AN OUTSIDE VIEW

HST interior Originally uploaded by seadipper . First Great Western is refurbishing its Inter-City 125 trains and totally rebuilding the power cars with new low-emission engines. Good, and it is nice to see that proper use is being made of a valuable asset. But they are shortening the trains and cramming in extra seats. This will cause a problem as it will make them uncomfortable- also they are used on holiday routes where passengers often have a lot of luggage and there will be insufficient space for it. At the moment, you can put luggage on the floor between the back-to-back seats (see picture), Why are the trains being shortened? The aim is to improve acceleration, which is fair enough, but it could just as well have been done by fitting the drive with a lower gear ratio and leaving the trains their original length. This would have reduced the top speed but on FGW's routes the trains have little opportunity to run at 125 mph anyway due to the close spacing of the stations and s...

Wessexs Soldiering On Originally uploaded by juliang2006 . These trains, known as Plastic Pigs, were introduced in 1988. They have now been withdrawn and put into store. They may well be scrapped despite there being a sortage of carriages. They have been replaced on the Bournemouth and Weymouth services by new Siemens class 444 trains, which passengers say are cramped and uncomfortable. The seats are hard and the carriages are 14 cm narrower. In my view the class 444 units are amongst the best of the trains introduced for the privatised railways, but they are still not wonderful.

As a gay man who is not averse to a little fling now and again, I can not be accused of either being in the closet or anti-gay. However, the idea of gay couples, or anyone else for that matter, having a "right" to adopt strikes me as peculiar. Nobody has a natural "right" to a child, but the notion that they do has led us to this, as well as the use of peculiar reproductive techniques - there is a lesbian woman I know who has had a child through artificial insemination, which is just as bad; not having both parents is a bad enough misfortune if it happens through natural causes, so it cannot be right to deliberately engineer the situation. Adoption is principally for the benefit of the child and it is for the rest of society to do its best to make sure that the child is placed in the best possible circumstances. And providing a home for a child, whether one's own or anyone else's, is a long-term business. So the likely stability of the relationship is an imp...

American town supports land value tax This is a local campaign for land value taxation in small town USA. So it sounds as if the Daily Mail readers whom New Labour is so anxious to keep on side would actually do very well out of a switch from present taxes to Land Value Taxation. Unless the government's stupidity exceeds its craving to hold on to power, it might yet do the right thing.

asbo - yob Originally uploaded by statravelphotos . The latest goverment gimmick is something called "Respect Areas". These are meant to curb anti-social behaviour with measures like "parenting orders" The whole thing sounds as if it has been dreamt up by some advertising agency to show to the Middle England voters that SOMETHING IS BEING DONE. Thus, government in Britain has become little more than a string of disjointed panic responses to the concern of the moment. The sole aim is to get voted in next time. The thing will have the opposite effect to that intended. Living in a Respect Area will get you respect on the street, just like having an ASBO does.

Simon On Call Originally uploaded by Tango_hui_voine . This carriage is about fifty years old. It was originally built with both fist and second class compartments, plus a guard's van for bicycles, luggage etc. They were for long through workings where vehicles would be shifted from one train to another to save passengers having to join in a scrum at Birmingham New Street, which is the Department of Transport' idea of what should happen. The second class (originally third class) were more spacious and comfortable than Virgin's Club Class which costs zillions to go on.

I have watched the debate on this since the announcement was made last week. The Times Comments, which seem to come mainly from schoolchildren and teachers, are mostly agains the idea. This one sums up the general view. "I am a pupil at school and I want to stay on at school. But there are horrible children at my school who make not only pupil's lives a misery but also the teachers which is not a good evironment for people to be in. So this would be atrocious to keep children in education until 18 if they do not want to because they will just cause havoc.I am a pupil at school and I want to stay on at school. But there are horrible children at my school who make not only pupil's lives a misery but also the teachers which is not a good evironment for people to be in. So this would be atrocious to keep children in education until 18 if they do not want to because they will just cause havoc." My own view is that learning opportunities should be avalable to everyone of ev...

