AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Is this what comes from reading The Institutes of the Christian Religion ?

From the EU website:   The European Commission is the EU’s politically independent executive arm. It is alone responsible for drawing up proposals for new European legislation, and it implements the decisions of the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. There is the key problem: the Commission alone can propose and consequently acts as a gatekeeper. Nor is it politically independent. The Commission appointments are made by politicians and the members are politicians; it is misleading to compare it to the British Civil Service. Add in multi-member constituencies and there is a built-in disconnection between individuals and their representatives. The EEC was founded on the the principle of subsidiarity. In practice, subsidiarity was been ignored. The EU ’ s trade and economic policies neglect the basic principles of sound economic practice as they had been understood since before the end of the eighteenth century. Four blunders is an achievement: CAP, VAT (a condition ...

The 800 series stock have 88 seats in the trailer cars. Realistically, they could have 80. They have 9 bays ie 72 seats, and another 8 could be fitted in. I don't know what the bay dimension is, but optimal is 1.90 meters. I suspect the bays are 2.0 metres. British railways are optimised for vehicles 20 metres long, with space for 64 seats and a couple of toilets. This was established in 1951. That allows them to be full width, nominally 2.82 metres, which is the old C1 loading gauge. These are the dimension of British Railways mark 1 stock, as well as the recent types running mostly south of London. Vehicles with these dimensions can run anywhere on the system. Longer 23 metre vehicle (Mark 3) were introduced in 1971 to a new loading gauge, C3. These are 2.74 metres wide ie 8 cm narrower than the Mark 1 stock; the reduced width is to provide the additional clearance on curves where the vehicles overhang more. They also have a restricted range of operation as routes have to be...

The typical inter-city journey in Britain is about 100 miles. Now look at this table of speeds and journey times; remember that to achieve an average speed of 100 mph will involve a period of running at 120 mph or more. 30 mph, 3 h 20 m  40 mph, 2 h 30 m  50 mph, 2 h  60 mph, 1 h 40 m  70 mph, 1 h 26 m  80 mph, 1 h 15 m  90 mph, 1 h 7 m 100 mph 1 h  The time savings for each successive 10 mph speed increment are 50, 30, 20, 14, 11, 8 and 6 minutes respectively. It is a situation of diminishing returns. It gets worse than that, because there are break points. 50 mph is the maximum operating speed for light rail. After that, the regulations for heavy rail come in, which affects safety standards, signalling systems, vehicle design and track design, with engineering costs to match. At 100 mph, the EU’s Technical Standards for Interoperability apply, which are even more stringent; at over 125 mph, there is another step change, in design requir...

Crossrail has been plagued by delays and cost over-runs which have attracted widespread criticism. A simpler scheme, possibly a tube line, could have been built for, perhaps, 40% of the cost, given 80% of the benefits and opened 15 years ago. However, the scheme as it is will transform ease of movement in and across London and will be adequate for many decades to come, which a new tube will not have been. The delays and extra cost will soon be forgotten. The real Crossrail scandal is that it will generate many times the construction cost in land value uplift but the taxpayers will see little of that back in return for the money that has been spent.

The EU has consistently got its fishing policy wrong. There used to be a flourishing inshore fishing industry all along the Sussex coast, with a self-policing mafia. After 1973, the French fishermen came across and scooped the sea clean. In another ill-conceived incarnation of fishing policy, the result was that small fish were thrown back into the sea, dead. This is a good example of where Georgist principles could apply. The seas within UK territorial waters would be divided into zones – Worthing, Shoreham, Brighton, Newhaven, Eastbourne and Hastings, for example, for which a limited number of fixed term licences would be bid in an open auction, something like the auction for radio spectrum; there would also be zones where no fishing at all was permitted, to allow stocks to recover. There might be a limit on the size of boats which could be used – ten metres, perhaps. The bids would be open to anyone; if French fishermen thought it worthwhile to use fuel and spend the time t...

When the new EU copyright rules kick-in, I would expect a lot of the remainers will be losing their enthusiasm. Being inside the EU, I have already come across numerous non-working links due to EU regulation. Reminder to self: sort out VPN.

