AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Should I believe in Polly Toybee? I have never met her. I know her only through what she has written in the Guardian. The opinions she expresses are consistent, usually almost to the point of being predictably stereotypical. Occasionally she comes out with something especially perceptive and sometimes there are touches of brilliance. More usually I find her irritating. But for all I know she could be a nom-de-plume for a group of journalists who take turns to write the pieces. Or even a textbot. I have no evidence to the contrary, even though I have seen advertisements announcing meetings to be addressed by someone purporting to be a "Polly Toynbee". On Sundays I go to church. It is a Catholic church and I am expected to believe that when the priest carries out certain actions and pronounces certain words, ordinary bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, that is, God. Her Christmas message , in the Guardian on 23 December, is "There's probab...

The concept of the fee market is coming under continued attack. But neither its attackers or its defenders seem to grasp the fundamental point that "The market" does not exist in the abstract - it is conducted within a particular framework of property rights, in particular land rights. Within the present framework, periodic boombusts have turned out to be inevitable. Within other frameworks, there would be other outcomes. The principal and fatal defect with our present system of property rights is that land is held almost free of obligations. This situation arose gradually, gaining its full force in the UK during the Enclosure period from 1760 to 1840. One result is that land titles are traded increasingly feverishly, using borrowed money, as economic cycles proceed. Another is that moneylenders have undue power. Another is that everyone who is not a land owner is obliged to pay rent or work for wages. Most damagingly of all, this system of land tenure ensures that some peopl...

There area reports that the main political parties are running short of funds again. People will not contribute. I wonder why? The collapse of the present political parties could be the best thing that could happen in British politics. Good riddance to them. The people who get to lead the parties are those who are least suited to do so - at their higher levels they are a magnet for the ambitious and unflective. The disastrous handling of the economy by Labour throughout its period in office and the inadequate critiques of government economic policy by the opposition parties appear to be an inevitable outcome of the system. A curious feature of the British party political alignments is that they do not reflect genuine economic or social interests. The Conservatives are an uncomfortable alliance of landowning and business interests which are inherently in a state of mutual opposition - most businesses are rent payers and get screwed by their landlords. Labour is an uncomfortable alliance...

The editors of the Oxford Junior Dictionary have brought it up to date by leaving out words relating to the natural world, Christianity, and even some common foods and things you can see in the local park. Supposedly this is meant to reflect the multicultural nature of British society but I can't help suspecting that it is part of the agenda to turn the British into a race of morons, an enterprise at which those responsible are achieving complete success. The words missed out are Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe Dwarf, elf, goblin Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade adder, ass, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi, cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panthe...

Humvees and Clouds Originally uploaded by Jayel Aheram I saw a train parked at Didcot the other day, loaded with vehicles something like the ones in the picture, in desert sand colour. This made me very angry. This stretch of railway is one of the busiest in Europe yet it is still not electrified. The right sort of train I would want to here is the one loaded with cables and other gear for putting up the long-overdue electrification.

The relentless slide of the UK pound continues. Commentators try to explain it away by suggesting that it will make exports cheaper but our manufacturing capacity is a shadow of what it was. Britain's biggest "industry" of recent years - making money by moving it around - is no longer an effective means of livelihood. And with most of the world in a similar mess, though not, seemingly, to such an extend, there is not going to be a rush of visitors coming to spend all their money in Britain. The economic "experts" assure us that there is a danger of deflation, but the falling exchange rate will soon enough translate into higher prices in the shops, and the growing body of government debt will unleash a tidal wave of inflation around 2011. The interest rate cuts are proving useless except as a means of driving down the value of the £, whilst hitting the thrifty and provident, and since the recession will continue for at least three years longer than the Chancellor...

