AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Overhead Electrification Contractors 1 , originally uploaded by jovike . Network Rail has been fined £14 million because works carried out over the Christmas and New Year period at Liverpool Street Station, Glasgow and Rugby were not completed on time. What is the point of fining a public sector company? It is taxpayers' and passengers' who will have to pay. It may be possible for NR to pass the fine on to its consultants, but I doubt if that will happen. The reason for the over-run, apparently, is the shortage of qualified people to put up the overhead electric wiring, like those in the picture. If there was even a small rolling programme of electrification, there would have been more trained staff available, but it turned out that workers were being poached between sites by team leaders desperate to get the work completed.

Next year's Council Tax charges will be announced soon and there are already complaints that it should be replaced by a tax based on "ability to pay". Which means Local Income Tax. The only trouble is that Income Tax is not based on "ability to pay". Far from it. If you can afford it you will pay for advice on how to exploit all the loopholes. Because taxes payable by individuals or companies, based on something called "income", inevitably contain loopholes. Moreover, definitions of "income" are ultimately arbitrary. It cannot be otherwise, partly because the boundary between the formal cash economy and the informal family and community economy is blurred. I fix my plumber's computers and he fixes my central heating system and, roughly, it balances out, give or take the odd bottle of whisky at Christmas. Then again, I can ask friends to give me a bill now and again so that they can claim expenses to set against their other income. All thi...

Tesco Britain 1 , originally uploaded by replicam . Tesco has come under criticism for tax avoidance. It seems they have hived off their property to a company in the Cayman Islands and avoiding UK taxes. Good luck to them. People should stop tut-tutting about the tax dodgers and aim their anger at the real culprits - the government and its advisors. It is the tax system that creates the dodging opportunities in the first place. People and companies are mobile. Property is fixed. If the tax liability went with the land ownership, then nobody could escape it by syphoning funds off into associate companies based in tax havens. It is up to the Chancellor to sort out the problem, which is inherent in the system and will not be resolved by endlessly attempting to plug loopholes.

Red 19 , originally uploaded by greendrz . I was pleased to hear that the plan for a chain of supercasinos has been dropped and now there will not be any. People in Manchester are disappointed but I am mystified as to how a supercasino would have promoted economic regeneration. Gambling produces absolutely nothing and its effect is to syphon off money from the gamblers to the big companies that run these operations, mostly based in London or abroad. Far from leading to economic regeneration, it would have had the opposite effect and I am astonished that anyone in authority thought otherwise. There are two ways to promote sustainable economic regeneration in depressed areas, which are normally that way because of poor access. The first is to construct transport infrastructure and the second is to change the tax system so that it reflects geographical advantantage and disadvantage, and captures the land value increases that occur when infrastructure improvements take place. If ...

The rights of part-time and women workers have come under scrutiny, with proposals for fresh legislation to give added protection. Nobody seems to ask why it is that labour is nearly always negotiating from a position of weakness in the employment market, and consequently feels in need of protection. Nor are the wider implications of this protection understood - that it makes employers reluctant to employ. Protective legislation does not address the underlying causes which leads to the exploitation of workers in the first place.

Shoreham Airport , originally uploaded by seadipper . A Virgin aircraft has made a flight, powered partly by biofuel. Is this part of a sustainable future for aviation? No. It takes a huge amount of energy to just get an aircraft off the ground. Even the light aircraft in the picture are greedy little fuel gobblers, though things are not quite so bad if you go on a long flight in a straight line. As a means of mass transport, the days of aviation with heavier-than-air machines are numbered. In fact, I would go further and suggest that the era of cheap travel over distances of thousands of miles is just a short-lived historical aberration.

A friend of mine came round last night for help in setting up her new laptop computer. This came complete with Microsoft XP and Office and other things ready loaded, but to keep it going for more than the 30 day trial period she had to buy a licence. I pointed out that she could have done everything she wanted using Open Office, legally and free of charge, but she preferred to cough up and use the Microsoft product. So the 25 letter security code had to be entered. I had never set up a computer with Microsoft on it before. There are lots of screens with boxes and fields that have to be filled in or ticked, then you wait while it goes on line and verifies things. It all takes nearly as long as a Linux installation which once you have got it started, you can go away and leave to get on with its business. And you do not have to bother with the anti-virus software nonsense. It all goes to show the power of advertising and the confidence that people will have in a brand label. I haven't...

