-rich and the poor, with people in the middle being squeezed down. This is occurring in most countries, the effect being particularly marked in the USA and Britain. Nobody seems to know what to do about it.

Yet there is no mystery about what is happening. It is precisely as predicted by the nineteenth century economist Henry George, who, in his book "Progress and Poverty" examined and accounted for the paradox whereby the enormous increase in productive power produced by the Industrial Revolution led to a small class of wealthy people and a huge class of people squeezed to the limit and living in poverty.

The past thirty years have seen a succession of revolutions which have had the same effect as the first Industrial Revolution, of increasing people's productive capacity. First we had the large centralised mainframe computer, which did away with a vast number of routine jobs. Then came personal computers, which did away with another raft of jobs. And then came the communications revolution which brought us the internet, mobile phones and other technologies which have transformed the way people work. Each has increased the individual's productive power at least five-fold, but who has enjoyed a five-fold increase in real wages? It is probably the most recent of these information technology revolutions which has resulted in the great widening of the gap in the last few years.

George explained why an increase in productive power does not result in a commensurate increase in real living standards. The experience of the past few years vindicates his analysis, and, incidentally, the relevance of his proposals to deal with the problem. But are any politicians or their advisors really interested?

Download Progress and Poverty freely

or buy the book

The Wreck of the Vasa, Calculus and Naval Architecture

2007-08-05T18:55:00.000Z

King Gustav Adolph's flagship, the Vasa, sank in 1628 when a squall blew it over in Stockholm harbour on its maiden voyage. It is now on display in a specially built museum. This incident was similar to that which sank the Mary Rose in Portsmouth Harbour in 1533.

The guide explained that the ship was too narrow for the amount of sail which it carried and that there was insufficient knowledge of ship design at the time to prevent this kind of thing, other than rule-of-thumb. There was a commission of inquiry but nobody could be blamed.

Which has set me thinking. What had happened to the Vasa was widely known. It is also likely that shipbuilders understood that a narrow ship was a faster ship. But optimum design would require the application of calculus, which was not invented until around 1675 by Newton and Leibnitz, apparently simultaneously and independently. And, as far as I know, it was to be another century before the mathematical principles were applied to practical shipbuilding.

As I understand it, Newton was concerned about the motions of the planets. Of Leibnitz I know little. But Newton was a member of the Royal Society, which was founded just after the Restoration in 1660. To what extent, I wonder, was the Vasa disaster the driving force behind the interest in science by monarchs such as Charles II?

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Kräftskivor - Crayfish party

2007-08-04T16:24:00.001Z

Grövelsjön, northern Dalarna, August 2006
Originally uploaded by marielinder.

Kräftor är ett litet djur som ser ut som en hummer. De har två klor och hundretals av ben. Svenskarna äter dem i augusti men värför vet jag inte. Kräftor innehåller nästan ingenting som man kan äta. Det finns ett stycke kött samma storlek som min lilla tå vid svansen och två stycken i klorna, men det är mycket små. Man måste dra ut köttet från den hårda skalet med fingren. Man behöver bra syn och ljus. Därför är kräftor inte mat. De är ett roligt spel.

Igår kväll satt vi tillsammans i ett stort rum på Göteborgs Nation. Gardinerna stängdes och det fanns levande ljus. Det var ganska mörkt. Det fanns massor av kräftor på bordet. Vi hämtade kräftor och åt dem. Vi drack mycket öl och snaps och sjöng många studentsånger. Men det var svårt att äter kräftor. Det smakade ganska bra men det fanns också bra ost och knäckbröd som var bättre så jag åt det istället. Jag åt bara ett halv dussin kräftor därför att de var för besvärliga.

Senare hade vi druckit för mycket och då stod vi på stolarna och när vi sjöng. Sedan sjöng vi högre. Men sångerna var inte melodiska. Egentligen fanns det allt ingen melodi. Därför kunde man inte lära sig melodin.

I slutet var vi ganska fulla. Det är konstigt därför att Svensk smaker liksom myggorkiss, som vi säger i England, och snaps smaker som medicin. Usch! Men i alla fall hade vi en rolig tid.

Men gourmetmat var det inte. Jag skull hellre har åt fisk och chips. Och jag skulle hellre titta på kräftor i akvarium än på tallrik.

