AN OUTSIDE VIEW

"The door was closed... for fear of the Jews". Nevertheless, Jesus, the Risen Christ, came and stood among them. The phrase, in this week's Gospel (John 20:19) is there to make the express point that the post-resurrection Jesus does not have a normal physical body but one that can pass through closed doors. On the other hand, the post-resurrection accounts tell of Jesus having a wounded body, with pierced hand, feet and sides, and one that eat normal food. Thus, the appearances of Jesus between the Resurrection and the Ascension are paradoxical. But what is this bit about the Jews? It makes me uneasy. All the disciples inside the room were Jews. So which Jews is St John referring to, that the disciples were afraid of? Clearly, it is the religious authorities. Unfortunately, unless the matter is thought about, the opprobrium rubs off onto all Jews, which is understandable but absurd, untheological and ultimately leads to hatred. Christian preachers need to make the poin...

I have drawn attention several times to the falling value of the Pound against the Euro, which was worth about €1.50 when the Euro was instituted in 2002, €1.40 last summer and has now slid to €1.27, a drop of over15% in less than a year. At last the issue is being noticed. There was talk on the radio this morning of allowing it to fall to 1 pound to the Euro, a devaluation of one third since 2002. In any case it should not be forgotten that the Euro has been subject to inflation of around 15% over the same period. This recent fall in the value of the £ against the € will quickly show up in higher prices in the shops, though it is good news for British producers and manufacturers, and exporters in particular. Personally, I suspect that the Euro will itself drop before long, which will lead to a flight of investors into gold and commodities. It is a pity that Gordon Brown sold half the UK's gold reserves when the metal was at its rock bottom price, as they could have been sold now...

The Government is changing the empty property relief from business rates by applying the full business rate to properties that have been empty for three months or more – and removing the exemption from industrial and warehouse property so that the full rate will be applied if they have been empty for six months or more. These reforms will take effect from 1 April 2008. In an interview on the radio this morning, Liz Peace, spokesman for the British Propery Federation, suggested that it could lead to a resurgence of what is known as "Constructive Vandalism" such as de-roofing, in order to avoid the tax. It could also encourage developers to defer completion of new buildings. Peace claimed that the rules were unfair as the average time for a re-let was 24 months. If I heard this correctly, it is incredible, as it shows that whilst owners obviously want to keep their premises let, they are willing to wait a considerable time to squeeze the highest possible rents from their proper...

The altar was decorated again for the Easter Vigil on Saturday night. The big candlesticks are used at festive periods. The rest of the time we have the Pugin pattern candlesticks. One of them has got bent because someone knocked it off the altar in the middle of Mass one Sunday morning. If the altar had been in its proper position against the east end of the church, the accident would not have happened, so I would take it as a sign from the almighty that He is displeased with the altar being where it is and wants it moved back to its original place. But at least with the proper frontal the altar looks better than I have ever seen it.

Why do these periodic booms and slumps occur? According to Paul Ormerod, writing in the Sunday Times , it is all due to the summation of people's optimism and pessimism. Well, it's a theory, but there is a more plausible explanation, which is that it is due to the interaction between the land market and the banking system. Put simply, booms turn to slumps when the capital values (selling prices) of land are driven up to the point that the actual yields (rentals), as a percentage of those capital values, are unacceptably low. What drives up these land prices is indeed optimism, the expectation first, that capital values will continue to rise and second, that the rentals that ultimately underpin those capital values, will also keep on rising. The latter expectation is ill-founded and the capital values are themselves boosted to unreasonably high levels as the banks become recklessly willing to lend for land purchase by recklessly willing borrowers with unrealistic expectations of...

Catholic Labour MPs are refusing to support the government's bill to facilitate research with embryos. Are they slaves of the church, incapable of independent thought, or what? Research with embryos could well produce useful information. It might even lead to the discovery of cures for serious and presently incurable diseases. But is that reason enough to permit such research? Immoral means should not be used to obtain scientific information. Experiments on prisoners in German and Japanese concentration camps during World War 2 is an example of immoral means being used to obtain information. It is wrong to kill a person or carry out operations on that person which could harm them. It is better to forgo the information. But what is immoral about embryo research? An embryo is just a blob of jelly, surely? The problem comes down to the question of when does a human life begin? It is obviously before the time of birth, but the difficulty is in establishing when. Any time other than the...