Tax scams, legal and otherwise, have been in the news over the past few days. First there was the business over the wealthy Germans who have salted away their savings in Lichtenstein to avoid paying taxes. Accused of aiding and abetting tax fraud - it is not a crime in Lichtenstein - Crown Prince Alois has stood his ground, pointing out, quite rightly, that if Germany was a more direct democracy with a better tax system, perhaps its citizens would not cheat. It now transpires that the German authorities had bought their information from a whistleblower who has also been paid for information by British investigators. High tax Sweden has also lost out from wealthy individuals, such as Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, who feels that he cannot afford to live in his home country and have taken up residence abroad. The Non-Dom tax debate In the meantime, in Britain, a debate is raging over whether the so-called non-domiciled - wealthy foreigners - should continue to enjoy their tax privilege...

The government assured everyone that 24-hour drinking would lead to more relaxed attitudes and cut down on the problems caused by the old restricted drinking hours. Seemingly it has not, which shows yet again that practices which work well in some countries might not necessarily be adopted in others without trouble.

Winter wheat on the South Downs , originally uploaded by seadipper . The farming programme today talked about the rising cost of wheat and its increasing scarcity. What is happening? First, there is increased demand, apparently due to increased meat eating in India and China, which means that more land must be devoted to growing food to feed to animals; second, there is the amount of land being used to grow biofuels; and third, changes in the weather have led to crop failures. This makes me want to tear my hair out. If animals are kept according to proper principles, they make farming more efficient, by eating left-overs and grazing land which cannot be used for crops. Cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks and other farm animals go out and find their own food. That is the whole point of farming them. If farmers are buying food for their animals on any more than an occasional basis, they are keeping too many of them. Pig farmers, apparently, are in trouble due to rising costs of foo...

The government has come up with proposals to make immigrants pay for British citizenship. This, it is said, will raise tens of millions of pounds. "which will pay for the public services they use". Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the proposals, this amount is so trivial as to hardly be worth the trouble of collecting, and it makes one question the numerical literacy of politicians.

Well done Brighton and Hove Council #1 , originally uploaded by seadipper . A committee of MPs has criticised councils for their lack of enthusiasm about a pilot scheme to charge people for the amount of rubbish they put out for the dustmen. Rubbish is left all over the place all the time even when it is taken away free, so what will things be like if people have to pay according to the amount of rubbish they produce? Most rubbish is packaging. The cost of disposal should be incorporated in the price so that you pay for rubbish when you buy it. This would create a fund for it to be collected with no questions asked. Since the cost of disposal would thereby be reflected in the price, it would create incentives all-round, to be economical with packaging and to recycle and re-use containers. Other rubbish such as metals and electronic scrap is potentially a source of valuable commodity elements, which the big mining companies are happy to dig away half a mountain to obtain. Re-use ...

Well done Brighton and Hove Council #1 Originally uploaded by seadipper . A committee of MPs has criticised councils for their lack of enthusiasm about a pilot scheme to charge people for the amount of rubbish they put out for the dustmen. Rubbish is left all over the place all the time even when it is taken away free, so what will things be like if people have to pay according to the amount of rubbish they produce? Most rubbish is packaging. The cost of disposal should be incorporated in the price so that you pay for rubbish when you buy it. This would create a fund for it to be collected with no questions asked. Since the cost of disposal would thereby be reflected in the price, it would create incentives all round to be economical with packaging and to recycle and re-use containers. Other rubbish such as metals and electronic scrap is potentially a source of valuable commodity elements, though many items could actually be kept in service much longer than they actually are - I recen...

Post Tower yellow - (HDR) , originally uploaded by mapled (beaten up by censorship) retired . The head of Deutsche Post has been accused of tax fraud, using Lichtenstein as a haven. Now the thing has come to light, it is turning out that a lot of wealthy Germans are doing the same. Good luck to them say I. The German Chancellor just needs to remember the people and companies are mobile whereas property is fixed. With globalisation of corporations and the super-rich, if governments do not want to let them get off scot-free, this principle is more important than ever. Land cannot be hidden or demolished or removed to a tax haven and it is straightforward to levy and collect a tax on land. If the owner does not pay up, then, as a last resort, it can be confiscated and sold to pay the tax due. People, especially politicians, should not complain when people and corporations try to avoid paying tax. There is a simple solution and it is up to governments to apply it.

