AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Jufureh slavery mural Originally uploaded by lidbit . It does no harm that the detailed horrors of the slave trade have been given an airing. I had not been aware that Britain was the dominant power in this trafficking as this uncomfortable fact is normally glossed over. I suspect that it is a factor in the enfeeblement of the British upper classes, and in particular, the low esteem they hold for craft, manual and engineering skills. From the eighteenth century on, the English ideal was that of the country gentlemen, living off other people's labour, on the principle that it was better to keep your hands clean, sit in an ivory tower and contemplate, with hunting, shooting and fishing to prevent complete stagnation. I came across it at university, when students who were studying science and engineering were held in contempt. Nowadays, the idea persists in the ambition to make money by shifting it around rather than actually producing anything. So that is just one way in which we ar...

This is not America! Originally uploaded by LHOON . Estonia privatised its railways a few years ago but as it has not worked they have been renationalised. So now they can be modernised with a contribution from the EU.

The Lyons Inquiry into local government finance, which reported last week, is probably the most thorough since the Layfield Inquiry which reported in 1976. Submissions were made to Layfield, putting forward the case for land value taxation (LVT) but the final report argued that LVT was incompatible with the operation of the Development Land Tax (which was repealed a couple of years later). This cleared the way for LVT but the mental blockage remained. And now another Inquiry has produced its report. LVT advocates have made their submissions, and were invited to give oral evidence. And this is what Lyons has to say on the subject. ==================================== Chapter 6 (funding reform):- Taxation of economic rent 6.42 Most economists would agree that there is a strong case for levying taxes on land. Land is in fairly fixed supply, and much of its value will therefore be what economists call ‘economic rent’, which can be taxed without altering the incentives to use the land. The ...

I am strongly against abortion, not for "religious" reasons but for the consequences. I have seen all of this with friends. (1) The father becomes distraught immediately (2) The mother becomes distraught and in some cases is permanently traumatised. Sometimes they can't look at a child of the age their own would have been without the dreadful feeling of what might have been. And it gets worse if they get past childbearing age without having had one of their own. And worse still into old age when they miss the child they might have had and are lonely and unloved. (3) A friend of mine stupidly got his partner pregnant and abortion was a thought that crossed his mind. I encouraged him to look forward to having the child, which he would enjoy, and now his three-year-old daughter is his favourite companion. More generally, it promotes callousness amongst the medical staff involved, and within society as a whole, and when we get old there will be nobody to look after us apart f...

How rail privatisation failed. Originally uploaded by seadipper . This picture sums up the failure of Britain's railway privatisation. This was Eastleigh works, which was developed as a railway workshop from the 1890s. It was a real centre of tradition, skill and excellence, and remained so throughout the period of railway nationalisation. It was also, of course, a valuable training and employment opportunity for local people. What happened? On privatisation, it was sold to the managers as a management buy-out and became Wessex Traincare. Their main interest was to sell the company on to the highest bidder. The eventual purchaser was the French conglomerate Alstom, which hoped to sell a fleet of new trains to South West Trains and use the works for maintenance. But in the event, Alstom's engineering resources were consumed by getting Richard Branson's tilting trains built and running, and so they were unable to give sufficient attention to ironing out the teething troubles...

After deliberating for some three years about how to pay for local government services, the committee headed by Sir Michael Lyons has come up with nothing better than. 1 Reform of the Council Tax so that people in more valuable houses pay a larger share of the cost; 2 Possibly allowing local councils to set part of the business rate and; 3 Increasing the savings limit so that more pensioners can claim Council Tax benefit. "In the medium term the Government should: " * revalue council tax to update the tax base and improve fairness; " * at the same time, reform council tax by adding new bands to reduce bills for those in the lowest value properties, paid for by increased bills for those in higher value properties paying more - there should be no increase in average council tax bills as a result of this; " * consider assigning a fixed proportion of income tax to local government; " * find ways to improve the incentives within the grant system; and " * consid...

Income tax is a lousy tax, as it contradicts all the established maxims of taxation, such as those formulated by Adam Smith. It is immensely complicated and more harmful than is normally recognised. It can be shown that it is responsible for a raft of economic ills, and the idea that it is related to ability to pay is an absurd fiction. As the American millionairess Leona Helmsley famously said, "Only the little people pay taxes." And by reducing the standard rate of tax but leaving the allowances unchanged, Gordon Brown is certainly making sure that the poorest bear the brunt. Is this plain cynicism, as a bid for the votes of those who are slightly better paid, who could swing election results? The effect will be to hold down the underclass still further, as the higher tax makes work less worth-while and helps to drive people with few skills out of the employment market altogether, as they cannot afford to go to work. Nevertheless, if we are going to have this tax, it should...

P3150027 Originally uploaded by jim_buchan . Once again the old story surfaces, of tax havens causing a loss in revenue that should go to the British exchequer. This time it is the Isle of Man that has come under fire. (Observer business 18 March) If the Isle of Man were subject to the mainland UK tax regime, its economy would be like that of outlying regions such as Cornwall, with high unemployment, which would lead it to suck in funds from the exchequer and probably the EU as well, far in excess of what is "lost". If the chancellor does not want to lose revenue, he and his advisers need only to bear in main that people and capital are mobile, but land is not; it cannot be hidden or removed to a tax haven. Taxation of people and capital is the problem. The system is inevitably full of loopholes. Attempts to close them result in ever-increasing complexity and the process is ultimately futile. The remedy for tax avoidance and evasion is in the hands of our own government.