I came across this project to restore these monster American locomotives which dated from the 1940s. In principle, they consist (since many survive as historic monuments) of two large locomotives with one boiler supplying the steam. What I do not understand is the rationale behind the immensely complicated design. The same effect was achieved more simply by the Beyer-Garatt configuration, with two engine units and a boiler slung in between on a carrying frame. The space over the engine units was used for fuel and water. The boiler was set low down, giving the engines a low centre of gravity which made them suitable for high speed running. Large numbers of this type were built for use in Commonwealth countries and some narrow gauge (2ft) examples are running on the Welsh Highland Railway. In principle, the Beyer-Garatt could be much larger than any that were every built; a double 2‑10‑2 would have been practicable, with no limitation to the size of the boiler. The puzzle is why, ...

An article in the Observer discusses what should be done about what it describes as “Asian child grooming gangs”. It says that, “It is imperative, though, to be clear that exploring this question to inform the prevention of abuse in no way implies whole ethnic or faith communities are more likely to sexually abuse children than others.” But then again, the question needs to be answered. Skirting round it helps to feed the rumour mill and the real racism, not the genuine concern that there is one faith group (which one could it be?) which seems to be disproportionately represented in these cases. If this is really the case, then the reasons need to be explored. The Observer does not help by trying to promote diversionary arguments like “Asian men are more likely to work in the night-time economy, which gives them greater opportunity to exploit vulnerable children.” And it is disingenuous to blame the authorities, as the authors of the article attempt to do. “The disgusting prej...

With increasing automation, it has been suggested that it will be necessary to subsidise jobs. Is there anything in this idea? There are unlimited amounts of work waiting to be done. It can be done by people with little in the way of formal qualifications and which cannot easily be automated. However, the suggestion of subsidy raises a key point. Real wages are the net purchasing power of take-home pay ie take-home pay minus sales taxes, in particular VAT. Gross labour costs to employers are take-home pay, plus wage-related employer taxes, primarily NIC, plus taxes nominally payable by employees, ie employee’s NIC plus employee’s PAYE Income Tax. The difference between the two used to be called the Tax Wedge, but the term has gone out of fashion. Another way of expressing it is to say that the incidence of all labour related taxes, including those nominally done by employees, is on the employer. Depending on pay levels, it is between 60% and 90% of net purchasing p...

Rosa and Blå Express bus routes have now been re-routed to run direct from Järntorget to Nordstan and Centralstationen, via the Opera House. That solves the problem of the long journey time between the station and the west side of Gothenburg city centre, which is the main benefit of Västlänken. If these buses are not sufficient, a new route could be introduced to run from the station to Järntorget via the inner ring road (past Heden). So now Västlänken can be dropped and a few tens of billions of kronor saved.

The UK government is not proposing to restrict the flow of goods INTO the UK, nor is the EU proposing to restrict the flow of goods OUT of the the EU. That poses a set of questions, but not the ones that are being asked; there have been warnings about Britain running short of food after Brexit, due to customs delays. But there has been no threat of sanctions against the UK, so what is this all about? More relevant was an article last week in the Guardian described the problem of reinstatement of customs at Rotterdam. EU rules will require customs checks on goods from Britain at every port. However, there does not seem to be any corresponding need to do the same thing at Harwich and Felixstowe, nor does the UK government appear to have the inclination to commit the considerable resources. Likewise, passengers arriving at E27 destinations from the UK will theoretically have to declare goods purchased in the UK. I can envisage being made to queue for customs checks on returning home...

In the dream, the Jewish Israelis all pack up and go, leaving only the Christians, Muslims and Druze. The Palestinian refugees, now in their third generation and numbering five million descendants of the estimated 700,000, can now return. To redress all the other injustices, compensation is be paid to the estates of 1948 landowners on the basis of 1948 use value, plus 70 years rent. Tenants displaced in 1948 are compensated on the basis of 70 years disturbance. That raises a practical question. How would the restored ownership and tenancy rights be allocated seventy years later? Would there be a court to settle disputes between claimants, eg second cousins? How long would it take to settle these disputes, which would inevitably arise? What would happen in the meantime?