In Catholic churches there are normally lots of flowers and candlesticks, and the altar is covered with a cloth and other decorations. But not on Good Friday or on Easter Saturday before the vigil service. Then everything is removed and the church is bare, like this, the altar having been stripped after Mass in the evening on Maundy Thursday. It is differences that create meanings. The liturgy is a highly sophisticated semiotic system. Our parish priest has got the measure of it and so, following the example of the Pope, is reintroducing practices which have long been abandoned.

The economies of northern towns are falling behind their southern counterparts because transport links to the big cities of Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle are inadequate, according to a study by the Centre for Cities thinktank. There is a comment on the report in the Guardian. The study focuses on the poor local public transport and road links in the satellite towns around cities such as Manchester and Leeds, compared to those with better connections, and, more generally, in comparison with London and the south-east. Average pay is lower where transport connections are bad and the report argues the case for improvements. What the study fails to mention is the sky-high housing prices - in reality, land values - in the prosperous areas of the UK, which gobble up much of the advantage of the economic benefits of better transport. Suppose, for a moment, that substantial investment was made in transport around, say, Manchester, leading to higher pay and improved economic performance. Th...

The economies of northern towns are falling behind their southern counterparts because transport links to the big cities of Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle are inadequate, according to a study by the Centre for Cities thinktank. There is a comment on the report in the Guardian. The study focuses on the poor local public transport and road links around cities such as Manchester and Leeds, compared to those in London and the south-east, and gives this as a reason for lower average pay in those areas. What it fails to mention is the sky-high housing prices - in reality, land values - in the prosperous areas, which gobble up much of the advantage of the economic benefits of better transport. Suppose, for a moment, that substantial investment was made in transport around, say, Manchester, leading to higher pay and improved economic performance. This would quickly push up land values, with higher house prices, and higher commercial and residential rents. In other words, the benefit of the...

Parliament , originally uploaded by haleyhughes . It is only in recent years that the proceedings of parliament have been broadcast. To listen to the behaviour of British politicians is not edifying. They sound like adolescent schoolboys trying to score points off each other. Though they are old enough to know better, rowdy confrontation is often all that seems to be happening. Hardly ever is there a sense of there being a group of people trying to work together, approaching problems from different points of view and attempting to come to decisions which will achieve the best results all-round. They are not listening to each other. They are just shouting each other down a lot of the time. In such an atmosphere, sensible solutions cannot emerge. Comparison with the Riksdag is instructive. What a way to run a country.

Are the present troubles just a crisis of confidence or is there something real going on? "Credit" comes from the Latin word "credo", meaning "I believe", and refers to the trust that has to exist between individuals and companies in order for the economic process to function. And so, to the extent that the economy depends on credit, the collapse in confidence is itself a real economic effect. But there is something more substantial going on as well. For production to take place, three factors must be available and brought together. These are Land, Labour and Capital. The yield to land is called Rent. Essentially, it is the productive advantage of the site or location and appears as an income stream. Analysis of a slump The fundamental value of a piece of land is this income stream. The purchase of land is in principle the purchase of an income stream, the rental value. And if that were all there was to it, land prices would be such that ratio between rent...

Day after day the newspapers are full of reports about problems with the banks. The £ continues to fall. The US dollar likewise. Every few days another skeleton falls out of the cupboard. This is the beginning of the next big crash. Some commentators say that it will be worse than 1929. I would not go so far as to suggest that but will not be surprised. On 16 September last year I wrote ON THE ROCKS , about the Northern Rock collapse and THIS about the likely consequences. It gives me no pleasure to see the predictions coming to pass. This is no mere crisis of confidence but something happening in the real economy. Expect to see vacant sites, boarded-up shops, closed factories, growing unemployment and all the other marks of a full-blown depression. It was all avoidable. Indeed, any country following the right policies could have spared itself much of the misery. But the time to act would have been ten years ago. The right policies applied now could get any country that did so into re...

A common scene on our street early on Sunday mornings.

