AN OUTSIDE VIEW

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.

Voyager at Tyseley South Junction Originally uploaded by Kevin R Boyd The tilting mechanism on Cross Country’s fleet of 28 class 221 Voyagers is being de-activated. Though it was only used between Oxford and Banbury, it has been a persistent source of problems. The feature will remain on Virgin’s own class 221 fleet, which use the mechanism on the West Coast Main Line to enable them to run at 125mph throughout. The tilt feature adds 8 tons to the weight of each vehicle. A case of ignoring the maxim to keep things simple.

02-23 66544 Ais Gill 1 Originally uploaded by delticalco Thirty years ago this main line was threatened with closure. It kept going, mainly through the efforts of local pressure groups who supported passenger services which provided a basic level of service through the lean years. A minimal repair programme was carried out, mostly to replace rotten wooden sleepers. Then came the West Coast upgrade, when it became an important diversionary route, and then came the Pendolino, which left little room for freight trains. Now the line has filled up with heavy freight trains (above), mostly carrying imported coal from the West of Scotland to the Yorkshire power stations. New track is being laid and new modern signalling installed in a five year project costing nearly £80 million. The moral of the story is to look well ahead and keep options open. Had the line been shut, the cost of reinstatement would have been far more and might not have been feasible at all.

Finland double deck train interior Originally uploaded by seadipper The opening of the new high speed railway between London and the Channel Tunnel last November has led to renewed interest in the idea of constructing one or more high speed railways for travel inside Britain. There is much that needs to be said on this subject. It could turn out to be an expensive prestige scheme of little real benefit. The first and most obvious point is that it is the door-to-door journey that counts, which is why the private car will remain the first choice for most people’s travel, followed by the bicycle and walking for short trips, especially in towns and cities. People will normally use public transport if they live in a city and have chosen not to own a car, or cannot afford one, or if the roads are too congested, or the journey is long and the train or plane is faster or cheaper. For long distance travel, key factors in the choice will be the ease or otherwise of getting to an airport or main...

Isfield Station. The Lavender Line. Originally uploaded by Wastrel UK The 7 1/2 mile long Lewes-Uckfield line was shut in 1969 as part of the Beeching cuts. The closure put an end to through running to Lewes and Brighton and turned the Uckfield line into a long dead-end branch. A short bit in the middle of the route (above), called the Lavender Line was reopened and is runs by a group as a hobby and visitor attraction. Ever since the line closed, there have been attempts at reopening. In the late 1980s, the cost was going to be about £6 million. Since then, as one report has succeeded another but the line has stayed shut, the cost has crept up; figures of ten or twenty million pounds were mentioned a few years ago. The latest estimate is £109 million, which apparently does not meet the criteria for an economic case for reopening. Presumably, the next time a study is done, the cost will be up to nearly double that amount. One wonders about how the economic case was made. Was any attemp...

henry flixing his mussels Originally uploaded by lomokev I was looking at the vital statistics of the Olympic swimming gold medalists. The only one under 6 feet tall was the Japanese breast-stroker, at 5ft 10in. Anyone less than 6ft 4in tall might as well forget about competitive swimming, freestyle. It is a natural consequence of the laws of hydrodynamics. This effect begins with swimmers at school age, favouring the big ones at the expense of the little ‘uns and late developers. No amount of training will make anyone taller. Leaving aside the most important question, whether competitive sport is a desirable and worthwhile activity at all, do those responsible for regulating the sport really want it to exclude everyone apart from those with the right gene?

P3194902 Originally uploaded by Ingy The Wingy This project is another one the Department of Transport and the consultants have got into a deeper and deeper mess with. So far, nearly £10 million have been spend in consultancy fees, and at the end it is likely to end up at about £15 million and still not deliver anything that fully meets the specification and could not have been bought virtually off-the-shelf. The problem is that the Department of Transport has got up a concept for a train that can be almost everything at once. They want light weight, to save energy, 140 mph capability and the ability to operate both with electric power and under some other form of power when running on lines that are not electrified. And very high reliability. Light weight on its own should not be too difficult to achieve. Adopt an efficient form of construction for the body shell and pay attention to the weight of components such as seats, which can add up. Constructional systems such as the mark 3 h...

crowded train thameslink railway Originally uploaded by seadipper The Department of Transport and the consultants it is employing seems to have a habit of getting into a mess over rolling stock procurement. New trains – 1100 new vehicles – are being ordered for Thameslink, to come into service in 2012. The project is in the hands of the Department of Transport. Thameslink, now rebranded under the meaningless name “First Capital Connect”, is a service that attracted crowds of passengers right from the day it opened in the late 1980s, and people have been complaining about it ever since. The route, which links Brighton and Bedford with a through service, runs through the middle of London and serves Luton and Gatwick Airports. It is a long distance service, an airport service and an inner suburban service all at once. The trains were designed to satisfy these diverse requirements and ended up failing to do any of them properly. There are not enough seats, and what there are are cramped a...