Adam Smith, who has his portrait on the latest £20 notes, has got a bad name due to being misrepresented by people who claim to be advocates of his views, notably the "Adam Smith" Institute. The £20 note illustrates the division of labour, which he cited using the example of pin manufacturing in Birmingham in the second half of the eighteenth century. One workman made the wire, another cut it into pin-sized lengths, another put the head on, another the point, and so on. Unfortunately, over the past 25 years the concept has been taken to a lunatic extreme and applied to complex organisations providing a sophisticated range of services, such as the National Health Service and the railways, which could not have been conceived of in Smith's day. This is, for instance, a major factor in MRSA in hospital wards with their contracted-out cleaning and catering, the ever-increasing cost of running the railways and the spread of "targets", which is a consequence of trying ...

There seems no limit to the nonsense that is being spouted about the Olympics. The whole idea of competitive sport is dubious - it is no accident that, historically, the most totalitarian regimes are the ones that have devoted the most resources to competitive sports. Competitive sports as we know them today are a nineteeth century invention founded on the then contemporary notions of social Darwinism. But matters subsequently became worse still. In the twentieth century, it metamorphosed into a branch of the mass entertainment industry, and the whole thing fits well, too, with the contemporary cult of the celebrity. It provides lots of opportunities for companies to promote their products and so has become big business. Governments are in favour of big sports events because they keep the newpapers full of stuff that diverts people's attention from their own inadequacies and failure to deal with fundamental issues like management of the economy. It was only to be expected that a sh...

We British are notoriously amongst the worst linguists in the world. It does not help that we are an island and are less likely to make a casual trip abroad than someone living in say, Luxembourg. Nor does the fact that English is so widely spoken. Go to Germany and adress someone in German with an English accent, and they will politely reply in perfectly good English. It takes a lot of effort to get them to conduct a conversation in German especially if one speaks it badly, and there is never the opportunity to improve. So this is good new especially when it will help break down our insularity. But who will teach these foreign languages and what languages should be taught? In the past, French was the first language that most people were taught, presumably on the assumption that France was the foreign country they were most likely to visit. But that is no longer so. One never knows what foreign language one might need to know. Spanish? Russia? Arabic? Chinese? Swahili? So perhaps the b...

"The forthcoming government white paper on planning will relax rural protection rules, which protects the countryside from urban sprawl, says an article in today's Guardian "The Queen, British Aerospace and BP will make billions of pounds from developing the greenbelt under proposals to meet government housing targets. Research by the Guardian and the Campaign to Protect Rural England shows at least 10,000 acres of greenbelt land are likely to be sacrificed to build some of the biggest developments in Britain in the past 30 years. In addition, speculators have bought large areas of greenbelt land. "BP stands to make nearly £10bn if its advanced plans to build 20,000 houses on 3,700 acres of greenbelt land that it owns in Hertfordshire are accepted. The Crown Estate, which manages property owned by the Queen, could make up to £500m from the development of 6,000 homes near the A1 (M), while Arlington Securities, the former property arm of British Aerospace, hopes to m...

Adam Smith Originally uploaded by surfstyle . Masden Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute was interviewed on the BBC news and current affairs programme "The World this Weekend" today. He argued that globalisation and giving access to markets were the way to cure poverty. He is more right than those who would argue for protectionism, but implicit in his advocacy of the free market is the idea that wealth will be distributed through the famous trickle-down effect. Unfortunately, there is no such effect. Surplus value ends up as rent and is claimed by whoever owns the land. This is why the benefits of fair trade can be a delusion. If the farmer gets paid more for his crop but does not own his own land, then the extra he receives will be claimed by the landlord through higher rents. Pirie ruins his sound case by ignoring the effect of land tenure on wealth distribution and needs to address this with appropriate policies, of which land distribution is not necessarily the right one. ...

London suburb Originally uploaded by blackwine . The Daily Mail has been running a campaign against proposals for a Council Tax revaluation. (article and editorial, 9 March) At present, the Council Tax is based on the value of a house as it was or would have been in 1991, and so the valuations are badly out of date. The Daily Mail is complaining that the valuers have been issued with guidelines about how to do the valuation; houses which are in good condition or have extensions, improvements, or attractive gardens, will be assessed at a higher value. So will houses which are near to a railway station or have a good view. I am no supporter of the Council Tax and as a Brighton resident, I am all too aware of councils' ability to squander money through incompetence and hare-brained schemes. However, the services they provide have to be paid for somehow, and around a quarter of what councils spend comes from Council Tax. What is the alternative? Surely not higher Income Tax and VAT? ...

Kensington Protests - No Congestion Charge - 04030012 Originally uploaded by normko . In Stockholm it is a different story. Support for the congestion charge is greater than ever before, according to a new poll. The congestion charge, under which drivers pay to enter central Stockholm during weekdays, is to be reintroduced by the centre-right council and the government on 1st July. In the poll, conducted by Skop for newspaper Stockholm City, 67 percent of those questioned said it was good that the new government had decided to reintroduce the charge. 33 percent of the 1,021 people asked said they disapproved of the decision. The congestion charge was initially introduced by the former Social Democratic government for a trial period in the first half of 2006. A 51.3 percent majority voted in favour of retaining the charge in a referendum in September. The incoming centre-right administration promised to honour the vote, but said that income from the charge would go towards road-buildin...

Brighton and Hove Council has become the first education authority in Britain to allocate secondary school places by lottery. Nothing could better demonstrate the failure of British social policy since 1945. Probably the most popular state secondary school in Brighton is the one in the pictures - Cardinal Newman, a Catholic establishment. It is odd how so many people who are vehemently anti-religious are happy to send their children to church schools when they recognise that church schools tend to provide a higher standard of education. A friend of mine sent his daughter there and was livid when she decided to become a Catholic - he would have been less put out if she had been in trouble with the police, got pregnant or become a drug addict. What did he expect? How things have changed - at one time Catholic schools were notorious for having the roughest pupils and severe discipline. Newman is over-subscribed with Catholics and Anglicans, so if you aren't eligible and can't affo...