Our parish priest has followed the example of Rome and is reinstating traditional practices in the liturgy, beginning with regular confession - he encourages people NOT to take communion unless they are in a state of grace and makes himself freely available for confession. This year, for the first time probably since the 1960s, the processional cross was decorated with greenery and (below) the ugly altar now has a frontal in the correct liturgical colour and for Holy Week is veiled in purple. An other innovation is to spread the candlesticks across the altar instead of bunching them up at each end, to direct attention away from the priest, pending a reordering which will make it easier for Mass to be celebrated with priest and people all facing in the same direction.

At the other end of the newspaper spectrum, though also from the Murdoch press, is the Times. This too was unenlightening. Its property section has the title "Bricks and Mortar", which is misleading as the most important thing about it is the land purchase and sale opportunities. "Little in the Budget to help the majority of would-be homeowners" ran the headline, critical of the Chancellor's decision to leave Stamp Duty much as it was. Now Stamp Duty is a very bad tax, but not for the reasons that are usually given. It is a tax on moving and therefore discourages people from moving. This gums up the market and encourages people to stay in accommodation long after it has ceased to be suitable for them. Which in turn creates a shortage, depriving those at a different stage of life, for whom that accommodation is exactly what is needed. But whilst abolishing Stamp Duty would be of indirect benefit to everyone by freeing-up the market in general, it would not help f...

Also in the Sun was an article about one of our boys, who was on the same flight back to Britain as Prince Harry. The is a picture of a fit young man called Ben who was talented at sport but has lost an arm and a leg in a "horrific" landmine explosion in Afghanistan, just before his 21st birthday. One wonders when landmine explosions are not horrific, but the picture shows Ben in his "before" condition. He has has four major operations lasting up to ten hours each. A few years ago I advised a young man in the Swimming Club against a career in the army, which he was contemplating. It was nothing to do with pacifism - I am not a pacifist - but that the army is abused for the aggrandaisement of politicians in pursuit of their dotty ideas. I think, and hope, he took the advice, as the last time I saw him he was working as a lifeguard. Blair deserves to go down in history as having caused much trouble due to his delusions of grandeur, imagining himself as some kind of sa...

Not having seen a British newspaper for a couple of weeks, I browsed through a few on the way back from Harwich. The Sun criticised the budget for hitting Britain's hard-pressed motorists under Labour's "war on Mondeo Man". It claimed to have found the only person in Britain who LIKES the Budget - a non-smoking teetotal bike-riding woman from Leeds who works as a fitness instructor. Judging from her photograph, she looked pretty good on it, incidentally, which is some sort of advertisement for the lifestyle, especially in comparison with the fat ugly men shown on the same page, who were complaining about the extra cost of drinking and driving.

I arrived back in Britain at Harwich. This is quite a pleasant way to come and go. But you arrive on the station platform just in time to miss your train to London and have to wait an hour for the next one. Perfect miss-timing. The ferry and the train companies obviously do not talk to each other. As it turned out, this was quite convenient as it reminded me I needed to book a return trip back to Denmark. Down on the station platform, all the digital clocks are out of order and look like they have been that way for years. Pride in the job? What is that?

Apse, Hagia Sophia , originally uploaded by vittoriosa . The argument against Israel's existence is that the land was taken by force and they ought to give it back to the previous occupants. If one accepts the argument then Turkey should return Constantinople to Greece. It was, after all, bombarded by the Turks and the inhabitants massacred in 1453 so this is obviously an unjust occupation just like Israel. Perhaps the Israelis should offer to depart from their country on condition that the Turks hand back Constantinople. I think they would be safe to assume that the offer would never be taken up.

Buddhist monks, Potala Square, Lhasa, Tibet , originally uploaded by iancowe . It is strange how the oppression in Tibet by the Chinese does not attract the same sympathy for the Tibetans as the Palestinians get. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), for example, had nothing on their web site on the subject - in fact, their silence is deafening. If the Palestinians had support the kind of leadership shown by the Dalai Lama, the problem would have disappeared long ago, and to that extent, their continuing suffering is something they are bringing on themselves. But that seems to be the Moslem way.

DSCN8919 , originally uploaded by Sou'wester . An idea whose time has come?