För några veckor sedan fick vår svenska klass en mycket konstig övning. Läraren gav ut en sida som visade bilderna av olika människor. Eleverna bad hålla om deras historia, hur människor hade träffats och deras förhållande. Det fanns en kvinna som såg ut som en tant som går i kyrkan på söndagarna. Egentligen är hon en elak kvinna som äger en bordellkedja. ”Tanten” misstankes för allvarliga brott, till exempel mot unga flickor. En ung flicka som såg ut som ett fnask är en kvinnlig polis som jobbar på sedlighetroteln. Hennes arbete är givetvis ganska farlig. En man i medelåldern som såg ut som en revisor är också kriminell. Han har dömts för stort internationell fusk. Han fångades av man som såg ut som en gammal student men egentligen är konsult och arbetar hos polisen som forskare. Han är specialist på databrott. En gammal hippie var också polis. Han är knarkspanare. En av bilderna visade en par klädda i fina kläder, som är bondfångare, och en man som såg ut som en snickare är deras med...

Black & White dog Borry Originally uploaded by andzwe Two years after being elected, the Swedish coalition government is planning a raft of tax reforms. There are to be reductions all round and “black” work is to become legal. Sweden spends a lot on public services, over 50% of GNP being in the public sector. If it is going to improve its defences as well, it is going to have to spend a lot more. So how is this going to work? Presumably somebody has been reading Laffer, who devised the famous Laffer curve which shows that tax yields reach a maximum at a certain rate of tax and decline if tax rates are higher. There is some truth in the argument; it would be expected on theoretical grounds, as most taxes give rise to a deadweight loss, consisting of production that would take place were it not for the tax. The effect takes place at the margin, in that taxation at locations close to the margin has the effect of knocking enterprises at those sites out of production by rendering them...

I rarely comment on international affairs as the issues are too complex, but in this case there are general points to be made. The break-up of the Soviet Empire was a humiliation for the Russians, as many of the countries that became independent had been part of the Tsarist empire for centuries. Others, including the Baltic republics, had enjoyed just a brief period of independence from 1918 to 1938. All of these ex-Soviet countries have ended up with significant Russian minorities. It is also a fact that post-Communist Russia is not turning out to be a very nice country, though that should have been expected. A further complication is that Western Europe is becoming dependent on Russia for its energy supplies. All of which creates problems all-round, and especially for the ex-Soviets. If I was a politician in any of these countries I would want to make sure that my Russians would not become a focus of discontent. If there were any areas with significant concentrations of Russians, I w...

Mass at North Stoke Originally uploaded by seadipper I have just finished a week’s retreat. I stayed in a guesthouse run by a community of nuns. It was very comfortable and good value. My room had a view over a lake. The nuns meet in the church to sing the office four times a day, which they do beautifully, in the vernacular, which unlike the English translations, are true to the Latin. The median age of the sisters is, I would guess, on the wrong side of fifty, which is not disastrous but nevertheless worrying if the continued existence of the community is to be assured. The interesting thing is that this community survived the upheavals of the 1970s, despite, or possibly because it adapted to the changes that followed on from Vatican II. The question that comes to my mind is whether there is a need for further changes in the near future. Most, if not all, of the community members seem to have come from another country, which is not in itself significant, but it must be a disappointm...

Vadstena Originally uploaded by seadipper I am off to Vadstena for a week and will be out of range of the internet so no more postings until 23 August at the earliest.

As predicted, the tallest swimmers are getting the gold medals. Yet people still tell me that it is all a matter of skill and training. Unless a 1.5 metres tall man wins a gold medal in the swimming events, I am not going to be convinced. Or is there a way of training swimmers to become 2 metres tall? If success in swimming and some other events is primarily a matter of inheritance, then the games are the equivalent of a human vegetable show and of no more consequence.

Having a war in Georgia while the Olympic Games is distracting everyone looks like a clever strategy on the part of the Russians. The break up of the Soviet empire has left Russians stranded in independent countries all round Russia's borders. This was always going to be a potentially dangerous situation. Closer to home are Estonia and Latvia, which cut Russia off from its enclave in the former East Prussia. What are these countries to do? Would the US or the EU come to the rescue if Russia invaded?

