AN OUTSIDE VIEW

I really liked Barbara Ellen's article in last Sunday' (18 February) Observer. She was commenting on the UNICEF report that put Britain at the bottom of the league. Her piece was headed British kids are not 'miserable'... they're arsey "Our adolescents are vile, stroppy, sarcastic ingrates, which explains exactly why their lives are worth living.." She really pulled the UNICEF report to bits, with a well-aim swipe at countries like Sweden and the Netherlands which came at the top of the UNICEF league. I was in Scandinavia last year. It is a horrible part of the world. The trains have brushes in the toilets, would you believe? And alcohol gel to clean the seat with. How prissy can you get? And paper towels, which people use to wipe their hands on instead of shoving them all down the pan and blocking it. And they take their shoes off if they put their feet on the seats. Cyclists are another thing. In Copenhagen there were all getting off their bikes and walk...

"Sweden needs to deregulate the housing rental market and changes are needed to employment rules in order to stop the exclusion of immigrants and other groups, a new survey of the Swedish economy from the OECD has said. "The report, issued every two years, praised Sweden's 'strong and steady' economic performance, saying that the country's economy had done better than most other European countries. The report said that the country's response to the economic crisis of the early 1990s had laid foundations for current successes. "But the OECD reserved strong criticism for the housing market, calling for the abolition of rent controls. "Heavy regulation of rent levels forces people who might have preferred to rent into buying property instead, particularly in Stockholm, the reports said. Rent controls also force people onto the black market, lead to the conversion of rental flats into tenant-owned apartments and lead to low construction levels of ren...

Land has always been an important concern to the Catholic Church. In feudal times, much land was held by the church with the aim of providing it with an income from the rent, to support the religious orders, who provided the services which are nowadays the responsibility of the state - care of the poor, the sick, teaching, etc. The land issue was raised in last week's edition of the Catholic Times; the writer, who works for the Institute of Economic Affairs, a "right wing" think tank, was making the case for private ownership of land as essential for development. Land tenure is indeed key to both economic justice and to the use of resources in a sustainable way. But this is not the whole story. What people need for development is secure tenure, which is a different thing from land ownership. In fact, land ownership gives benefit to some at the ultimate expense of others. Wherever injustice, extremes of wealth and poverty, and political tyranny exist, we find land ownersh...

Edinburgh Castle Originally uploaded by Trent S. . London subsidises the rest of the UK to the tune of £13 billion a year. So says a report by Oxford Economic Forecasting Not so. London, like any other major business centre, can only exist as an important business centre by virtue of its hinterland. Most of the flow of wealth in Britain goes from the periphery to the centre. The effect is overcrowding, unaffordable housing and congestion in London and the South East, and widespread economic depression everywhere else, requiring substantial sums of money being spent in a largely futile attempt to redress the imbalance. And still, so much wealth is left in the bottom right hand corner of the country that property (land) values grow inexorably. The reality is that London and the South East are sucking wealth out of the rest of the country. The principal mechanism through which this happens is the tax system, which largely ignores the advantages and disadvantages of geography. And so busi...

Death on the Doorstep 1 Originally uploaded by Carmbowlski . Aren't you relieved that the Met is putting armed police on the streets of London as part of its response to the recent spate of gun crimes? Just make sure you don't get caught in the crossfire.

Congestion charge Originally uploaded by jeni rodger . Proposals for congestion charging in Britain have been met by a petition against the idea. Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander said: "Unless motorists and families can see the benefits, a national road pricing system won't happen." He adds that he has told those bidding for the pilots: "There must be a fair deal for motorists. These councils will get extra cash to improve public transport because, if a local scheme is to work, people need real alternatives, including better bus services." The petition was launched on the Downing Street web site under an experiment introduced by the government last year. It says: "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy" and was submitted by Peter Roberts, a motorist from Telford, Shropshire. With just eight days to go to the deadline for signing, the total stood at 1,127,817. Paul Biggs, spokes...

Wild Turkey Tom Originally uploaded by sandon1090 . If you keep large numbers of turkeys or any other animal crowded together in a heated shed, you can guarantee that any infection will spread fast. I am not a vegetarian but I cannot possibly enjoy eating an animal that I know has had a miserable life. But leaving aside issues of animal welfare, it is a big risk you are taking by "farming" in this way. But now that bird flu infection has struck, and 160,000 birds have had to be killed, the taxpayer will pick up the bill for compensation. Thus, all of us, including "hard-working families" are being made to underwrite cruel husbandry. If the farmers had to carry their own risk through commercial insurance, these animal Auschwitzes would become uneconomic and shut down. Isn't DEFRA wonderful?