AN OUTSIDE VIEW

An new organisation has been set up called  Stand up for Vatican 2 It is calling on the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales to support a national celebration in each of their dioceses of the forty fifth anniversary of the closure of the Second Vatican Council in 2010. But there seems to be no agreement on precisely what V2 was proposing. Many of the subsequent changes, such as the regular use of the vernacular in the liturgy, appear to be an interpretation that may not ever have been intended by the Council. Which raises the question of what precisely there is to celebrate? In Europe, at least, the Catholic church has not flourished since Vatican 2. However, it seems to me that an appropriate parish celebration would consist of Mass in the Extraordinary Form, with Gregorian Chant and music by Palestrina.

The government has, at last, announced an inquiry into whether plans to buy the fleet of Hitachi high-speed trains are value for money. The inquiry will delay a decision on whether to proceed with the Inter City Express programme until after the general election. It comes after more than a year of negotiations between the Department for Transport and a consortium led by Japan's Hitachi, which was named preferred bidder last February . The consortium was due to supply up to 1,400 carriages for 125mph trains to replace the InterCity 125 diesel and 225 electric fleets. Even if the project eventually goes ahead, the inquiry will delay the retirement existing trains, built between the mid-1970s and early 1990s. This is welcome, and not before time. What a pity that £20 million has been spent so far on development work. This alone would have paid for, four Electrostar sets or 8 electric locomotives. The most urgent needs are (1) to develop a new electric locomotive for use in Britain, eq...

Jews leave Swedish city after sharp rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes Sweden's reputation as a tolerant, liberal nation is being threatened by a steep rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes in the city of Malmo. The perpetrators are young Muslims. This should not come as a surprise since they are only doing what their holy book tells them to do. But if Sweden does not quickly get a grip of its unruly Moslems, the problem will soon affect far more people than the Jews. As elsewhere in Europe, it is the politicians on the left who are encouraging this by a policy of tacit encouragement. Criticism of Islam is seen as racist. A few weeks ago I published a translation from an article on the subject in a Swedish newspaper, but today there is a report in the British press, with this article in the Daily Telegraph Also published today is a piece by a Tariq Ramadan in the Guardian Comment is Free on "Islam's role in an ethical society". I referred to and linked the above artic...

It was reported last week that the Conservatives have withdrawn their support for the proposed route of HST2. This is due to fear of losing votes from their NIMBYs voters, who are fearful of property blight. It is the worst of reasons since it does not go to the heart of the problem and question the whole project. Nevertheless a valid point is being made, if not directly. There is no effective means of judging whether or not a particular item of infrastructure development is a good investment, both in absolute terms and relative to other possible and competing investments. The unfolding arguments about whether Britain should have a high speed railway and where it should run illustrate a general problem. A good measure of the value of infrastructure is the aggregate change in land value to which it gives rise, but there is only limited experience in analysing the effects and forecasting the likely increases. The Conservative objection to the high speed railway boils down to the fact tha...

These homeless men sleeping out under the promenade at Brighton are all ex-soldiers of various ages. They have served in places like Northern Ireland, the Falklands, and the Gulf. Once they left the army they found it impossible to settle into civilian life and ended up homeless. They have a drink problem but clean up as best they can afterwards. They are probably "institutionalised". A significant proportion of homeless men are ex-servicemen. The official attitude seems to be that they are no longer of use and can be discarded.  I think the problem is that the sort of accommodation that would be right for them simply does not exist. I get the impression that they would not get on well in, for instance, a bed-sit flat, which is what they would probably get offered, after which they would be forgotten about as a solved case. These men need a structured environment, where ex-servicemen can live in a protected community, under firm direction What might be done? In the se...

The ferry between Harwich and Esbjerg is more expensive then a cheap flight but it avoids the harassment of airports and Scandinavia starts when one steps onto the ship at Harwich, which is always a good thing. The restaurant, though on the pricey side, is worth it as well. You only live once so why not? DFDS ferries

Why do British immigration officials present themselves so badly? Every time I encounter these people, I find their behaviour gratuitously offensive, regardless of whether I arrive at the Eurostar terminals at Brussels or Paris, or at the east coast port of Harwich, it is the same story. To judge from the way the conduct themselves, they appear to be ex-prison warders. Or possibly they are prison warders and immigration control is part of the job. Yesterday I arrived at Harwich and was confronted by a burly, hatchet-faced man with an unpleasant demeanour. I was asked a whole string of questions; what had I been doing for three weeks in Sweden? What was my address in Britain? What was my job? The latter question revealed incompetence, because if he had checked my date of birth on the passport, he would have realised that I was retired. If I had been caught by the police in the act of breaking-and-entering, arrested and taken into custody, such an approach would have been appropr...