There never was a free market. A free market cannot exist if land is enclosed and monopolised, which has been the case since the early nineteenth century. In that situation the landowner is always bargaining from a position of strength vis a vis both the capitalist and the labourer. Governments must collect the rent of land and use it as public revenue instead of taxes on wealth production. Otherwise there will be another boombust around 2025. There is no free bargaining when potential tenants have the option of starving or coughing up whatever was asked. So the right sort of land reform is key. In Zimbawe, we have a classic example of the wrong sort of land reform. Mugabe identified that there was a genuine problem and then did exactly the opposite of what was required and the country ended up with land monopolised by his cronies instead of former colonialists. What Mugabe ought to have done was to leave the white farmers free to continue on their land but to introduce a tax on the re...

There is just one flaw in the libertarian argument but it is fatal. It fails on the question of land rights. Nozick, one of the prophets of modern libertarianism, skirts over this key issue. There is a powerful critique of the position by Hillel Steiner, who wrote a piece called "The Libertarian Dilemma" It can be illustrated by a couple of parables. A boatload of people lands on a fertile island. In the middle of the island is a chest containing the title deeds to all the land on the island. They share it out equally between them. A few minutes later another boatload arrives. Now that all the land is owned, there is nowhere they can go. Those who came on the first boat approach the newcomers with labour contracts. The latter have no option but to accept whatever terms are offered. In the second parable, four people sit down and play Monopoly. When all the squares have been bought by one or other of the players, a fifth player joins the game and is given an allocation of mone...

It is being suggested that President-Elect Obama should appoint a "Poverty Czar". But the root cause of poverty is lack of access to land. Those who do not have it are forced to pay rent and work for wages. Rents rise to the maximum that people can afford and it is only the exceptional individuals who can get out of that trap. If everyone is educated or works harder, the effect is merely to raise the levels of rent. It is as simple as that. The Law of Rent is an iron law of economics. It was described by, amongst others, David Ricardo, whose name it bears. Unfortunately, modern economic theory ignores the role of land and rent, with the result that the cause of poverty is nearly always thought to be something else, and the problem is never solved. Where land has been freely available, there is no poverty, since people have the option of working their own land. This was the situation on the western side of the USA in the mid nineteeth century. This was noted by a San Francisco...

The concept of "rights" worries me because in practice they are not delivered when the need is greatest. It seems to me that rights are best achieved when it is duties that are defined, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. eg my right to walk down the street freely depends on everyone observing their duty not to molest me or arrest me without due cause. Amongst key duties which are not being observed at present are the duty not to kill another human (something itself in need of definition), the duty to care for one's children, and the duty of the state to ensure that everyone has the means of earning a livelihood.

Following the Mumbai bombing, there have been discussions on the Guardian's "Comment is Free". Someone asked why a Jewish centre had been attacked and a rabbi and his wife killed. I replied with the suggestion that the following passage might have had something to do with it. “The Jews and the Christians are perverts; fight them.” Koran 9:30 Both the original question and my reply were deleted by moderators. How free is comment?

It is like a man on his way abroad who summoned his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to a third is one; each in proportion to his ability. Then he set out. The man who had received the five talents promptly went and traded with them and made five more. The man who had received two made two more in the same way. But the man who had received one went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. Now a long time after, the master of those servants came back and went through his accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents came forward bringing five more. "Sir," he said "you entrusted me with five talents; here are five more that I have made." His master said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant; you have shown you can be faithful in small things, I will trust you with greater; come and join in your master's happiness". Next the man with the two talents ca...

60163 Tornado on its first day of public service Originally uploaded by Alastair Wood The locomotive in the top picture is Tornado, based on a 1946 design and the first high speed steam locomotive to be built in the world since the 1950s. It is now being commissioned and when this is complete will be able to run at speeds of up to 90mph. It has taken over 15 years to complete. This is a tremendous achievement. It is a pity that it was not possible to incorporate most of the technical developments which have taken place since the 1960s and have improved the power and efficiency of steam locomotives by about one-third; perhaps some of these can be retro-fitted in the future. The reason, I understand, was that the design, if modified, would have had to go through the costly rail vehicles approval process. In the circumstances, I think it was the right decision to go ahead with building the original design. There are various other projects to construct new steam locomotives of types which...