Conflicting predictions are being made by Brexit opponents. Brexit will lead to the collapse of British agriculture and industry. There will not be sufficient workers for seasonal agricultural work. Both predictions cannot be true. Assuming a near, but not total collapse, there will be millions of unemployed workers willing to pick strawberries at a pittance wage. Fantasy aside, there are not a fixed number of workers in a country, any more than there is a fixed amount of work to be done. Unemployment in the UK is allegedly at a very low level, though this conceals big regional and sectoral differences. Unemployment figures are also politically loaded. There has, for decades, been a drive to remove the unemployed, in one way or another, from the numbers of those seeking work or potentially economically active. The amount of harassment needed to claim benefit and remain as an unemployed statistic is an incentive to drop off the list, thereby becoming classified as not economicall...

The rumour mill in Sweden is increasingly talking about election fraud. There is certainly a big discrepancy between the pre-election predictions and the result, particularly in the case of the Sverigedemokraterna (SD), which is about one-third down. There were reports that there were no voting slips for the SD at many polling stations (there is a different slip for each party), and that counts and registration of votes may have been irregular. The government website crashed for over an hour after the election. The Swedish voting system is complicated and the votes are not counted as they are in Britain. It does not happen under the eye of the public, as in Britain, where the ballot papers are sorted and counted in a large hall, closely watched by scrutineers from all the parties. Nor is there the exciting moment when the Returning Officer stands up to announce the result. There is much wrong with the British first past the post system, where people vote for the major party or ca...

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, shocked by the shift of the Labour Party back to the Marxist Left, has argued that it is time. My reaction is just a weary, “Here we go again!”. In the 1980s it was called “Militant”. Now it is “Momentum”. Behind it are the same public sector white collar staff and college lecturers. We need to think beyond the one-dimensional Left-Right political model. Left and Right are both failed paradigms. Both are driven, conceptually, from the extremes. It was Lenin who said that “The wind always blows from the Left”. At the other end of this spectrum is the false libertarianism inspired by thinkers such as Rothbard, Benson and David Friedmann (son of Milton), More success is likely from a party which stood in a triangular relationship to Left and Right, as indeed did the British Liberal Party until the end of World War 2. If it had held to its guiding principles, an alliance with the centrist SDP would not have hapened since it would have been conceptual...

Here is a mystery which I cannot unravel. The Midland Railway procured a fleet of locomotives from US manufacturers in 1899. This is what was said about them. The American 2-6-0 tender engines were erected at Derby in 1899 and were supplied by Burnham Williams and Co., namely Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia and by the Schenectady Locomotive Works, New York. Recourse was made to America as the Derby shops were full to capacity with work, and the private locomotive builders were in the midst of a boom and suffering from strikes. As more six-coupled locomotives were needed Johnson (the Midland Railway’s Chief Mechanical Engineer), in company with his opposite numbers on the Great Central and Great Northern Railways, obtained sanction to purchase from the USA and orders for thirty locomotives were placed with Baldwin and ten with Schenectady.  Within a few weeks the first crates arrived at the Derby Works on 24 May 1899, the engines having been previously assembled and the...

The opening of Crossrail has been delayed by yet another year. It never was a good scheme. The stated need was for additional capacity on the northern section of the Metropolitan between Paddington and Liverpool Street. This could have been met by a new tube line between Paddington and Liverpool Street, on the same alignment as Crossrail. Because these are not logical starting points, it might have run westward to Heathrow and/or Hammersmith (the Metropolitan branch), and eastward to Stratford or Woolwhich, but as a tube. With no need to run on the national network, and running in tunnels of just over half the diameter, it could have been completed 15 years ago at a fraction of the cost. This was a bad case of mission creep. Like HS2.