I have been taking photographs since I was a teenager, when I started with a Box Brownie taking 8 negatives on 120 roll film. These had a little frosted glass viewfinder with the image projected onto it with a lens and a mirror. You held the camera at waist level and peered into the viewfinder, using your hand to keep the screen shaded. It was possible to take a reasonable picture with them but they were never sharp. My first proper camera was a Selfix 820 with a Ross Xpres lens, also taking 8 pictures on 120 film, made in 1959. At that time, 35mm film was of relatively poor quality and grainy. The Selfix pictures were extremely sharp. The Selfix 820 was a folding camera and quite compact. It is very well made and robust. When the camera is opened up for use, it is very rigid and the lens is held in position positively. The main drawback of the model I had bought were a poor and inaccurate viewfinder and the lack of a coupled rangefinder. After a couple of years I replaced it with...

St Mary Magdalen's Catholic Church, Brighton, has gone through a series of changes over the past six months. The picture is of the approved layout but it was constructed in thick ply to see how it worked. It was not satisfactory and after a few weeks was changed, which was easily done due to the temporary construction. The edge of the platform and the altar was moved further back. The steps were extended all the way across and returned on either side. The priest's chair stands on a plinth at the same level as the bottom step on the north side. This will probably be the final arrangement. The idea of having a temporary structure proved a good investment as it could be tested without spending large sums of money.

Whoever wins the next election, the people of Britain will lose. As election time approaches, that much is obvious. The real choice is minimal. There is no proper thinking going on, not just in parliament but nor the think tanks or universities either. Basic concepts in economics such as Ricardo's Law of Rent are hardly talked about and certainly not understood, because to do so would lead on to conclusions that are political dynamite. Why should this be? How about this for an explanation? Seen from a Scandinavian perspective - the idea came to me while I was sitting on a Gothenberg tram - this hypothesis makes more than a bit of sense. "The country is run by and for the benefit of a mostly hereditary elite, with the aid of their recruited mandarins. One technique is to capture the opposition, so it does not matter who gets elected. "This elite has always conceded just enough to keep the "peasants" from revolting. From that perspective, the post war socialist re...

Elevation of the Host , originally uploaded by seadipper . St Mary Magdalen's Church, Brighton, has been going through a series of changes over the last few months. This was the temporary altar, with the remains of the sanctuary floor behind. It was moved the following week but its final position is a matter of speculation. Many members of the congregation would like to see it put back to its pre-1970 position against the reredos, where the ruins of the original altar can be seen in the picture. The arrangement of the sanctuary should not be a matter for argument, since the requirements are set out in the Chapter 5 of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal , which is here reproduced. However, like the church, this is a work in progress and the present edition of the GIRM dates from 2003. As long ago as 2001, Pope Benedict, whilst as Cardinal Raztinger and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, spoke of the need for a "reform of the reform"....

With the government now being forced to make spending cuts, it would be an opportune moment to abandon the Inter City Express project. The arguments against it have been presented so many times that this is not the place to repeat them. From the moment the project was first mooted, Modern Railway has been publishing very well informed articles by Roger Ford, and writing from a different perspective, Ian Walmsley. According to various estimates, it costs between two and four times what it should and involves the premature scrapping of rolling stock with a decade or two of useful service life ahead. There is nothing I can usefully add. The other project that needs to be subject to scrutiny is Crossrail. I commented on this before here . The main underground sections from Paddington to Stratford and Woolwich could be constructed as tube lines and integrated into the London Underground system, possibly taking over the Hammersmith and City branch of the Metropolitan Line. This should be sig...

Oxford - The High , originally uploaded by seadipper . Britain's universities are braced for a round of cuts. This could be turned to advantage. Further education and training in Britain needs a complete re-think. Universities were first established in Europe in the middle ages, as places for the teaching of universal knowledge. The range of subjects that was taught varied, but usually included theology, philosophy, mathematics, law, astronomy and medicine. As time went on, other subjects were added: chemistry, physics, mathematics, botany, zoology, classics and history. Geography, modern languages, anthropology, psychology, politics and economics were relative latecomers. Subjects with a practical or vocational content such as art, architecture, and music tended to be taught in dedicated establishments, as, later on, were surveying, engineering and agriculture. Such courses usually involved periods of work in practical situations - learning on the job was balanced with learn...