THE CRAYFISH PARTY

Crayfish look like a small lobster. They have two claws and hundreds of legs. The Swedes eat them in August though I cannot imagine why. They contain almost nothing one can eat. There is a little bit of meat in the tail, about the size of one’s little toe, and there are two tiny bits in the claws. These tiny bits of meat have to be pulled out from the hard spiny shell, using fingers. It needs good eyesight and a bright light. And so crayfish are not food. They are a game.

We had a crayfish party last week. We were all sitting together at long tables in Göteborg Nation (a student union building). The curtains were drawn and the were candles on the tables. It was quite dark. There was a stack of crayfish on a table. We fetched the crayfish and ate them, drank lots of beer and snaps and song student songs. But it was hard to eat the crayfish. They tasted quite nice but the crispbread and cheese were better so I ate that instead. I only had a half-dozen crayfish because they were so troublesome.

Later on, too much had been drunk and then we stood on the chairs and sang. Then the singing got louder. But the singing was not melodic. In the end there was no melody at all. So nobody learnt the tunes, which I think is what they were meant to do.

At the end, a lot of people were really drunk. This is strange because the Swedish beer is gnats’ piss and the snaps tastes medicinal. Yuk. But all the same, we had a fun evening.

But gourmet food it was not. I would rather have had fish and chips. And I would rather have watched the crayfish in an aquarium than on my plate.

The state of Britain

2007-08-04T07:10:00.000Z

One of the people on the course is a 25 year old Croatian who is studying Swedish so that he can do a Masters degree in International Relations in Helsinki. He has been in Britain for about half his life.

I had a long conversation with him on the bus on the way to Stockholm. His analysis is worrying, as it roughly coincides with my own. His generation has just switched off from public affairs. He finds hardly any of his own British contemporaries that he can talk to about anything serious.

In my own experience this isn't entirely true - I get to talk to young people at my old college when I go there, and things are not quite that bad. But they will mostly go into high-powered well paid jobs which is fine but it does nothing for the public realm as such.

I thought it was just me being a miserable old fogey but seemingly it is not. I wish it was. If we have no insight into our problems, how are we going to get out of them?

Of interest in this connection is the view of Sweden held by both people on the course and others I have spoken to. A common misconception here is the importance of the country, which is exaggerated. It is easy to get the idea that it is bigger than it is, despite the fact that Ken Livingstone's realm is larger. They do not seem to recognise that this is is a little backwater on the edge of the planet where the news is mostly about the weather and a blocked train toilet will make the news. Almost nothing happens. And there are problems, which mirror Britain's - failure to integrate immigrants, bureaucracy, a loopy housing market and rising house prices, and disguised unemployment. There is also significant homelessness, a drug problem and crime levels not much lower, proportionately, than Britain's.

The difference, which is not related to the size of the country, seems to be the way these problems are perceived - this is evident from talking to people, and from comments in the newspapers, which I can now read and at least get the gist of. There seems to be more awareness of the issues and criticism goes beyond mere grumbling and complaining. Which leads to hope that here at least, these problems might, just, be addressed in a sensible and effective way.

Stockholm City Hall

2007-08-04T07:07:00.001Z

Edit: Stockholm City Hall
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

We had our conducted tour of Stockholm City Hall today. As an iconic building, it attracts a constant stream of visitors, being one of those tourist attractions which appeals to a very wide range of people with all sorts of different interests and cultural backgrounds.

Completed in 1923, and gloriously extravagant, it cost three times more than intended and it provides accommodation for just the city councillors and a couple of hundred support staff.

There is an interesting comparison with London's County Hall, also on a key site by the river almost opposite the Houses of Parliament. What happened to that? The Council was abolished and the building sold. Most of it is a hotel and on the ground floor is a Macdonalds.

Who has their values and priorities right?

Is monarch the key to Britain's liberty?

2007-07-29T07:19:00.000Z

In today's Observer is an article by journalist John Gray with the title "Monarchy is the key to our liberty - The institutions that attract the keenest scorn are actually what protect our democracy today."

This has attracted plenty of comment. Most of it is hostile and ridicules the stance he is taking.