Europe's most expensive real estate , originally uploaded by Bēn . British tax dodgers will soon find a way round the Chancellor's latest attempt at a clamp-down. Like this, perhaps There is no limit to people's ingenuity. Living in Monte Carlo would not be my cup of tea, but people are mobile. If governments try to tax them, they will dodge. Land, on the other hand, is fixed and cannot be removed to a tax haven or hidden. If governments base their revenue-raising on land holding, then they will not lose their revenue through tax avoidance. If you see this and have the Chancellor's ear, could you remind him, please?

Today's UK budget is being billed as "giving priority to tackling child poverty." Apparently, ministers define the child poverty target as ensuring "no children live in a household earning less than 60% of national mean income, before housing costs". How strange to exclude housing costs, since this is the biggest single living expense, but then the whole concept of poverty definitions is dubious. I used to work in Catford, a poor part of South London. Yet customers who were obviously not well off had their trolleys piled high with expensive prepared junk, costing several times more than the basic ingredients. Like tinned potatoes, for heaven's sake. The food industry wants people to buy these things, which are called "added value products", though really they are subtracted-value products. This stupidity is not confined to poor working class families. The middle classes are no better. Marks and Spencer's branches now have yards and yards of she...

Woodham's Scrapyard Barry South Wales 1975 , originally uploaded by loose_grip_99 . This streamlined locomotive of the Battle of Britain/West Country class was designed by the engineer Bulleid for the Southern Railway during World War 2. It went to the scrapyard in its original form with a streamlined casing, which, as the photograph shows, conceals a conventional locomotive boilder underneath. But most locomotives of the type and all the larger Merchant Navy class were rebuilt with the air smooth casing removed - it was considered a nuisance as it obstructed access. The same happened to the LMS streamlined locomotives, while the Gresley streamliners also had some of the streamlining removed for access and to prevent overheating. The other problem with these locos was the special chain driven valve gear which ran in an oil bath and there where incidents when the oil caught fire. So the rebuilds had conventional valve gear. But they had outside admission piston valves and the...

Over the past few years there has been a resurgence in conflict between religious and political interests. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s problems following his comments on the role of Sharia Law in Britain were one aspect of the problem. Controversies have also surfaced around so-called “gay marriage” legislation, proposed changes in abortion law and the rules governing scientific research on stem cells, embryos and reproduction. Developments in bio-technology mean that the latter issues are going to come under repeated scrutiny, whilst a related area of dispute concerns what are referred to as “end-of-life” issues such as euthanasia on the one hand and the practice of prolonging life through the use of technology to keep people barely alive, which spills over into the care of people who are old, frail and have perhaps lost their mental faculties. Concern amongst religious groups tends to focus on these topics, but with varying degrees of clarity, consistency and logic. Religion in Br...

"Only the little people pay tax" was the phrase famously uttered by American millionaire Leona Helmsley when caught out for tax dodging. It was the title of a piece on the privileges enjoyed by the non-domiciled residents, written by Martin Wolf in the Finanical Times last Friday (7 March). In his view, their privileges are unjustified. What he failed to pick up was the possibility that is that there could be an underlying problem with the tax system itself. And nowhere in the course of the present debate on tax evasion and related issues has the point been made in any of the papers, neither in editorial comment nor in letters from readers. Taxes are indeed a deterrent against whatever is taxed - windows, smoking, drinking, betting, etc. In some cases, that is their aim and purpose. But modern taxes fall primarily on work and enterprise, which cannot be right, since their effect is to impoverish. And they are levied primarily on people and companies, which is no longer practi...

christian democrats , originally uploaded by friendly-fire . I came across a blog recently which was highly critical, quite reasonably, of the Swedish Christian Democratic party, on the grounds that it had been giving support to policies that compromised Christian principles. The solution, in the author’s view, is to establish a new party. From a British perspective, the notion of a Christian Democratic party on the Western European model is alien. All three of the British political parties draw on a variety of roots. The Conservatives have long included a strand of Catholic/Anglican tradition, represented by MPs such as the late Enoch Powell, a High Anglican, Norman St John Stevas, a Roman Catholic, Chris Patten, a liberal Roman Catholic, and Anne Widdicombe, a former Anglican and convert to Catholicism. The Liberals grew out of the Whig party but there were Quaker and Nonconformist adherents. Labour, too, had Methodist and other Nonconformist support in its early days, and wa...