Snowy night in Gothenberg , originally uploaded by seadipper . My visit to Sweden has been during the coldest winter for fifteen years or so. Does everything carry on working like clockwork? No. The railways have been disrupted with the usual things like failed trains and iced-points, and the island ferries have been running to a special ice timetable. And people have been slipping and injuring themselves on the ice. Nevertheless, better preparations have been made for the extreme cold weather and things keep going. Which is no criticism of the authorities in southern England, who have been caught out, because it is expensive to prepare for cold weather and it is better to take the risk of occasional disruption. Living in a cold climate demands careful preparation or the consequences can be fatal. Which probably explains quite a lot about Swedish attitudes and the national character. It is an environment that is not so hostile that it is not usually possible to take control but th...

Canary Wharf Station , originally uploaded by seadipper . The Docklands Light Railway in London is a fine system but falls awkwardly between two stools, probably because of the ad-hoc way it grew up. Constructed with the aim of opening up the former docklands area of east London and opened in 1986, it ran originally from Tower Gateway to Stratford and Island Gardens, mostly on disused railway viaducts. At the planning stage, there was talk about short sections of on-street running, but in the end this never happened. Early decisions made were to use light rail tramway type vehicles, driverless trains under remote control, and an unusual system of third rail electrification, the latter, seemingly for aesthetic reasons at the request of the planners in the London Docklands Development Commission. Subsequent extensions were made to Bank in 1991 and Beckton in 1994. Further expansion took place with the opening of branches to Lewisham in 1999, London City Airport in 2005 and Woolwich Arse...

In theory, 3G broadband is a good idea and these USB wireless receivers are just the job. But none of the providers give decent Linux support. Some models open up as a USB memory stick with a load of Windows software which is useless if you are not running M$. Others may or may not run, or run sometimes, seemingly at whim, so you never know what they will do. Some suppliers eg Phone House, will not refund your money if they prove not to work, because the packet has been opened, though how one is meant to try them without opening the packet is something the shop staff cannot explain. Of the two illustrated, from 3G, the old one works fairly reliably but the new only works after many attempts. What a waste of time.

Brienz Rothorn Bahn , originally uploaded by Bods . The development of the steam locomotive did not end in the 1950s. For one reason and another, a few countries kept their steam locomotives going. One of these was Argentina, where a coal-carrying railway purchased a new fleet as recently as 1973. In South Africa, subject to sanctions, a study in the late 1980s actually showed that in the special conditions that prevailed, with cheap labour, plentiful coal, and an oil embargo, it would be cheaper to continue to use steam traction on routes that were not worth electrifying. Ignoring this conclusion, the railway administration replaced its steam fleet with diesels anyway! In a remote area of Argentina, a series of experiments was conducted by an idiosyncratic engineer, L D Porta. The most important of these (the locomotives were burning coal) was to introduce waste steam into the fire. This causes the so-called water gas reaction, in which water and carbon produce hydrogen and carbon mo...

55008 York 29.10.81 , originally uploaded by d9006 . The early diesel locomotives were big, heavy and under-powered compared to the steam locomotives they replaced. The 3300hp Deltic (above) was one of the early challengers with sufficient muscle for the task. But this power was dearly bought. A typical diesel-electric locomotive cost about five times as much as the equivalent steam locomotive, and machines like the Deltic were highly tuned, needing a well planned support operation with teams of skilled technicians to keep them going day in and day out. The days of muck shovelling by unskilled labour were over. What was the early experience with diesels? It was claimed that they could keep running 22 hours a day, and the better designs probably could. The difficulty was, and is, that there is not the traffic to keep them occupied in this way, and once complete fleets had been acquired, expensive capital was inevitably kept idle for long periods. This is the economic reality of running ...

The writer C P Snow famously said that an unbridgeable gap had developed between the arts and the sciences, and the mark of the scientist was that he (and it usually was a "he" when he made his comment, in the late 1950s) could explain the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This was part of the physics syllabus and was usually and confusingly explained with diagrams like the one on the left. The simplest way of putting it is to say that heat does not flow of its own accord from a cold object to a hot one, which everyone knows. When the Law is applied to applied to engines which work through the expansion of a hot gas, it turns out that they are more efficient if the gas starts off as hot as possible and is cooled to the lowest possible temperature. Steam locomotive engineers knew about this early on but it was not always easy to put into practice. The boiling point of water increases with pressure and progress consisted of running boilers at higher pressures - which was dependent ...

1, 2, 3 Brunnsparken; 4, 5 Masthugget; 6 Vasagatan; 7 Hjällbo; 8 Saltholmen; 9 Bergsjön; 10 Chalmers Tunnel; 11 Brunnsparken The Gothenberg system as it is today is not what was planned. The long extensions to the suburbs were intended as part of a metro system in which the street tramways would run underground in the city centre. But cutbacks became necessary and the trams still run in the streets. This retains the connectivity than would have been lost if the trams had been put underground. Another unintentional feature is the continuing use of vehicles dating from the 1960s which have just been refurbished for another ten years of service. This was due to the initial unreliability of the replacement five-section trams (bottom), the order from Ansaldo having been curtailed due to the prolonged teething troubles.