I am no flag-waver and would not bother to turn out on the street to see the Queen if she came to town on an official visit. However, I find it depressing to read the barrage of comment which shows how little the British "intelligentsia" understand the way the British constitution works and where the built-in safeguards lie. The problems with reform of the House of Lords have demonstrated the problems that can come with attempts to change matters of constitution. The growing inequalities in British society have nothing to do with the monarchy and everything to do with poor economic management by elected politicians and the advisers they have chosen.

For what it is worth, this was my own reply...

"A recent survey showed that the happiest children in world were to be found in the Netherlands, closely followed by the four Scandinavian countries. Four of these five are low-key monarchies. They are also, arguably, the most equal countries in Europe (and probably the world), and the most democratic.

"Sweden managed to engineer an (arguably) successful socialist revolution which is, more or less, still functioning. It has been able to absorb (not without continuing problems) a large flow of immigrants, mostly refugees, in the last 40 years, to the extent that incomers and their children now form over 10% of the population. The outskirts of the cities have large areas of what look to British eyes like grim council estates for the underclass, but they are generally well constructed, well planned, well maintained inside and out, and there doesn't seem to be an underclass, or if there is, it is scarcely visible. Public services are good, the streets are well cleaned and maintained, and public spaces are a pleasure to be in. And you don't see people living in shop doorways.

"Whether the fact that these countries are monarchies is relevant is a question at least worth asking. There may be no connection but I suspect there is.

"It is questionable whether the UK can make a transition to a fair society without undue inequalities, but the presence of a monarchy does not appear to be a major obstacle. Certainly, the monarchy did not get in the way of the radical changes that were made immediately after World War 2.

"Since the 1980s, Britain has suffered from politicians with a megalomaniac streak - arguably, those who most want to govern are, by personality and temperament, the ones who are least suitable for the task. To put the point as politely as possible, they see themselves in a presidential role. In the circumstances, the monarchy could well be acting as the safeguard against tyranny."

Skoklosters Slott

2007-07-28T16:03:00.001Z

Skoklosters slott
Originally uploaded by Björn Sahlberg.

This was one of the organised visits we made. Due to the coldness of the winters here, the fact that the house has been little occupied throughout its history and that the tides of war have never swept over this part of the world, what can be seen is a time capsule. The upper floors do not have electricity and the curtains are kept drawn to preserve the colours of the textiles.

There is a most magnificent collection of largely seventeenth century artefacts including paintings, tapestries, furniture and weapons.

Strangely, there is also an English long case clock with a brass and silvered dial and case in the Chinese style.

Such palaces were no doubt not so unusual in Europe before the First World War, but now one has to come to Sweden to see this kind of thing.

The Swedes have a minimally-invasive approach to conservation and avoid the over-restoration seen elsewhere. But it does mean that that things can appear dull, and flaking paint is tolerated. The same can be seen in the Gävle railway museum.

Small areas are sometimes restored so that visitors can gain an impression of the original appearance.

Comment is free

2007-07-26T04:13:00.000Z

I have been looking at the Guardian's comment pages over the last few days here. A few of my own responses have been copied into this blog.

On the whole the comments to be found on the Guardian's discussion pages are thoughtful but neither the readers nor the authors of the original articles seem to go to the core of the issues they are talking about.

This is strange because often the issues are at root simple and straightforward. Perhaps it is the starkness of the issues that makes people ignore basic principles and get immersed in the complexity of the details.

Staying in a student hostel in Uppsala and the other activities I have been engaged in has given me the opportunity to engage with local people, many of them young. So many of the discussions I have had would just not be possible with British people of the same age and social group. IN my own circles there is a widespread refusal to look beneath the surface of things. People here seem to be more willing able to stand back and take a balanced and critical view of what is happening in their country.

The worrying thing about the Guardian's discussion pages is that it seems as if this ability is scarce in Britain. If the people in a country cannot see what their problems are, they cannot even begin to solve them and things will just go on getting worse.

Still, it is nice to know that the government has just voted £3.9 billion for two new aircraft carriers. We have people living in shop doorways, the streets in our cities are broken and filthy, young people cannot afford homes of their own, large tracts of the country are an economic wasteland, the roads are over-congested and the railways are a basket case, but the British government obviously sees the country as an exemplar for the rest of the world and able to play its part as international policeman.

Jeffrey Sachs on development

2007-07-25T18:35:00.000Z

Economics pundit Jeffrey Sachs was writing on the subject today, with a lot of comment afterwards.