Take a look at the swimmers on the Olympic starting blocks. The men are typically about 6ft 5in (2M) tall. This is, for example, the average height of the US Olympic team members, the shortest of whom is one dwarf who is a mere 1.84M tall. I don't know what this is as a percentile of the human population but it must be less than about 2%. This is entirely predictable according to the laws of hydrodynamics. Whether competitive sport is worth while at all is a question that ought to be questioned more. Is it a good thing for young people to spend some of the best years of their lives churning up and down a swimming pools? That aside, competitive swimming, as presently ordered, is comparable to putting heavyweight boxers in the same ring as featherweights. They have not got a chance. However well anyone trains and develops their technique, they are not going to get anywhere if they are not tall enough. Height is mostly a matter of genetics. And the issue comes into focus even more sha...

The loss of money by the banks is a wonder to behold. How many boardroom members have lost their jobs as a result of this monumental blundering? Nobody in charge can really say they did not know they were taking a huge risk. At the root of the trouble is that the banks have been lending money for people to buy land. LAND IS NOT WEALTH. The primary value of land is its rental, which is a residual value after all the other claims on production have been made, for example wages, the suppliers of actual physical capital, and tax. What is left over is rent. Land price is the capitalised rent; think of land purchase as the purchase of an income stream. Then there is a chunk added on, the expectations of future growth. That is the hope value, which is the bit that bubbles up every so often. No prudent banker would lend money on the strength of hope value, even if that value had been rising for years and years. But they do, and now we can see the result. Worse still, those who run the banks se...

Yesterday I went to Stockholm and caught the ferry to Waxholm, through the Skärgård. My enjoyment was marred by the fact that my Nationwide debit card had, suddenly, not worked and I had had to pay by cash, which left me with only just enough for the return journey. I could not help wondering what had happened. When I got to Waxholm I tried three cash machines, all of which refused to issue me with any cash. Which left me with about 10 kronor after I had paid to get back. I thought at first that the problem was with the magnetic strip, but rang a friend of mine who told me that her Nationwide card had suddenly stopped working too. Eventually I rang, at great cost, the Nationwide office in the UK and they explained that I should have been using a new card which they had issued in April. I had not received any such card, though I had been issued with a special electronic card reader, and in any case my present card was valid till 05/10. No, they said, it was no longer working,and no, the...

If I was a politician planning to do something unpopular, I would choose the next three weeks to do it, while the media are preoccupied with the Olympic Games. I do not suppose this has passed unnoticed and it will be interesting to see if we get through to the end without something nasty happening.

"Vad sade du?" is the commonest phrase in Swedish. You will hear it all the time, in shops, streets, restaurants, people's homes. It means, "What did you say?" Swedes often don't seem to be able to understand each other, so how foreigners are expected to know is an interesting question. If I say it, the chances are I will get a reply in reasonably good English which doesn't help my learning. We have been having lessons in Swedish pronunciation. The general idea is to drop about one-third of what is written and mumble the rest, apart from a couple of key words in every sentence, which much be pronounced absolutely spot-on. It is also the case that there is, we have been told, no standard and accepted way of speaking Swedish. There is nothing corresponding to "Received Pronounciation", apparently. But at least the teacher assured us that we are not being taught to speak like teenagers, though we have to take that on trust. Konstigt. Eller hur?

The Catholic Church is introducing new English texts, which follow the Latin very closely. I am inclined to agree with those who think this archaic and affected even though it is accurate. You can't get away with this kind of thing in English. It is useful to have the translation but for study purposes, I don't see the point of it for public use, one might as well stick to the Latin and be done with it. Styles of English are so dependent on social class, age and place of origin, with all the connotations that go with these things, that the language should not be used in the public liturgy at all. Whatever style of English is used will be divisive. I don't know why the sixteenth century Trent rejected the use of the vernacular but I would be surprised if the reasons that applied then do not still apply now.

Canterbury Cathedral (112) Originally uploaded by Wayne Huzzey It is depressing to have to listen to the travails of the Church of England, which took up the whole of today's BBC Sunday programme. Really, it should not have done. From a world wide perspective, the C of E just isn't important. Were it not for King Henry VIIIs divorce it would never have existed and it only got as big is it has because the British were colonialists. It claims to be both Catholic and Protestant, which means it is founded on an impossible proposition. Those of its members who think themselves to be Catholic and orthodox ought to get the matter clear in their minds and join the actual Catholic church, which would resolve their confusion. Those of a more Protestant inclination have plenty of choice - there are Baptist churches, more or less independent, where the emphasis is on Scripture. There is the United Reform Church, with a Presbyterian organisation and linked to the Church of Scotland. There...

Folkestone Harbour Originally uploaded by seadipper The attractive brick viaduct that carries the railway from the main line down to the pier is only used occasionally for special trains such as the Orient Express. The line is due to close, the track will be taken up and the viaduct demolished. But it is a fine piece of heritage, and surely there is no need to demolish it as part of the town's "regeneration"? In fact, I would suggest, it needs to be preserved as part of that regeneration. Why haven't the town's planners realised this?