Royal Albert Hall Originally uploaded by Aubrey Stoll A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about the shape of British politics . Because the MPs sit opposite each other, debates becomes a shouting match with a lot of smoke and no light. There is literally no space for for views other than those held by the two protagonists, who connive in agreeing on their terms of discussion. Perhaps the Government should should move out of Westminster, which could become a tourist attraction and hotel. Where would they go? How about the Albert Hall? It has a circular seating plan. It would be interesting to see what would happen if they tried it. It could transform British politics.

So goes the notorious poster which has aroused lots of attention. I was convinced God did not exist. Till I met him. This was worrying. I thought at first I was having some kind of mental breakdown or suffering from delusional symptoms. But strangely I felt perfectly OK, better than ever before, and well disposed towards the world and everyone and everything in it. Then I met others who had had the same experience, and they all seemed more than averagely balanced, sensible and pleasant and generous individuals, well able to cope with their lives and the ups-and-downs they encountered. This is a widely reported experience, which has nothing to do with indoctrination or brainwashing. If I and they were all suffering from delusions, then whatever those delusions were could not be be regarded as a pathological condition. A benign condition, perhaps. So to my astonishment, starting from my atheistic position, God turned out to be not a spaghetti eating monster in the sky, but a external rea...

Last week I went to talk about how to make money. The line was that the only way to do it was to build up a property empire - it couldn't be done by real work. Land is used as an investment, but in reality it just produces an income stream which is roughly linked to inflation and general prosperity. Over lending and over borrowing caused land titles to increase in price to the point that the rate of return dropped and dropped, priming the crash. So it was not such a good investment after all. The vested interests, who are a handful of landowners and bankers, would make sure that a land tax, the only way to reduce the force of boom-busts, is never discussed. Try and get it raised on, say, Any Answers? They won't touch it. The place of land in economics has been virtually expunged from the theory. Even Ricardo is mentioned only in passing. I wouldn't call it a class war, because if the information got out, the vested interests could be faced down, eg the fact that five famili...

I was listening to the broadcast recording of yesterday's parliamentary debate. It was the usual slanging match, conducted in sneering tones, the main objective apparently being to score points off each other. The row concerned the conversations that were alleged to have taken place when George Osborne boarded the yacht belonging to a Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska whilst on holiday in Corfu. According to the Daily Telegraph, Mr Osborne and Andrew Feldman, the Tory party chief executive, have admitted meeting the billionaire on his yacht off Corfu this summer. Subsequently, financier Nat Rothschild told the two that Mr Deripaska was willing to donate £50,000 to the Conservative Party through Leyland Daf, the UK company he owns. Mr Rothschild said that Mr Osborne initiated the discussion about donations, but the Shadow Chancellor vehemently denies this and said in a statement that he did not ask for the money. The donation was turned down, but the fact they they were on the yach...

On the tram Originally uploaded by seadipper These 1960s trams have just been refurbished for yet another 10 years in service.

The Religious Right claim to follow the bible, literally. So they will oppose the teaching of evolution, homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion, masturbation, &c. It is strange then, that they totally ignore the contents of chapter 25 of the Book of Leviticus, reproduced here in full. The passages printed in red relate to usury and land holding. There is nothing about handing the land over to banks as security for money lent out for interest. The LORD spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, 2 Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the LORD. 3 For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits 4 but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the LORD. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. 5 You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undres...

Adelante train interior Originally uploaded by seadipper A survey by Passenger Focus has found that 66% of passengers prefer facing seats to airline style. Since they also provide a decent amount of luggage space between seat backs and ought to weigh less, why do most trains have airline layout seats with separate luggage stacks?

