AN OUTSIDE VIEW

With the recent confirmation of construction of a 19km long bridge from Puttgarden in Germany to Rødby in Denmark, which to be finished in 2018, one of the last train ferries will come to an end. A Danish IC3 train is seen here on the car deck of the Scandlines ferry.

This car is probably too far gone to qualify for the government's new "scrapping grant" to boost the ailing car industry, but old cars now qualify for a £1000 grant and a further £1000 manufacturer's discount. As a result of the law of unintended consequences, derelict old bangers are suddenly worth £2000. It is the kind of thing that happens when governments operate without any underlying principles to guide their decisions and policies can only be made on an ad hoc basis. It is a recipe for disaster. The cost of this piece of nonsense is is expected to amount to £300 million, enough to pay for 60 new Electrostar trains like these. Who decided the priority or did the decision just happen?

The use of the term "Roman" Catholic is confined to certain protestant countries where it distinguishes it from other protestant religious groupings which refer to themselves as catholic. In England, for example, the Church of England describes itself as "catholic and reformed" ie protestant, and within it there is an "Anglo-Catholic" group which adheres to many of the liturgical practices of the Catholic church and considers itself as a continuation of the pre-Reformation English Church, whose allegiance was to Rome. The Catholic church is that Christian body which is in direct line of descent from the Apostles and in communion with the Bishop of Rome, the successors of St Peter. Authority for this claim comes from Matthew 16: 18-19, which establishes the role of the Roman Bishop as exercising a special ministry as the head of the Christian Church on earth. " You are Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not pr...

Something called the "Left Economics Advisory Panel" is having a conference next Saturday under the title 'Capitalism Isn't Working'. Speakers and contributors include the usual gang: John Christensen (Tax Justice Network), Penny Cole, Bob Crow (RMT), Andrew Fisher, Paul Feldman, Professor Gregor Gall, Gerry Gold, Rahila Gupta (Southall Black Sisters), Colin Hampton (UWC), John Hilary (War on Want), Jerry Jones, John McDonnell MP, Cllr Gordon Nardell, Rosamund Stock, Graham Turner, Professor Richard Wilkinson, Matt Wrack (FBU). Leaving aside the question of what exactly is meant by "Capitalism", what is "Left Economics"? Isn't there just plain economics? Surely economics is the study of causes and effects and an attempt to establish what were the relationships between the two? Though Stalin had a go at enforcing a particular and false view of biology, there isn't such a thing as "Left Chemistry" or "Left Mathematics"...

Italian Church I have not before referred to why I became a Catholic, but this Sunday's reading prompted me to go public. The reading was John 20:19-31 In the evening of that same day, the first day of the week, the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them, 'Peace be with you,' and showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to them again, 'Peace be with you.' 'As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.' After saying this he breathed on them and said: 'Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.' Thomas, called the Twin, who was one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. When the disciples said, 'We have seen the Lord,' he answered, 'Unless I see the holes that the nails made in his hands ...

Microsoft has been ordered to pay US$388 million (£259m) in damages after a US jury found the company guilty of infringing a patent for technology meant to deter software piracy. The bill for infringing software patent Microsoft earned billions of dollars by using the technology in its Windows XP. The Singapore-based company Uniloc sued Microsoft in 2003, alleging it copied software designed by the company's founder Ric Richardson. The company alleged Microsoft earned billions of dollars by using the technology in its Windows XP and Office programs. Last week, a jury in America found Microsoft violated the patent and directed the software giant to pay Uniloc $US388 million. The sum is the fifth-largest patent jury award in US history but the company is awaiting a final decision by the judge, who could increase the award three times. The jurors found that Microsoft "wilfully and intentionally" infringed Uniloc's patent for a software registrations system that allows so...

The Tax Justice Network (TJN) has been running a campaign against tax havens for some while now. But it takes the view that the tax system just needs to be tightened up - a bit more regulation and exchange, and all will be well. It is unwilling to accept that there is anything fundamentally wrong with the tax system itself. I posted this comment on their blog site... The problem with the tax system is that it is essentially a structure of perverse incentives. Successful, honest and legal, above the board activity, and thrift, are punished, whilst idleness, fecklessness, and dishonest and illegal activity, are rewarded. That is the nature of the tax system. The effect is that the GNP is about 12% less than it would otherwise be due to the deadweight effect of taxes - that is wealth which would have been created were it not for the tax system. Governments know this and mitigate with ad hoc concessions. These make the system ever more complex and incomprehensible, but they also create loo...

DSCN0116 Originally uploaded by mowran Gordon Brown has been writing to the tax havens. Jersey and the British Virgin Islands are the latest recipients of his missives. They are just a load of words. Brown & Co. would choke off the flow of funds to tax havens at source if he was really serious. If Iceland hadn't blotted its copybook so badly, Smokey Bay could have had a good future as a tax haven. It's a good name for one. Given that its plans to join the EU could yet go tits-up and it is well placed in the middle of the Atlantic, it still might. If I was Amazon or some other internet trade company, I would be checking it out with the aim of doing a deal for a tax free zone for a distribution centre.