If the issue of land tenure and land ownership is not addressed, development results only in an increasing gap between rich and poor.

Mostly, the land issue is just ignored. As there was next to nothing on the subject either in the original article or in the discussion, despair is the most appropriate response.

Giving aid to poor countries

2007-07-25T18:32:00.000Z

There was an article on this subject in the Guardian today, with reference to India. It begged the perpetual question of precisely who pays and who benefits from aid.

There are many poor people in Britain and most other "first world countries". This is due to maldistribution. Because of the way tax structures are loaded against them, the poor in the rich countries contribute disproportionately to any aid that comes from their governments.

Conversely, there are plenty of wealthy people in "poor" countries. Indeed, some "poor" countries are blessed with great natural resources such as mineral wealth and the problem is one of distribution within the countries concerned.

It is also the case that the main beneficiaries of aid from "rich" countries to "poor" ones tend to be the wealthy people in the poor countries. There is no "trickle-down" mechanism. Again, there is maldistribution.

Ultimately, the problem can be resolved only by the people in the countries with the problems. Aid from governments can exacerbate the problems or delay the time when people actually get to grips with them intelligently.

This raises a further question. Given the marked failure of most "rich" countries to prevent undue and now growing inequalities, and the historic failure of socialist measures to address the problem either, it is evident that current accepted economic theory is not up to the task of explaining what is happening. Consequently, governments who genuinely wished to address the problem have no means of developing and evaluating policies that might be effective.

In the circumstances, the best that people in "rich" countries can do is to support the better charities, those which devote their efforts to front-line work rather than misguided political campaigning. Government should keep out of the picture.

Viper's nest of tax avoiders

2007-07-25T18:29:00.000Z

This was the title of an article in the Guardian today. The big accountancy firms were blamed. But surely it is the tax system that is at fault?

Neither the author of the original article, nor any of he commentators, made this point.

Underneath all the fog of discussion there lies a simple reality. Taxes can ultimately be levied only on one of the three factors of production. These three factors are land, capital and labour. Wealth is created when people, with the aid of capital, apply their labour to land.

If labour is taxed, this increases the cost of labour and discourages people from employing. This has two results. The first is unemployment. The other is to encourage people to move the employment elsewhere. If individuals are taxed, they will move themselves, if they can.

If capital is taxed, then the tendency again will be for capital either not to be created in the first place of for it to be destroyed (remember the de-roofing of factories to avoid rates, and look at the large areas of brownfield sites all over the country) - or for it to be moved elsewhere. How many factories have been moved lock, stock and barrel to China and India in recent years?

The third option is to tax land. There are many ways of doing this, eg when land is sold or when planning consents are granted. These cause stagnation of the land market and are harmful. But a tax falling on the rental value of land, based on market assessments, has the effect of bringing land into its most productive use.

Since land cannot be hidden or removed to a tax haven, and development of the land does not increase the amount payable, there is no way of avoiding the tax.

Instead of blaming accountants and the wealthy for acting in their own interest, mostly taking account of the legal loopholes in the tax laws, it is up to governments to address the problem by reforming their tax systems.

Things I am not missing while I am away

2007-07-24T16:54:00.001Z

Just passing Through :)))
Originally uploaded by UK Yorkie.

I was reflecting on this as I walked into the town centre at Uppsala this morning. You can see the trains going over the bridge. You will not see a Virgin train or a train in any of the other absurd liveries that have been applied to Britain's trains since 1996. And if you have to travel in a train, you will find enough space for your legs, elbows and luggage.

Which made me think about what else I was not missing and then compare with the other UK students who are here. So, here are a few more things that are part of the familiar British scene but rare or non-existent in Sweden.

Broken pavements
Street litter
Gobs of old chewing gum all over the place
CCTV cameras
Tesco
Virgin
Chavs
People living in shop doorways
Drunken young men fighting in the streets
Vandalism
The flag, used with xenophobic intent
Large numbers of seriously obese men, women and children

This is not to say that the Swedes are a race of saints or that there isn't any crime or that they are completely accepting of foreigns. But the British, collectively, seem to have lost their grip.

Why has this happened?

Sorry, I have no enthusiasm about returning.

Tree of Life

2007-07-22T06:47:00.000Z

This poster in the Uppsala University Botanic Gardens shows the family relationship between flowering plants. It was built up not from fossils but from DNA analysis, which largely corroborates what has been deduced from fossils. Why, therefore, anyone should deny the overwhelming evidence for evolution is a mystery.