A good time to renationalise the railways? Transport journalist Christian Wolmar seems to think so. Of course the old nationalised railways did some excellent things but huge and often strategic mistakes were made, with matters being aggravated by political interference. It does not altogether matter how the railways are run if they have incompetent managers, of which there were too many in BR days, and they got in the way of the good ones and morale was often low. How they held down their jobs is a mystery but there was, reputedly, a masonic lodge at the old British Railways Board HQ in Marylebone Road. If this was true, it would explain quite a lot. The main problem now is that important decisions are being taken by the technically illiterate, but that isn't new either - eg the proliferation of different types of incompatible rolling stock, all under the eye of successive rail regulators, who are the people who would end up running the nationalised railways. Had there been sound...

The Lewes pound is a new local currency with a picture of Tom Paine on one side. It demonstrates an important economic principle. The purpose of money is to avoid the inconvenience of barter. Nobody would normally want to swap, say, a sack of potatoes they have grown on their allotment for a pair of trousers. But they might do that because the value of the trousers would not have to be included on their tax return as "income". Sometimes people actually do exchange services in this way to avoid having to pay both income tax and VAT. Such exchange of services by mutual agreement, whilst not immoral, is of dubious legality. The Lewes pound will facilitate this kind of barter, but only until the tax authorities notice what is going on and insist that people declare, on their tax returns, income received as Lewes pounds. As they will of course insist that all tax is paid in ordinary Bank of England pounds, the Lewes pounds will then become pointless. This is one reason why all loc...

This evening's news reported the start of a trial for a £53 million bank robbery. Yet there has been no suggestion those responsible for the £multi-billion fraud which has brought the banking system to near-collapse world-wide might have to face trail and possible imprisonment. The fraud - misrepresentation and obtaining money by false pretences, has been committed by those who devised the so-called securitized debts - mixed bundles of good and bad debt backed by land as collateral, that was worth only a fraction of what was claimed. An analogy would be a dishonest street trader who sold boxes of rotten fruit with a few good ones on the top. It is inconceivable that they have not already fallen foul of existing criminal law for which a lengthy spell in prison would be the correct punishment. If they are going to be allowed to get away with it, what is the point of regulation? There may also have been actual criminal activity on the part of the bankers who failed to check what the...

The US bank "rescue" plan is supposedly intended to avert a disastrous collapse of the economy, which is threatened by the increasing difficulties in obtaining credit. The word credit comes from the Latin "credo" which means "I believe". Given what has been happening, it should not be surprising that there has been a collapse in trust. However, the so-called bipartisan approach will lead to inflation and a drop in the value of the dollar, which will hit peoples' savings and lead to industrial unrest as people find the value of their wages is shrinking. And it has been suggested that the cost of the rescue is much higher than the figures currently being quoted. It is shocking that there is agreement across the two US political parties. It would probably be safer and more effective to let the collapse happen - these were only ever paper values, after all - and introduce land value taxation, which would promote a quick recovery and save the US dollar. Giv...

Svenska Kyrkan is celebrating the 50th anniversary of women priests. As a Catholic, I can only comment from the outside but having women priests has certainly has not helped the church to flourish. As far as I can understand, priests in the Swedish church are comparable to those at the "high" end of the Anglicans - in other words, they regard themselves as priests and not ministers. The status of Anglican orders was clarified in Apostolicae Curae in 1896 by Pope Leo XIII, declaring all Anglican ordinations to be "absolutely null and utterly void" . I can find no reference to the status of Svenska Kyrkan's orders. One issue is that the Catholic Church regards Ordination as a Sacrament, which is not the case with the Anglicans, but the principal point is that of authority and recognition of the authority of the successor of Peter, which is an article of the Apostles' Creed - " I believe in the Holy Catholic Church ". Anyone who really does believe th...