Warship Class D840 Resistance on the scrapline at Old Oak Common 1 Nov 1969 , originally uploaded by JohnGreyTurner . With nearly all industrial production devoted to the military, Britain's railways struggled through World War 2 with a strategy of make-do and mend. By 1945, they were both worn-out and running with a equipment that was hopelessly antiquated, including nearly 20,000 steam locomotives of which nearly half were more than 30 years old. This was a train spotter's paradise but tied down a huge labour force in heavy and dirty work. When the war ended, new and improved designs of steam locomotives were introduced, which more efficient and incorporated a collection of labour-saving features. Then came nationalisation in 1948 and further design improvements were made by British Railways' engineering design team. By the early 1950s, diesel traction was becoming established in the USA, and a handful of expermental locomotives came into service in Britain. Then, in 1951...

One of the claimed advantages of rail over air travel is that it runs city-centre to city-centre. But most journeys are not of this nature. Most people live around cities rather than in the middle of them and at least one end of their journey involves a connecting stage of some sort. It is most likely to be made in a car. Having got into the car, the temptation is to make the whole journey in the car. It is not just a matter of time but of convenience. High speed rail does little to make the car less appealing in comparison, especially when it is expensive unless bookings are made well in advance. What would tip the balance in favour of the train? One factor is penetrability. The convenience of the local transport network is critical. It means frequent services that go as close as possible to where people want to travel to where they live and work. Buses are obviously an essential part of the mix, but it must also include trams, light rail (above) and local train services. It may also ...

Railways have enormous fixed costs which must be paid before even one single passenger can travel. The line, stations, signalling equipment must be constructed. Rolling stock must be obtained. Staff must be engaged, trained and their wages paid. It adds up to a lot of resources invested, and the aim must be to achieve the best use of these. Resources fall broadly into three categories: the fixed infrastructure, the rolling stock and the trains service itself. Little extra cost is incurred in running one additional train, so long as the capacity of the track and signalling is not strained to the point that congestion occurs. Likewise, little extra cost is incurred in running longer trains rather than shorter ones, so long as the rolling stock is available. And it costs no more to run a full train than an empty one. From the operator’s point of view, the simplest and most efficient operation is to run standard fixed-formation trains at regular intervals, on infrastructure with just enoug...

Having been doing some travelling lately, I have had more thoughts on the subject of ultra-low train ticket offers. When I first started travelling long distance in the early 1950s, the return fare from London to Glasgow was £5 0s 6d. This was calculated at 1½ d a mile (hence the odd sixpence), and all fares were at the same rate, according only to the distance. There were of course cheap day returns and special excursion trains to popular destinations, which were a simple form of yield management, since they made use of rolling stock which would otherwise have been standing idle or gone for scrap. Later in the 1950s came the mid-week return, available on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with the aim of tempting people onto under-used services and relieving the pressure on the busier trains. Nowadays, things have gone to opposite extremes as the railways have followed the airlines. At one time, this meant cheap standby fares for passengers who turned up at the last minute, but the p...

To answer this question it is first necessary to define both Islamophobia and racism. A phobia is an irrational fear, and Islamophobia presumably means irrational fear of Islam. Racism means an irrational dislike of people of another race. Race is difficult to define but it would generally be agreed that people can be classified according to superficial physical characteristics like skin and eye colour. It is by these external features that people would be recognised as members of a particular race. Most of the characteristics of the different races seem to be adaptations to climate and are not something that any reasonable person should find disturbing. Examples of races would be white Europeans, Negroes, Australian Aborigines, etc, although vast numbers of people have a blend of those features which are regarded as racial markers, and indeed large areas of the world are populated by such. Ethnicity, which merges into but is separate from, nationality, is loosely related to race but g...

The beleaguered Jewish community of Malmö The following article written by Ricard Westerberg was published in Dagens Nyheter on 30 January “In a series of noteworthy articles, Skånska Dagbladet has been describing how the Jews of Malmö have become increasingly beleaguered in recent years. How the chapel at the Jewish cemetery was attacked with a firebomb. How Jewish children have been forced to change schools. How Jewish people no longer dare to show their Star of David because it can be thought offensive. How families with Jewish connections are moving out of the city because they feel threatened. How football teams with Jewish players are being harassed by the public. How security guards must be present during synagogue services. “In this situation, on 27 January, the memorial day for victims of the Holocaust, the Social Democrat party community adviser, Ilmar Reepalu, chooses to criticise the Jewish community for failing to dissociate itself from the conduct of the Israeli gover...