I find it easier to comment on British politics from a safe distance away. What struck me as interesting today were the Liberal Democrats' spring conference in Liverpool and what George Osborne, shadow chancellor, had to say about the kind of budget he would introduce if he were the real chancellor instead of Alistair Darling. The LibDem leader, Nick Clegg, is critical of the winner-takes-all electoral system which sustains Britain's two-party system and squeezes out alternative views. It is not going to change, for the same reason that turkeys do not vote for Christmas. That is the way that Britain will always be unless something drastic were to happen that would force reform, but in that case it is unlikely that would be for the better. It is probably a more productive use of energy to stand back and really try to understand what is going on and attempt to influence opinion from the sidelines rather than get sucked in to a bad system. As for the shadow chancellor - the depre...

National Express HST , originally uploaded by Cabert . This photograph illustrates the problem faced by those trying to find a replacement for the Inter-City 125 trains. The train is diesel powered although the line is electrified. This train is probably going to Aberdeen, so it will run the 400 miles to Edinburgh under the wires and then continue over the non-electrified part of the route. It would probably be worth extending the electrification to Aberdeen and it may be that the Scottish parliament will give this the go-ahead. But these trains also run to Bristol, Penzance, Plymouth and Cardiff, and also over other routes which are not likely to be electrified because the civil servants who are now in control believe that some new form of power will be available. If this were to happen, they think any money spent on electrification will be wasted. But so far, the hoped-for new traction system still has to be invented and so the trains will have diesel power for operation over n...

Stonehenge #1 , originally uploaded by seadipper . This is the best view you will get of Stonehenge. If you try to go closer, you will have to ignore the car park and a busy road which runs close by. The monument these days conveys little sense of magic. There was a proposal to bury the road in a tunnel but now the government has buried the scheme, having concluded that the £500 million bill is too much, and poor value for money. It is a pity, but I am inclined to agree. It is just a piece of expensive tinkering. The press of people and traffic around Stonehenge is a symptom of a bigger problem. This is best seen by looking at a map of Britain and drawing a line starting at Bournemouth and taking in Bristol, Birmingham, Greater London and the south coast conurbation This encloses an area that contains about 80% of Britain’s population. Within this zone, paradoxically, people, industry and other facilities are relatively spread out, to the point that huge numbers of are dependent...

Royal Albert Hall , originally uploaded by VT_Professor . The row over the inaccessibility of the Proms was strange. Would it be too far-fetched to imagine that Culture Minister Margaret Hodge was set up? If working class children are being cut off from what in Japan is referred to by the useful descriptive term “Western Art Music”, a major part of the blame must be placed on schools which have dumbed-down the music curriculum. This has come about as middle class teachers have come to belief that working class culture should be given its place, and that it is somehow demeaning and oppressive to promote middle class art forms. Formerly, many children were exposed to classical music though religious education, but the traditional hymns that were current fifty years ago have been largely replaced by banal, folk-style tunes. Catholic children were particularly privileged, as they were routinely taught Gregorian chant out of the book called “Plainchant for Schools”, and could encount...

On the Dana Sirena , originally uploaded by seadipper . DFDS ferries are an easy way to travel to Scandinavia, Northern Germany and the Baltic countires. The boats are comfortable, the food is excellent and the charges are reasonable. Departures from Harwich and Esbjerg are in the early evening and arrivals are around midday. As the crossing takes about 18 hours and the boat is also carrying cargo, I doubt if the carbon footprint is excessive. DFDS Ferries

Free Gaza - Please support if you can , originally uploaded by Wandering Light . The Palestian cause gets lots of support from well-meaning people in the west, who stand outside shops like Marks and Spencer and ask customers to boycott Israeli goods. News reports talk about collective punishment and the high death toll in Gaza due to Israeli reprisals against the rocket attacks. However... The inhabitants of Gaza voted for Hamas, an organisation that expressly denies Israel's right to exist at all. They knew what they were doing when they cast their votes. In other words, they would like Israel to vanish into thin air. Had they the power to make this happen, they undoubtedly would. It would be a re-run of the Constantinople massacre of 1453, and nobody would come to the aid of the Israelis until it was too late for anything but expressions of regret. Next... if a French government did nothing but give tacit support to groups of irregulars who lobbed rockets across the Eng...