I read today that "Constitutional experts and minority parties yesterday rallied behind proposals to repeal the 300-year bar to Catholics succeeding to the throne and end male precedence in the royal succession." I feel uncomfortable about the present law but it could cause more problems than it solved as the monarch is de facto head of the Church of England. If the law is abolished, the Church of England is downgraded to the position of being just another sect. It would no longer have the right to have its bishops in the House of Lords. and would leave the British state dangerously vulnerable to takeover by some other religious force in the future. In a strange way, the present law enshrines a Christian identity in Britain, though a Protestant one. Things could be a lot worse and there is no knowing what damage this reform could unleash. In any case there are more important matters that have to be dealt with.

The Guardian's old stalwart, Polly Toynbee, is another journalist who gets trashed by the commentators both from positions on the left and right. She was an ardent advocate of New Labour, which in retrospect demonstrates a certain lack of perspicacity. Now that the wheels have come off, she has found herself in a position of having to try to defend the indefensible. Some of the attacks are personal, drawing attention to her privileged background. In the circumstances, and given what she says, such criticism is not unreasonable. Toynbee and her Guardian colleagues are as much a part of the British Establishment as the top level civil servants, the heads of Oxbridge colleges and the editors of the right wing press. Their shared aim is to control what it is permitted to be discussed and what voices must be silenced. With a 99% success rate, by their own standards they are doing very well. But it has got the country enmeshed in a mass of nearly insoluble problems.

Why does the Observer keep on employing Will Hutton? Week after week he writes articles which are pulled to pieces by commentators. His proposals would be disastrous and usually counter-productive. He has been doing it for years. Strange. Why don't they get rid of him and employ one of the better commentators instead. Almost any of them would be better? Read the article here

Why are the Liberal Democrats talking about what they would do if they became the next government? They are not going to be the next UK government. Paddy Power was giving odds of 100-1 against. This does not mean to say that they are useless, but they ought to take a realistic view. There is a need for a critique of the policies of both of the largest parties but the Liberal Democrats are not presenting the distinctive point of view which is so needed and which they have the potential to do. Talk of tax cuts indicates the shallowness of their thinking. The trouble with tax is more to do with what is taxed, not how much tax the government collects. What a pity that so few in the party have picked up this idea.

I came across this on Facebook and reproduce it here. Från 1 januari 1975 och fram tills idag har det utförts drygt 1 100 000 aborter i Sverige. Motsvarande siffra för hela världen är över 1 miljard. Hur förstår man något sådant? Kanske är det nödvändigt att höra berättelser från män och kvinnor som varit med om aborter för att kunna få en inblick i hur hundratusentals män och kvinnor i Sverige mår idag. From January 1975 to date there have been over a million abortions in Sweden and over a billion worldwide. How can anyone understand such a thing? Perhaps it helps to hear accounts from men and women themselves who have been involved in abortions in order to gain an insight about how hundreds of thousands of people in Britain feel today. Besök gärna två nya bloggar som startats de senaste månaderna, den ena till och med för bara några dagar sedan. Om du börjar att läsa blogginläggen bakifrån, med det äldsta inlägget först, är det svårt att sluta. Have a look at two new blogs which have...

The cost of railway vehicles is accelerating. I discussed this the other day with an expert, who told me it was just the trend of things that the price of passenger vehicles was rising to the £2.5 million level. Is it inevitable? Could it be that engineering costs have gone out of control because specifications are not being sufficiently questioned? From the passengers' point of view a modern train actually offers less in some ways than its 1950s predecessor. There is less space, seating is cramped and many of those seats offer no view out of the window. A chronic complaint is shortage of space for luggage. There is a lot of advanced and expensive technology in the background which ought to add to the comfort and convenience of the journey but the obvious things like legroom and luggage space have been squeezed out, partly because the high cost of the modern vehicles means that it is critical that as many people as possible are packed in. Fleet sizes must be pared to a minimum, lea...