An article in the Guardian by an abuse victim refers yet again to abuse of “children”. But since the author of the article was fifteen at the time, this was not child abuse but under-age homosexual abuse. Indeed, this seems to be the nature of most of this abuse, which, technically speaking is not paedophilia but ephebophilia . Why, therefore, is this epidemic of abuse still being referred to as child abuse by critics of the Catholic Church? Is it because there is a desire to cover up another reality? If so, why? The author also states that the abuse continued for two-and-a-half years, which raises the question of why the victim allowed it to continue for so long? A punch in the face from a fifteen year old would have put a stop to this and no priest would have dared reported such an assault to the police.

The FT has run a couple of pieces on Sweden this week. The first was a report of the outbreak of car burning, the second, today, on the rise of Sverigedemokraterna (SD), described as a populist party with Nazi roots, which is probably not far short of the mark. Around ten this morning, there were about 150 comments, most of them reasonable; a few had been removed. By lunchtime, all the comments had been hidden and the article was no longer open for comments. The same phenomenon hit the Guardian a couple of years ago. Comment is Free is no longer free, with only the most trivial topics being open for comment. This is precisely the kind of thing which gives rise to a sense that the media is being controlled by an elite which will tolerate no criticism. Its main effect is to boost the populist right.

The last timetabled steam train on British Railways ran exactly fifty years ago, Saturday 3rd August 1968. That evening, Preston station was packed with enthusiasts and general public alike to witness the departure of the last two ordinary, timetabled steam hauled trains. The Blackpool train had already left at 20.50 behind 45212. Everyone now waited for the very last one of all, the 21.25 Preston (ex Glasgow) to Liverpool Exchange leave with LMS Class 5, 45318 at the head of a packed train. The driver of the train, Ernie Heyes died on 25th June 2010, aged 75. RIP. The following week, Saturday 11th August, ran the famous 15 Guinea special, and that was the end. British Railways enforced a total ban on steam, which in the event, and entirely unexpectedly, lasted for only three years, with the running, in the autumn of 1971, of a special train headed by the Great Western locomotive King George V. So disappeared as c...

An analysis of students in the US has found that those who have a certain type of brain parasite are more likely to be majoring in business studies. Toxoplasma gondii , a protozoan parasite carried by cats, can infect people through contact with cat faeces, poorly cooked meat, or contaminated water. The parasite forms cysts in the brain where it can remain for the rest of a person’s life. Some studies have linked infection with the parasite to slower reaction times, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, suicidal behaviour, and explosive anger. I wonder what the incidence of this disease is among politicians? It could explain quite a lot. Would it be a good idea, for the safety of the public, that they were screened? https://www.newscientist.com/article/2175045-business-students-more-likely-to-have-a-brain-parasite-spread-by-cats/

This project sounds like one of those environmentally friendly schemes which is almost certainly just the opposite. Just a few of the doubts concern... The embodied energy of the concrete structure. The effect on wildlife, including fish and wading birds. The long-term consequences of the scheme, eg silting and pollution. Maintenance issues eg marine growth on the turbines, and silting again. The uncompetitive cost of the electricity it would generate gives some indication of the embodied energy the scheme would absorb before any power was generated. I am inclined to think it is a good thing that the scheme has been abandoned.

Next week come the first major disruptions due to Västlänken. Major alterations to Gothenburg’s tram services are always a feature of the summer as the holiday season is set aside for renewal of track. That is a story in itself, because the fleet of Italian trams that came into service in 2010 are inflexible and cause additional wear on curves. However, on top of this, there are closures in preparation for Västlänken, and to crown it all, the road tunnel along the Göta Älv will be closed for six months in one direction for the same reason. That will cause horrendous and widespread delays and congestion. It is already proving to be a project too far, and that is just a month into the construction period. In addition, trenches are appearing all over the place, blocking the entrances to shops and restaurants, which cannot be doing their business any good at all. I wonder how many bankruptcies there will be before the wretched scheme is complete?

Microsoft’s underwater data centre idea plumbs the depths in several ways. The idea is to use cold surrounding seawater to dissipate the heat generated. This is of course low-grade heat, but it is perfectly suitable for the heating of buildings, hot water systems, etc, which adds up to a huge amount of energy use worldwide, especially in the colder parts of the world. A data centre in Helsinki uses the waste heat in this way, heating a group of adjacent buildings. I would be happy to have a data centre in our basement if it meant no more heating bills. There is a fibre optic cable in the street outside, so there is no need for an underwater cable. What are Microsoft engineers thinking of?