A few months ago I got into a discussion with some Christian evangelicals who had a display, including some anti-evolution books, on a table in the main shopping square in Brighton. I mentioned that I was a Christian and that I didn't have a problem with evolution. I asked why they did.

The answer, I was told, is Scripture, so I asked which translation. "The King James version", was the reply. I asked him which language this had been made from, but the fellow didn't know. "Hebrew", I said, and asked which was the oldest version of scripture. He didn't know that either, so I said it was the Septuagint, an early translation into Greek. At this point he went into rant mode so I walked off and let him rant by himself.

But the problem for people who want to accept a literal interpretation of scripture is this. The meaning of words changes with the passing of the years. Styles of writing change. Poetic writing is not intended to be taken literally but metaphorically. And Hebrew presents particular difficulties of its own as it is written without vowels, and the same written word can often represent one of several possibilities.

As for Genesis, the Hebrew word for "day", as in "...on the seventh day", can mean an epoch or period. Even if one does not want to take the Genesis text as a reworking of older accounts of the order of creation, there is no reason to assume that "day" refers to a 24 hour period.

So it is bizarre that anyone should wish to do interpret an ancient text in such a way. Why they should do so, and in large numbers, would be an interesting subject for study in itself.

Will ignorance triumph?

Should we build on Green Field sites?

2007-07-15T07:57:00.000Z

This was the subject of an article in today's Observer. To judge from the article and comments, the issue is not being explored in the necessary depth.

85% of Britain's population live within an area of about 150 miles radius centred roughly on Leicester. This is not because they particularly want to but because that is where the jobs are.

There are many reasons for this but the main explanation is that it is an example of the workings of Ricardo's Law of Rent, as it interacts with a tax system that ignores the facts of geographical advantage and disadvantage. The tax per unit of wealth production is the same in, say, the far north of Scotland as it is in the middle of London, and the effect is to make large tracts of the country sub-marginal for economic activity. With a different tax system, taking account of geographical advantage and disadvantage, these marginal areas could sustain viable economies; one need only look at places like Jersey and Iceland where it would be impossible to make a livelihood under the UK tax system.

The present concentration of population gives rise to a collection of problems - high housing costs, road and rail congestion, shortage of people to run essential service industries. In the absence of other measures, building on green field land in London and the South East will do little to alleviate rising costs of housing and will create other problems in its wake.

As regards high densities and quality of living space, typical Victorian suburbs with two-storey terrace houses have densities of around 45 houses per hectare whilst still leaving a decent amount of garden space and without feeling oppressively over-built. The trick of the better Victorian developers was to have efficiently designed houses laid out in a way that used the land efficiently. This is a technique - I would not call it an art -that has been forgotten.

Planning Gain Supplement shelved

2007-07-11T22:24:00.001Z

Housing Development Burgess Hill
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

The Guardian reported today that government's proposed Planning Gain Supplement would be shelved if a better alternative could be found.

This is after about four years of work by various appointed committees headed by highflyers like Kate Barker, who came up with the idea, and Sir Michael Lyons, who addressed the issue as part of his remit to reform local government finance.

The Land Value Taxation Campaign made submissions pointing out that the most appropriate and practicable way of collecting development value was through the form of Land Value Taxation advocated by the Campaign. When the proposals for the Planning Gain Supplement were announced, the Campaign, amongst many other groups, pointed out that similar legislation had been adopted and failed in Britain four times since 1945 and that precisely the same thing would happen again.

So it seems as if after all the work now done, at vast expense, the government has just backed off. At least that is some kind of victory for commonsense, but what a wasteful way to run the country, and the problem of finding an effective solution remains. One might remind Gordon Brown of the alternative of Land Value Taxation, but it is a safe bet that he will not take any notice.

Of course, the objectors are motivated solely by self-interest, but what is depressing is that those who recognise that the PGS is an attempt to deal with a genuine problem are unable to look at the issue in any depth and suggest a workable alternative.

Here is the text of the Guardian article, headed "Brown retreats over tax on property developers"

"Gordon Brown rowed back from a row with Britain's property developers today, postponing a move that would have seen a levy on the profits made by housebuilders.