And so we have another report - this time from Halifax - to tell us how the price of housing keeps going up. (yesterday's Guardian, article by Angela Balakrishnan) As mentioned in an earlier blog, it is not the price of bricks and mortar that has gone up. The most expensive bricks are still less than 75p each, cement is under a fiver a bag and there are plenty of building workers following the influx from eastern Europe. What keeps rising is the price of the land the houses are standing on. It is worrying that so little is understood about this phenomenon by campaigners and and economists, as they demonstrate when they argue for a tax on property or land price gains. How would this be implemented? When would the tax be an increase in value from? Since the previous year? Since Domesday? Since the previous sale? And why not on the whole value? And when would the levy be paid? Once in a while? Every year? At the time of sale? And if the increase in value turns out to be a bubble value...

On 11 January, the Guardian published a letter by Kevin Cahill in response to the article on Monday. Kevin Cahill is author of "Who Owns Britain and Ireland" "There is only one legal owner of land in the UK, the Queen (A land tax is 200 years overdue, January 8). All others have one of two forms of medieval tenure, either freehold or leasehold. When Adam Smith argued for a land tax, 97% of the land was held by about 3,000 families and the rest held not so much as a blade of grass. Now 70% of the population have a stake in a private home and, indirectly, in land. Of the UK's 60m domestic acres, the 41m acres of agricultural land, constituting 69% of the surface of the UK, are held in freehold by 158,000 people or families, about 0.26% of the population. The land occupied by home owners is about 2.5m acres, just 4.1% of the domestic land mass. Residential property is not an unproductive asset, it is the sole shelter and main asset of 70% of the population. What is prop...

Incompatible trains Originally uploaded by seadipper . The train on the left is a class 319 Thameslink train with a BSI coupling. The train on the right is a Virgin Voyager with a Scharfenberg coupling. They can't be joined so if, say, the Voyager breaks down, the 319 cannot push it out of the way. And they cannot be attached to a locomotive - a special match vehicle has to be put in between. Any ten year old with a train set knows that all the trains should be fitted with the same type of coupling. Seemingly the experts who are responsible for co-ordinating Britain's railways do not.

Mini seat Originally uploaded by seadipper . I am only a shrimp of a guy - I weigh less than 60kg, but even I can only just squeeze - literally - into this seat. Thameslink was taken over by First group who call it First Capital Connect. They are refurbishing the trains and giving them a psychedlic livery, and this is part of the result. I suppose it is OK to put a child, but then they can't see out, as they are looking at the stack of luggage opposite.

"Design" was a magazine that had been produced since the nineteen-forties by the Design Council, a body originally set up in 1944 under the title "Council of Industrial Design", with the aim of improving the quality of British product design as industry was brought back to civilian production after the end of the war. This article was submitted in late 1993, when rail privatisation was being progressed the the Major government. Derided as a "Poll Tax on wheels", the scheme was widely considered unworkable even then, but the government persisted, in the face of threats by the Labour opposition to re-nationalise if it got re-elected. The rest is history. The editor of the magazine was told not to publish the article and resigned. The magazine was then closed down. Here is the text of the unpublished article. ========================================== DESIGNING FOR THE RAIL FRANCHISE Trains haven't the glamour of cars. Normally, boarding a train is not a ...

たまご屋／egg store2 Originally uploaded by motocchio . Markets are a good thing. Whether you are buying or selling, you can be sure that you will get a good price for what you are selling and will not pay too much for what you want. And producers quickly get to know what people want to buy, and the right goods become available to those who want them. It is a much better system than having bureaucrats in offices decide what people want. Usually, they haven't a clue, and then they have to force people to produce what is not wanted, and you end up with Gulags, concentration camps, secret police, corruption and all the other apparatus of a totalitarian state. Post-1945 economists especially, recognised this and became advocates of the free market, in preference to the directed economics that was favoured in both communist and social democratic countries. But the concept is flawed. Free markets assume prior equities, and when not everyone has equal access to land, those who do are in a pri...

