AN OUTSIDE VIEW

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.

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,...

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 intel...

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?

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...

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 au...

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 i...

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.

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 ver...

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 wa...

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 here...

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...

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 lan...

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 fr...

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 C...

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.

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?

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 su...

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. Wh...

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...

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.

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 n...

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 inheriti...

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.

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 eq...

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 c...

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

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 b...