After January swim , originally uploaded by seadipper . The swimming club lock was glued up again this morning - this has been happening about twice a week since Christmas. Who could it be? Obviously someone with a grudge, and some time and money to waste. So we walked along towards Kemp Town and gathered up some of the wood that is still lying about. The workmen complained even though we were saving them a job. They said it was the council's wood. We lit our fire and had our swim. There is a strong offshore wind and it was close to the water's edge, so nobody was disturbed. Then the council's seafront officer came along on his quad bike to say we shouldn't be doing that. I pointed out that if there was proper law enforcement on the sea front we would be using the swimming club premises for which we had paid instead of having to change on the beach in the cold. I also reminded him of the lack of action last week when the jet skiers were about. It would be nice...

Sainsbury's Empire , originally uploaded by sonicdante . The Office of Fair Trading is concerned about supermarkets' pricing behaviour. The dominance of the four supermarket giants Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons is to be investigated again, the third time in seven years. The stores control almost 75% of the £120bn grocery market and the OFT is asking the Competition Commission to investigate. The watchdog said there was evidence that the buying power of big supermarkets could distorts competition and producers complain that they are squeezed down to selling at rock bottom prices. There are also concerns about planning rules and supermarket land holdings. There is an underlying problem here which is being ignored. Where land is freely available, it is easy for individuals to start up in business, whether as producers or retailers. But where all the land is occupied, then ownership is effectively monopolised - unless there is a holding cost on land, such as a...

The newly-declared independence of Kosovo is likely to have far-reaching and possibly dangerous repercussions. The country was for several hundred years Serbian and Christian. It fell into the orbit of the Ottoman empire in 1389, following the defeat at the Battle of Kosovo. After this came centuries of oppression and islamicisation. In fact, the spread of the Ottoman empire did not end until 1683, when the Turkish armies who were besieging Vienna were defeated by armies led by the Polish King King John III Sobieski, who successfully attacked from the high ground above Vienna. The defeat of the Ottomans led to the rise of the Austro-Hungarian empire as a Balkan power, ending with the events of 1914 and after. The politics of the Balkans remains in essence what it was in 1914. The Catholic Croatians look to the west, whilst the Orthodox Serbs see Russia as their protector. The apparently successful attempt to split off a Islamicised part of Serbia was inevitably going to arouse anger in...

The eventual nationalisation of Northern Rock was likely as soon as the decision to bail them out was made by the government shortly after the crisis blew up. That was the logic of situation. It will, of course, be problematic for various reasons. What are the politics of repossession of people's homes by a nationalised bank? There is a substantial financial risk here, because Northern Rock was offering 125% mortages; what will the value of the collateral be if house prices take a really big tumble? The lesson of this seems to be that the private sector is happy to take risk unless there is a prospect of loss, in which case the government is expected to bail out reckless behaviour.

Most people use computers with some version of Windows running on them. This is environmentally unfriendly, because up-to-date versions of Windows such as XP, and even more so, Vista, need an up-to-date computer. But most of the things people do with their computers are undemanding and can be done on five-year old computer using Linux, the main thing being to make sure it has plenty of memory - about 512 megabytes. Sometimes Windows can't be avoided and an effective way of running it is as a virtual machine inside Linux, using VMware. Both Linux and VMware are available free of charge from the internet but I have found installing VMware is tricky. The key to a trouble-free installation of VMware is to use a Linux distribution with all the development packages, including the kernel source, and to install all of them and update them on-line before installing VMware. That way the installation will go smoothly. I have used a variety of Linux distributions but Open Suse seems to be the...

Gris , originally uploaded by Ma1974 . There are problems again with Danish cartoonists. They ought to be more careful. The Saudis might boycott Danish bacon.

Jetskier , originally uploaded by seadipper . The last couple of days have been warm and sunny here in Brighton and some of us thought it would be nice to swim at high tide in the middle of the day instead of early morning, especially as the early morning low tides have been very low indeed, leaving not been enough water to swim in unless you walk out a long way. However... There were a couple of jet skiers the other side of the pier, just a few feet from the shore and we were anxious they would come though on to our beach. So much for having a relaxing swim. When there is the whole of the English Channel to ride their jet skis, why do they have to go on the bit where people go swimming? Of course, it is to show off to the people on the pier. We mentioned it to the Brighton Seafront Officer but he really wasn't interested, claiming he did not have the staff. How about having someone go on the pier with a megaphone? There was no answer to that. But the Council is obviously n...