A lot of people argue that Council Tax should be replaced by a tax based on ability to pay. By this, they mean some form of Local Income Tax. There are pensioners who have even chosen to go to prison rather than pay their Council Tax. Local Income Tax is advocated by some people in the Liberal Democrat and Green parties, as well as by pressure groups such as "Is it Fair?", which is supporting the "can't pay - won't pay" OAPs. Anyone who thinks Local Income Tax is a good idea should take a look at the latest report on the subject. A Fairer Way: Report by the Local Government Finance Review Committee for Scotland - Section 10: A Local Income Tax SUMMARY OF THE COMMITTEE'S CONCLUSIONS "It would not be appropriate to introduce a local income tax. There are five reasons for this. "First, we have already stated our view that a tax on property as a proxy for wealth should feature as part of the overall basket of taxes in the UK. "The second reaso...

Artist's impressions of the next generation of trains for London Underground have been released by Metronet. The quality of these computer-generated images is amazing. The trains will be built by the international company Bombardier. The front ends look highly styled and a long way from the the functional elegance of the Frank Pick era. The surface line stock front ends especially look like shower cabinets for the flashy-end of the market. Is this really how Transport for London wants to present itself? More importantly, is it the most practical solution? The function of the cab assembly is (1) to protect the driver against possible collision damage (2) allow the driver a good view of the signals and CCTV monitors, whilst protecting against thermal gain from the sun, missiles and other flying objects. (3) provide a surface for the mounting of information eg marker lights and route indication displays. What is shown does not spell out this function particularly clearly, rather it se...

It is encouraging to see someone speaking for land value taxation, (today's Guardian page 24 - "A land tax is 200 years overdue") but it is essential to be clear about the sort of land value taxation that is being proposed. Ill-conceived land taxes such those related to the sale or development of land have done immense harm, proved harmful and often unworkable and in many cases, have been scrapped. This fate awaits the government's suggested Planning Gain Supplement. Properly speaking, a land value tax should fall on the whole rental value of land, assuming that it is at its optimum permitted use. As each site is valued in turn, the buildings and other improvements on that site are ignored and their value excluded. Thus the assessment is the rental value of the site. It is not, therefore, a tax on the selling price of land; it is not a tax just on some arbitarily selected increase in value; it is not a mere property tax; and it is not an additional tax, but a replacem...

Tallinn former KGB headquarters Originally uploaded by seadipper . Tallinn former KGB headquarters. The windows were bricked up to stop passers-by hearing the screams of the people they were torturing inside.

IMG_5789 Originally uploaded by Martin Amor . Cambodia.

Following several rounds of consultation, the Treasury has come up with its proposals for collecting the increase in land value arising from planning permission in a document called Valuing Planning Gain. The idea is to charge a levy on the increase in the value of sites that occurs when planning consent is given. This is meant to be used to pay for infrastructure. The proposal is a re-run of similar legislation which was introduced in 1947 repealed in 1951, introduced again in 1967, repealed in 1970, introduced again in 1975/6 and repealed in 1980. It was complex and yielded little revenue. It also caused a shortage of land as owners of potential development sites kept them off the market, pending repeal of the legislation. The proposal has been opposed from various positions within both the develoment industry and amongst professionals. Almost nobody is in favour. The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) has condemned the proposal in a press release. Nothing could demonstrate the com...

I recently received an email with a link to a story about some pensioners who had gone to prison rather than pay their Council Tax. The story was being publicised by a group called Is it Fair I found this story very sad. The Council Tax is iniquitous, but part of the iniquitousness is that (a) so much of the money is wasted and (b) pensions have not kept up with rising wages. But "Is it Fair" advocates replacing Council Tax by increases in Income Tax and VAT, which would make matters even worse. Studies of the subject have repeately shown that VAT and Income Tax cannot, for perfectly practical reasons, be replaced by any form of local VAT and Income Tax, not least because of the widespread avoidance and evasion of these taxes that already takes place which would be even worse if they were local taxes. The thing would also be an administrative nightmare. Replacing CT, the only truly local tax, by national taxes, would only complete the process which has turned local councils...