The latest issue of Rail Professional is of more than usual interest. Amongst the topics examined are... Rolling stock for the future Colin Walton, Chairman of Bombardier UK, reveals that the company has a dip in orders around 2011 and would offer "a very good price" for orders placed by the end of the year. Which is why the decision by the Department of Transport to go for a new design of train for Thameslink is wrong. There is an excellent case for just going out and ordering more Electrostars and developing the next generation of electric multiple unit trains to a longer timescale. After all, Transport for London is ordering a version of the Electrostar for London Overground, operating on similar services. With a suitable internal configuration, having plenty of circulation space around the doorways, they are adequate if not ideal. In any case the Department of Transport needs to re-think how the Thameslink service is operated, as there can be no design of rolling stock t...

So says Polly Toynbee in the Guardian this morning. When four "aristocratic" families own the lion's share of Central London what else can one expect but that Britain is riven by class? Aristocratic means their ancestors enjoyed the monarch's favour in the sixteenth century and managed to avoid getting their heads chopped off. For an explanation, have a look a the web site of the Land Value Taxation Campaign here and download the exhibition brochure which spells it all out, unashamedly. There are, I suggest, several classes, at least five. (1) Aristocratic landowners (2) Government/educational establishment, opinion formers, top managers (3) Salaried employees, salespeople, tradespeople, small businesspeople. (4) Unskilled employed and low paid (5) Unemployed welfare-dependent. There is a small amount of movement between them. One of the tasks of level 2 people is to make sure nothing is said or done to damage the priviliges enjoyed by people at level 1. If they did...

There are two major objections to aid from first world governments to developing countries. First world tax systems, despite being notionally related to ability to pay, are in practice only so for the poor and not-quite poor, who cannot pay for advice to enable them to exploit the loopholes in their countries' tax systems. The second objection is that development does not necessarily help the poor in the developing countries, any more than it did in Europe in the period after the industrial revolution. With each successive wave of technical development, from the advent of steam power, railways, internal combustion, electricity, information technology and communications technology, the productive power of labour was increased manyfold. But it did not produce a commensurate increase either in wages or in the return to capital. Wages remained stuck at the minimum that labour would accept. The end product was a few fat-cat landowners and a mass of poor, a situation which was only all...

The cupboard of ideas, that is. The British economy is going through a bad patch and headed for worse. The essential emptiness of the New Labour project is now revealed. There is talk of the "total destruction" of the Labour Party. The Conservatives have got nothing to offer. Cutting waste and inheritance tax are their big ideas, as though cutting taxes on the dead will do anything for the living. If the Liberal Democrats have anything useful in their cupboard,, it is at the back of the top shelf, and well hidden. The Green Party is too small to matter. They have a few good policies, also on the top shelf and their members do not understand their significance. Some politicians talk about raising the retiring age and making benefit scroungers go back to work, though they do not explain how that is meant to happen with unemployment now above 6%. The party conference season is beginning. I fear it will just reveal the emptiness. How has this come about? Intellectual laziness, ma...

It struck me this evening that I will be on the ferry back to Britain in just four weeks time. When I read the news I cannot work up any enthusiasm about the thought. The British goverment has got the economy into a complete mess and made everyone poorer in the process. They have failed in their fundamental duty. The terrifying thought is that the Conservatives would have done no better. Can anyone be blamed? The politicians? Perhaps. They are only trying to do what people want. So came the rise of the focus group, which turned leaders into followers. What about the experts who advise the politicians? Partly, because economics turned from being a developing science into semi-quackery some time around 1885. Then again, people have freely fought to get onto the "property ladder", without thinking it was riddled with woodworm. Many imagined they could make a fast buck, as house prices rose by the week. And borrowed more than their houses were worth, or against the rising value o...