There was a report today that the government is planning to include five hours of culture a week in the school curriculum. What is happening in schools for the other twenty-five hours a week?

Why is being elected President of the USA regarded as a prize? That is what it was referred to on the news this morning. It is a Cross surely? Why would any sane person want such a burden and what do they really believe they can achieve?

Horses paddling , originally uploaded by seadipper . There was a horrifying piece on the news this morning about how animals are sent on long journeys packed into trucks and the holds of ships, only to be slaughtered on arrival. This disgusting practice should never be happening. It is unnecessary.

When Russia invaded Afghanistan in support of its puppet government in the late 1970s, the west, especially the US, supported the Muhajeddin Islamic freedom fighters. Eventually the Russians gave up and withdrew. Then came the attack on the twin towers and the War on Terror, with an invasion of Afghanistan, with the aim of wiping out Al Quaida. Then came the rise of the Taleban fundamentalists who took over most of Afghanistan and have never been driven out entirely. It is expected that the fight against them will have go continue into the indefinite future. What I would like to know is what is the difference between the Muhajeddin and the Taleban?

I wrote about this a month ago in my blog What's the matter with the experts who have only just noticed?

"Back To The Land" was the title of a letter written in 1881 by Dr Thomas Nulty, Bishop of Meath, to the clergy and laity of his diocese. It is something that contemporary Catholic campaigners for justice and peace would do well to study. Our Land System Not Justified by Its General Acceptance. Anyone who ventures to question the justice or the policy of maintaining the present system of Irish Land Tenure will be met at once by a pretty general feeling which will warn him emphatically that its venerable antiquity entitles it, if not to reverence and respect, at least to tenderness and forbearance. I freely admit that feeling to be most natural, and perhaps very general also; but I altogether deny its reasonableness. It proves too much, Any existing social institution is undoubtedly entitled to justice and fair play; but no institution, no matter what may have been its standing or its popularity, is entitled to exceptional tenderness and forbearance if it can be shown that i...

Rough Sleeping , originally uploaded by seadipper . I have just received the Columban Mission's quarterly news sheet Vocation for Justice. It is, as usual, an infuriating read. The latest issue deals with poverty in the UK, which, as anyone can see if they bother to look, is getting worse for some, with a widening gap between rich and poor. But something that has been around since the late middle ages is not going to respond to an "initiative", nor to the indignation felt at this state of affairs. Sadly, organisations like Church Action on Poverty (CAP) have nothing more to offer, other than prayer and alleviative charity. These are essential, but if concerned people are not willing to get their heads around the problem at a more radical and intellectual level and start asking fundamental questions, nothing can change fundamentally, as it needs to. Unjust Structures The editorial talks about "unjust structures", which is a good start, but what precisely i...

Halal butcher in London I know very little about Sharia Law apart from the fact that some of its provisions sound pretty bloodcurdling. Nor have I studied the Archbishop of Canterbury's statement. I suspect both statements apply to most of those who have rushed to comment on the subject. A comparison was made with the Jewish religious courts which decide certain matters of family law such as divorce, and can also act as arbitrators in civil disputes. A civil divorce is not recognised in Jewish law and nor is a Jewish religious divorce recognised in English law. So an orthodox Jewish couple wishing to divorce will first have to obtain a civil divorce and then apply to the Court of the Beth Din for what is known as a Get. The latter is fairly easy to obtain, and the main restriction is that a divorcee must not marry a member of the Cohen (priestly) dynasty. Any children of such an illicit (in Jewish law) marriage are regarded as outcasts from Judaism (Mamzerim). Civil disputes may ...

The past two months have seen faster change in the economy than I can remember, ever. The warning shot was the Northern Rock collapse and it has proved to be the tip of an iceberg of banking malpractice underpinned by economic mismanagement. Some commentators, such as Fred Harrison , suggest that the trough will occur in 2010. If he is right, and he has an excellent record of accurate prediction, what has been happening is just the beginning of an unravelling of long-established economic structures. There seems to be an cycle of about 18 years, and if one goes with that, the trough will come in two years' time. But this trough will be accompanied by problems with energy, probably with the approach of "Peak Oil" and growing consumption in India and China, and difficulties with economic development inside China, which will compound the effects.