The new prime minister announced the controversial "planning gain supplement" (PGS) - intended to be part of this autumn's Queen speech - would be shelved if a "better alternative" could be found.

The dry-sounding bill was intended to fund local infrastructure projects from the windfall profits often made by developers when planning permission is granted.

Instead, Mr Brown promised to consult over the summer on alternative measures, with the bill only being provisionally tabled this autumn. The House Builders' Federation, which represents Taylor-Wimpey and Barretts as well as 300 other homebuilders, welcomed the apparent U-turn. The Organisation's director of economic affairs, John Stewart, said: "We're pleased the prime minister is not charging ahead with something we don't think would have the benefits expected of it. "There are better alternatives to a property gain tax and we were concerned this wasn't a workable proposal. "Homebuilders want to see funding for new communities, but there are better alternatives - none of them perfect - and we would like to see a degree of flexibility."

The planning gain supplement had been intended to replace existing section 106 agreements between developers and local authorites, whereby builders agree to construct a road or playground or other amenity in return for planning permission.

The building industry complained the new tax could make developments less profitable leading to a stall in construction, and that 30% of any revenue would be used to fund regional projects, rather than local ones.

The PGS would have levied a "modest" tax on the uplift in value on land when it was granted planning permission. The original intention was to have the bill in the Queen's speech and on the statute book by 2009.

The British Property Federation, which represents commercial builders and investors, said they were "delighted" the "deeply flawed" PGS had been delayed.

Faraz Baber, director for planning and regeneration, said: "The PGS tax is not supported by the property industry and has received lacklustre support amongst a wide range of stakeholders."

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors also welcomed the consultation, saying PGS was "not the most appropriate mechanism" for increasing the supply of housing.

The RICS, along with some other players in the industry, would rather see a straightforward fixed-price tariff, as has been piloted in Milton Keynes, rather than a percentage of the windfall gain.

However, there was consternation at the possible loss of the scheme from other sectors of the industry.The National Housing Federation, which represents not-for-profit housing associations, said: "We strongly support the planning gain supplement and urge the government to go ahead with it."

Sveriges Riksdag

2007-07-10T15:02:00.001Z

sveriges riksdag
Originally uploaded by bendus.

You can walk through the neat formal gardens in front of the Swedish parliament building and nobody will try and stop you.

You would not be allowed to do this anywhere near the British Houses of Parliament, which is fortified, defended and stiff with armed police.

Perhaps there is a difference between the British and Swedish parliaments which makes one a more attractive target than the other. What could it be, I wonder?

Proliferating Piffle

2007-07-09T20:16:00.000Z

Piffle proliferates. Today's Guardian carries a report of a study which accuses Gordon Brown of pricing first-time buyers out of the property market. Its research showed that they faced an average stamp duty bill approaching £1,500.

'"Policy Exchange, the centre-right thinktank, called for the charge to be cut or abolished after finding that it now posed a barrier to would-be homeowners in most regions.

Today's report points out that, although the stamp duty threshold has been doubled to apply to homes sold for £125,000 or more, it has failed to keep up with fast-rising prices.

Oliver Marc Hartwich, the thinktank's chief economist, said: "Hundreds of thousands of first-time buyers now have to pay the government to get on the property ladder, whereas they wouldn't have had to pay anything a decade ago.

"The government cannot directly control house prices, but it does control stamp duty, and it should help first-time buyers by cutting it or even abolishing altogether for first-time buyers." '

I am not in favour of Stamp Duty on the sale of houses, but it is evident that neither the economists at the "Think Tank" nor Guardian's journalist have a proper understanding of the land market.

There are two effects at work here, the coarse one and the subtle one. If the tax came off, there would be more money in the pockets of house buyers, and they would bid up house prices by about the amount of the tax. Thus, the coarse effect of the tax is to take money from sellers, money which they would otherwise be able to realise through the sale of their houses.

The subtle effect is that the tax discourages people from selling property they already own as it adds to the cost of moving, This is creating a shortage of places to buy and discouraging people from moving into smaller accommodation when their homes are larger than they need. So to that extent, it is indeed keeping house prices higher than they might otherwise be. But this is not, apparently, what the commentators are saying.
The full article

The solution is to get rid of the tax and replace it, and all the other taxes which fall on the value of land, with a annual tax on site rental values.