AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Severn estuary and bridges Originally uploaded by net_efekt The proposal to construct a Severn barrage to generate tidal power has come up for active consideration again. If it works as intended it will generate a significant proportion of Britain's electricity. But there are many questions to be asked. What of its effect on wildlife? How long will it take to pay back the cost of construction? What is the overall energy balance, when the embodied energy in the structure is taken into account? What will be its effects on water flows? How much dredging will it need to keep it free of silt? How useful is the electricity, bearing in mind that tidal flows are small for 8 hours in 24 and that peak flows vary according to the monthly lunar cycle. I hope someone will ask these searching questions.

So said a headline a few days ago, and some scientists claim to have the evidence. Perhaps, but what then needs to be explained is how come it is so prevalent in the UK but less common in countries like Norway, Sweden, France, Switzerland and Italy? Surely a better clue is what is on the shelves of the supermarkets and in people's shopping baskets?

But who can tell if the subtitles are a true translation?

Ministers have quietly adopted powers to impose pay-as-you-throw rubbish taxes of £50 or more around the country without the need for a parliamentary vote. Article in The Daily Telegraph What is it about the British government that makes them jump at probably the most stupid policy imaginable? How can they be so out of touch? Over and over again, the wrong action is taken. If people are made to dispose of rubbish, many of them will just dump it anywhere. It would be difficult to think of a better way of encouraging the dumping of rubbish. If the prices of goods included a tax to cover the cost of disposal, then this would give a price signal: that buying rubbish costs money. It would also provide the funds for getting rid of it at the other end of its life cycle, no-questions-asked. And if there were incentives for re-use such as deposit schemes for reusable containers, they would cease to be a problem too, as people would collect them to get the money back. How is it that British poli...

A friend sent me this piece from a Swedish journalist who has visited Israel. This is a translation. I have visited Sderot, the Israeli town which has been worst affected by the Kassam rockets from Gaza. Around 7000 rockets have fallen on Sderot during the last eight years – two or three rockets a day on average. When the bombardment was at its heaviest, 70 or so rockets could fall on one day. It was in September last year that I and a group of Swedish journalists was guided by a student, Agi Venkiet, a 25 year-old girl. We drove round in a bus while she explained. Or rather, tried to explain. 19,300 people live in permanent fear in Sderot. How can one call it living? Agi explained that she had no idea of the prevailing reality in Sderot when she moved there to study at state high school a few years ago. The shock was not so much the rockets as that the situation was so little reported in the media. It is seldom that anyone dies because of the Kassam rockets in Sderot. They are neither...

This article was sent to Debbie Ducro, a American-Jewish journalist with the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. She published it, and was fired the next day. Quest for justice By Judith Stone I am a Jew. I was a participant in the Rally for the Right of Return to Palestine. It was the right thing to do. I've heard about the European holocaust against the Jews since I was a small child. I've visited the memorials in Washington, DC and Jerusalem dedicated to Jewish lives lost and I've cried at the recognition to what level of atrocity mankind is capable of sinking. Where are the Jews of conscience? No righteous malice can be held against the survivors of Hitler's holocaust. These fragments of humanity were in no position to make choices beyond that of personal survival. We must not forget that being a survivor or a co-religionist of the victims of the European Holocaust does not grant dispensation from abiding by the rules of humanity. "Never again" as a motto, rings...

So the government is trying to promote social mobility again. Never mind that the number of unemployed graduates is at record levels. Just a few observations Many of the seafront cleaners in Brighton are highly qualified graduates. They do the job out of preference, rather than sit in a office doing some well paid though pointless and ultimately unproductive job with someone breathing down their neck. What is this telling us? Many working class children do not want to work at school. Those that do are marginalised by their peers. The way to be admired is to muck about in class. I have seen this as a pupil, as a teacher and with colleagues who had wasted their educational opportunities, such as they were. It is a long tradition. At one time, classes were streamed so that children who do not want to waste their time in class could be put together and they would learn. Now we have mixed-ability classes, everyone's opportunities are lost. Which has widened the social divide as one can ...

The Palestinian 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. The intensity of anti-Israel protest has naturally stepped up in reaction the Israeli action in Gaza in response to the ongoing rocket attacks. At its inception in 1948 Israel was about one third of its present size and was immediately attacked by Transjordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria - ie all its neighbours. Their aim was to get rid of Israel entirely. Holocaust phase II, it would have been. They very nearly succeeded and from the point of view of the Arabs and their sympathisers, the fact that they did not is regrettable. But one result was that Israel ended up bigger than it would otherwise have been and this was the beginning of the Palestinian refugee problem, which remains to this day as other wealthy Arab countries have barely lifted a finger to help. At the same time Jews from Arab countries migrat...

Last year's new designs of British coins are now coming into circulation. You can view them on the Royal Mint's website, The New Designs Revealed According to the publicity, the shield of the Royal Arms has been given a contemporary treatment and its whole has been cleverly split among all six denominations from the 1p to the 50p, with the £1 coin displaying the heraldic element in its entirety. Each of the coins has a little bit of the shield, much magnified. So it would take a huge coin to fit the whole shield on. Is this a representation of the inflation soon to come?