I have been looking back over my previous blogs from a year or so back. At the time, I notice that the main economc concerns were about unaffordable housing and its rising costs. In one of my comments, I suggested that there was a crash imminent. My first on Northern Rock was in mid September, and soon after I noted that it was the harbinger of the major economic collapse that is now under way. How many of the professionals got that right? The most accurate predictions, as usual, came from people like myself who subscribe to the economic analysis developed by Henry George in the 1870s. It is not a matter of being a genius, but simply of following the most reliable body of theory available. There is no satisfaction in getting predictions like this right. We are all poorer as a result of the British government's reckless policies, as becomes evident when one is exchanging one's UK pounds into petrocurrencies like the Norwegian kronor. The pound was a petrocurrency once, but unlik...

Unlimited toilet paper! Originally uploaded by Savages911 And so the UK Pound slides down, now against both the Euro and the Dollar too, which was itself in trouble only weeks ago. Since the Euro has lost value against goods and services, so matters are much worse than they seem. The government does not know what to do. In the short term it cannot do anything. If the interest rate is put up, it will hold the value of the £ but aggravate recession. If it goes down, it will aggravate inflation. The mistake was made a decade ago, when it was decided to use interest rates as the means for achieving price stabiity. Of couse it did not work. There were people who said this at the time. Come the end of the boom cycle and the government finds itself powerless, since all options must fail. I do not blame the government particularly. A Conservative government would have been in the same predicament. I blame the academics who promote false theories of economics, as they have done since the rise ...

House of Commons interior (parliamentary copyright) Members of the British House of Commons sit opposite each other in facing rows. The layout was inherited from the middle ages, when the first meetings were held in a chapel with a similar layout. There is a government and an opposition, and the confrontational approach is reinforced by the first-past-the-post electoral system. In an interview a few weeks ago, one MP praised the system as ensuring that everything gets properly discussed and both sides of every question are aired and thrashed out. He referred to its origin in the arts of debate developed in classical Greece and Rome. Confrontation is not a good principle and in a fast-changing world it is not serving the country well. There are usually more than two sides to an issue. Confrontation leaves no room for a third point of view. Worse still, such a system absolutely prevents a shifting of the fundamental terms of any argument, since both parties to the debate are sharing the ...

If the Republican McCain gets elected, nothing much will change. But then nothing much is expected. What if Obama wins? He is still committed to the futile action in Afghanistan. He will also inherit the economic problems that have bubbled up. What will he actually do about those? He utters fine words but seems to have no policies that would address the USA's problems. A bit like Tony Blair in 1997, then. Expect nothing from him either.

Den här försök till översättningen är baserad på ”What is Land Value Taxation” som kan hittas här . Tyvärr är den felaktig eftersom min Svensk är hemskt dåligt. Om du kan hjälpa med att kontrollera, kan du kontakta mig på henry.bn{at}googlemail.com. Tack. Jordvärdeskatt är en sätt genom att regeringen får intäkter genom en årlig skatt pǻ årshyrans värde av jord. Jorvärdeskatten ersätter nuvarande skatter. Det är inte en skatt till. Det är en enkel sätt som kan användas för att lätta många stora sociala och ekonomiska problem till exempel transportproblemet, bostadsproblemet, arbetslöshet, fattigdom osv. Hur går det till? Varje områdes värde ska vara mätas ganska ofta – till exempel en gång om året och åtminstone varje femte år. Skatten måste betalas en gång om året. Summan räknas av en bråkdel av områdens värde. Det beror inte på ytan. ”Jord” betyder bara landområdet, utan bebyggelse. Allt ignoreras: byggnader, vägar och avlopp inom området, grödor och odlade trä. Var det gäller ...

Semaphore Signal bracket, Merchants' Quay, Workington Originally uploaded by russell_w_b The radio-based European Train Management Sytem should in due course replace traditional railway signals using lights on poles next to the track. Instead, train drivers will refer to a display inside their cab. The difficulty is that the specification keeps on changing. It is now up to version 2.3.0D, though that is not presently available. A trial system on the Cambrian line is being installed to an earlier version of ERTMS which will now need to be “migrated” to the new one when the trial becomes operational next year.