Digby Jones has criticised the government's proposal to tax wealthy foreigners who live in Britain and have up till now enjoyed freedom from UK taxes. He says that the country will lose talent. He has a point, but what he says does not just apply to wealthy foreigners. Nobody should be taxed on their earnings. It isn't necessary. There is another and simpler way for the government to obtain the revenue it needs to run the country, and it would not drive anyone away. The Chancellor should claim the revenue from land rent instead. Land value is created by the actions and presence of the community and should not end up in private pockets anyway. It is strange how envy and greed can blind politicians and commentators to the obvious.

16 October 2007 (1) , originally uploaded by Cle0patra . A recent article in the FT's property section (Bringing the suburbs closer - 3 February) had a feature on how the East London Line Extension will boost property prices in its wake. Places like Brockley, traditionally an area where land values were low because of its poor public transport access, were tipped as the next likely places to boom. Elsewhere in the paper, (Life and Arts - Seaside Saga), was an article on the regeneration of Folkestone, which referred to the expected impact of the new high speed line, and there was a comparison with Margate, which will lose out because the new fast trains will not be stopping there. The East London Line is part of Transport for London's £10 billion investment programme. But further planned extensions have been put on ice as the Treasury has not given the go-ahead. Isn't there something wrong here? This is public money which is ending up in a lottery which leaves some ...

The Bank of England has cut interest rates, as expected, by 0.25%. This is actually a cut of just under 5% in actual interest paid, and it will further reduce the attractiveness of sterling, thereby adding to downward pressure on the exchange rate and adding to the cost of imports, especially food. The Monetary Policy Committee is charged with the task of maintaining inflation below a certain level, not with attempting to prevent a recession - which will in any case prove futile. Seemingly, now that the UK economy is coming under pressure, the resolve is cracking. What is most worrying is the abyss of economic ignorance in the country. A few days ago the Daily Express headline was complaining about the recent increases in food prices. Today, it was calling for cuts in interest rates to relieve the pressure on people with mortgages. It cannot have it both ways.

Amongst the measures in the Scottish budget is one to cut the business rate. This demonstrates economic ignorance of a high order. All that will happen is that business will find their rents going up at the next rent review. It is just a way of giving taxpayers' money away to business landlords. One assumes that is not intentional but you never know.

The government is to make yet another attempt to cut down the number of people out of work and being paid Incapacity Benefit. Governments have tried about four times to get people on Incapacity Benefit back to work, but the numbers of people on benefit have remained resolutely high. The people on Incapacity Benefit have changed, apparently. Typically they used to be manual workers in their fifties, with back trouble or heart conditions which made them unable to do the jobs they had done when they were younger. The kind of jobs that they might have done, such as surface jobs in coal mines, had disappeared, so that, whilst they were theoretically capable of doing some kind of work, nothing suitable was available. In the early 1990s people who were unemployed were encouraged to go on what was then called Invalidity Benefit as it kept the unemployment statistics looking good. But the cost kept rising and the government decided to try to do something about it. The reform that was brought in...

afghanistan , originally uploaded by soldiersmediacenter . It would be nice if, as a result of the war against terror, Afghanistan were to transform itself into a nice democratic country - like Denmark, perhaps. And to stop living off the proceeds of opium production. And so Condoleeza Rice is visiting Britain as part of her campaign to get other NATO countries to pull their weight. It seems to me that a sense of realism would not go amiss. Britain fought in Afghanistan for many years in the nineteenth century. It was futile. The Soviets failed in the 1980s. The terrain puts all conventional armies at a disadvantage. And what exactly is the fight against? The Taleban are about an idea, and ideas of this kind can never be defeated by force of arms. As for the poppy products, first, there is a shortage of the stuff for legitimate medical use, and second, the epidemic of drug taking in western countries is symptomatic of a deeper malaise in our culture. This is not to say that the...