Näckrosdammen är den andra av fyra böcker skrivna av Annika Thor som handlar om Steffi, 12 år gammal och Nelli, 7 år gammal, två judiska flickor som skickas till Sverige från Wien av sina föräldrar i augusti 1939. Avsikten var att föräldrarna skulle komma senare när hela familjen fick inresetillstånd till Amerika. Flickorna bodde för tillfället med fiskarens familjer på en ö i Göteborgs skärgård. Steffis fosterföräldrar var tant Märta och farbror Evert Jansson. De älskar henne men tanten var medlem i Pingstkyrkan och mycket sträng. Kriget började. Flickorna skickades till folkskolan. Föräldrarna väntade i Wien för tillståndet men det fick de inte. Sommaren kom och på grund av Steffis bra betyg skulle hon fortsätta på läroverket. Förhållanden för judarna i Wien blev värre. Boken är skriven från Steffis synpunkt. September 1940 är Steffi 13 år gammal och det är dags för Steffi att flytta till staden för att börja på läroverket. I början bor hon med familjen Söderberg, en läkarfamilj va...

"We get the same comments repeated from the same commenter: that land value taxes are the only way forward, and forget all the other taxes. As usual, we disagree: land value taxes have a role, but only as part of a broader tax system." To which my response is that if TJN will not make the point itself, it will inevitably get these comments, and repeatedly - taxes tied to real estate are not avoidable. Of what other taxes can this be said? There is a good case for taxes on, say, strong alcoholic drinks but these get avoided through booze cruises, which have the advantage for non-boozers that they help keep the fares down eg in the Baltic and Scandinavia. Guess why so many of the Baltic ferries are registered in Mariehamn? Where the f*** is Mariehamn? Quite. And a multi national organisation can so easily make profits pop up in one place rather than another. If the problem of tax avoidance through the use of tax havens is to be cracked, the lion's share of public revenue mu...

"En ö i havet" är den första av fyra böcker skrivna av Annika Thor. Dessa handlar om två judiska flickor under andra världskriget. År 1938 invaderade Tyskland Österrike och landet fick nazistisk regering. Från början hotades judarna men snart blev de utsätta för allvarlig våld även av poliserna. Rika judar blev tvungna att flytta från sina lägenheter och sedan bodde många familjer gemensamt i trånga levnadsvillkor. Så småningom blev livet hårdare. Poliserna grep judarna trots att de inte hade gjort någonting fel. Judarna förbjöds att äga hundar eller åka spårvagnar eller bada i sjön. Många judar försökte att flytta men de flesta fick inte inresetillstånd av andra länders regeringar. Judarna var fångade. Däremot gav några länder tillstånd för att barnen skulle få bo där och på detta sätt började den så kallade barntransporten. Krigets moln samlas under sommaren 1939 när Steffi, 12 år gammal, och hennes syster Nelli, 7 år gammal, kommer fram till Göteborg, trötta och hungriga e...

The Tax Justice Network has been running a strident campaign against tax havens, an issue which has been taken up by the British and US governments and was one of the matters discussed by the G20 meeting. The mystery is why doesn't TJN go for a two-pronged attack? Most of the opportunities for tax avoidance arise due to the way that tax systems are constructed. If the tax systems are redesigned, then many, if not all, of the opportunities go away, and there is no need for draconian regulation and exchange of information between jurisdictions. TJN seems to have said nothing at all on this aspect of dealing with the problem of tax havens. This seems inconsistent. In its latest blog it complains about Transferring assets to offshore tax havens that maintain secrecy to avoid IRS detection. Fraudulently taking advantage of an exemption for portfolio interest paid to foreign persons. Posing as foreign persons and taking advantage of U.S. income tax treaties. If taxation is tied to land ...

The growing support for the construction of a new high speed railway is to be welcomed, but it needs to be tempered by critical analysis of the travelling public's real travel needs. There is a danger that the funding will be drawn to the projects that will make the best headlines. Most inter city journeys cover distances where travelling at 300 kph rather than 200 kph, or even 160 kph, results in relatively small savings in time but substantially higher costs. Nor do they start and finish in city centres. A high speed spine railway serving the main centres of population would need to be well integrated with local transport networks. The latter must be allocated a proper share of the total investment, so that the system as a whole will be tailored to the journeys that people actually make. There is also a need for a debate about the loading gauge that the high speed network will be constructed to; future generations of travellers should not be saddled with trains built to the cramp...

My local council in Brighton distributes a propaganda sheet called "City News", explaining what wonderful things it is doing. The latest issue contains a feature headed "Tip us off on benefit fraud", with a story about a named villain who was caught following an anonymous call to the fraud office, having cheated the council out of £34,000 in housing benefit. I do not condone benefit fraud but this looks ludicrous in the same week as the news is full of reports of MPs making absurd claims for expenses. A strongly worded letter from the Leader of the Council to the appropriate authorities would be more in order, pointing out that it is difficult for the council's efforts at fighting fraud to be taken seriously when the leaders of the country are doing the same thing on a vastly bigger scale, to say nothing of the robbery of the thrifty that is presently in full swing. The widespread view now is that if you steal a bottle of milk, you go to prison - but fiddle a f...