Last year I applied for planning permission to change some windows in a flat in a 1960s block. Most of them have already been changed, without permission. I was refused even though the flat is at the back and cannot be seen from the street. In the reasons for refusal the planners said it was in the Avenues conservation area, whereas in fact it is in another one, the Willett. This is not just a quibble as these 1960s blocks are specifically referred to as spoiling the character of the conservation area. There is a policy in Brighton that windows in buildings which contribute to the conservation area should be put back as they were originally, but it expressly states that it applies to those buildings which contribute to the character of the conservation area. This it clearly does not apply to 1960s buildings in a Victorian area. Perhaps there ought to be a policy for such buildings but there is not, and since the planners have had 20 years to introduce one, it is obviously not a priorit...

Fine 10 000,- , originally uploaded by kalevkevad . We could do with this in Brighton. And more public toilets kept open longer.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi , originally uploaded by oddsock . I was sorry to hear that he died yesterday, in his nineties. His great achievement, forty years ago, was to bring a certain style of interior spirituality to the west. It was a style that had to a great extent been lost from the mainstream Judeo-Christian practice and through his work, people in the west were helped to recover an important strand in their own older tradition. But the task has to be repeated in each generation, and today, two trends can be discerned. One is a crude and strident exteriorised religion, typified by evangelical protestantism of the US variety and by militant Islam, which have much in common with each other. The other, which also has its danger, that being an over emphasis on liturgical style, is traditional orthodox Christianity, of which Russian Orthodoxy and the liturgical movement now in train under pope Benedict, are exemplars of a religion with more potential interiority. But nowadays, the...

The latest New Labour wheeze comes from housing minister Caroline Flint: social housing residents should seek work as a condition of their tenancy. There is certainly a problem in some housing estates that are home to families who have been unemployed for a generation or two. But many of these people have few skills to offer or live in areas where there is little work of any kind. And matters have been aggravated by the one-size-fits-all school system which has levelled pupils down to the standard of the lowest. Nor does it help when the benefits system with its subistence payouts, still leaves many people better off than if they were working and paying tax out of their minimum wages. What is Ms Flint proposing should be done about that? If nothing, why should she expect people to go jobseeking for jobs that are not there, or they could not do, and nobody that would employ them or when they would be worse off than living off their meagre benefits Why don't politicians think before...

For the fifth time this year, Brighton Swimming Club members have been prevented from using their changing room because someone keeps putting superglue in the lock. The most likely suspect is one of the homeless alcoholics who hang about under the pier. Unless it is an inside job. The police were called but are not interested, even though the damage has cost the club hundreds of pounds. But what if he was caught and convicted? Nobody can get the cost of the damage off him, and either he would be sent to prison or given community service, which he would skip anyway. And he might prefer to be in prison, which could well be the best home he has ever had. It is the prevalence of people like that in Brighton that demonstrates how British society is collapsing. There are others responsible too. Brighton and Hove Council has done next to nothing to support sea bathing. There is a ten year wait for beach huts. And by neglecting an important area of the sea front it has provided ample opportuni...

There is a huge variation in the quality of education in Britain's state schools. In stable middle class areas, they are quite good. In areas where people are poor and have a variety of problems, for example in inner city areas, the standard of education is not good. In such areas, teachers may have difficulties in maintaining discipline and the children have little support from their parents. Neighbourhoods within the catchment areas of the better schools are more popular, and this has driven up house prices; if you can afford to live in the catchment area of a good school, your children will get a better education. If you live in the catchment area of a rough school, unless you can afford to go private, your children a likely to have a bad education. This has been the case in many places. Brighton and Hove Council, amongst others, has introduced a lottery system in place of the previous catchment area scheme for its secondary schools, which ensures that every school, indeed every...

An article by Simon Fanshawe in the Brighton local newspaper, The Argus, yesterday, suggests that Brighton deserves a place on a new World Monopoly board. Of course. It follows naturally from the real history of the game. The Argus says that it was designed in 1934 but it actually goes back to 1904, when Elizabeth Magie, a Quaker from Delaware, USA, was granted a patent for a game called The Landlord's Game. She was was a supporter of the Single Tax proposal of the political economist Henry George and the aim of the game was to show how property owners became rich at the expense of impoverished tenants. The present Monopoly game was based on the Landlord's Game, with more up-to-date graphics and the addition of the Chance and Community Chest cards. Henry George, who died in 1891, had devoted his life to trying to explain the paradox whereby some people lived a life of poverty in the midst of great wealth, and his theory had drawn on the work of the famous English economist Dav...