Gaps between platforms and trains are another problem caused when there is a mis-match between the infrastructure and the trains. When the system was built in the early days of Queen Victoria, passenger carriages were short four-wheeled vehicles, typically less than 10 metres long. Over the next century, the standard length of a British passenger vehicle had risen to 20 metres. With bogies close to the ends, and about 14 metres apart, there would be a large gap on sharply curved concave platforms. This was not usually a problem with slam-door trains as passengers would lower the window inside the door and use the top of the window frame for support when getting on and off. The trains were also fitted with external handrails. This was not an ideal arrangement but it worked. The first large scale use of sliding door trains on the national system adopted the 1/3:2/3 configuration, as in these class 313 trains seen here at Brighton. The size of the gap is obvious. From the mid-1980s,...

One would have thought that a priority for rolling stock designers would have been to make the best use of the limited UK loading gauge. Seemingly not. The illustration of the interior of the new locomotive-hauled Nova 3 coaches for Transpennine Express is taken from an article in International Railway Journal ; I hope this is acceptable under the fair use of copyright rules. Take a look at the skirting area. This shows the problem caused by the very sharp lower bodyside curvature apparent in exterior views of the stock. This example is almost the rule. The same thing affects much of the rolling stock built since 1990, including the BR-designed Networkers and the BREL Electrostars and Turbostars. The bodyside profile makes no sense within the parameters of the UK loading gauge. As is well known, the British loading gauge is little bigger than that permitted for narrow gauge railways such as those of Japan and South Africa. This is mostly due to the closeness of adjacent t...

The latest UK productivity figures for the first three months of 2018 are not good, prompting the usual recriminatory comments. However, there are basic questions which rarely seem to get asked. Transport costs. High reject rates.  Remedial work having to be done on finished products. Inefficient layout of factory premises. Inefficient delivery of components and sub-assemblies to workbenches. Works kept waiting for components to arrive. Products not designed for efficient production. Excessive down-time of plant and machinery.  Poor communications between management and shop-floor workers.  It is a subject that needs to be put under the microscope if remedies are to be found. Hand-wringing achieves nothing.

Three of us were received into the Orthodox Church today. One of us was baptised in the lake and then Chrismated - anointed with Holy Oil, on the forehead, eyelids, ears, nose, mouth, hands and feet. The others two, being Roman Catholics, were only Chrismated, having been baptised already. Many thanks to all involved, including those who acted as Godparents and Fr Mikael Fälthammar, who has given us the course of instruction and received us into the Church. It is one of the most important event that anyone could have in their life. The journey is of course not over. This is a staging post on the journey.

There is a flurry of articles about Marx today, it being the 200th anniversary of his birth on 5th May 1818. If only the Soviets/Red Guards/Khmer Rouge... had really understood, Marxism would have led to a paradise on earth.

Every so often someone comes up with an article in praise of Karl Marx and suggesting that we should take another look at what he wrote. If you have a subscription you can read the latest offering, in the FT of all places . What Engels observed in England in 1840s Manchester was not “ capitalism ” . It was the consequence of the large scale land enclosures which had taken place between 1760 and 1840, which had transformed a self-sufficient peasantry into a class of wage slaves with no land rights. The bit about wage slaves was correct; the process by which this happened on the ground was described in detailed by the Hammonds in “ The Village Labourer ” . The periodic economic crises which characterised the US economy, and indeed, the general development of the US, were analysed by Henry George in his book “ Progress and Poverty ” , published in 1879, which promptly became a bestseller, remained so for half a century and is still in print and available on-line. George cont...

This article paints a glowing picture of multi-cultural Malmö. I mentioned in comments that the recent immigration had had a disastrous effect on the Jewish community in the city. My comments have disappeared without trace. So much for freedom of discussion. Left-liberalism, Guardian-style, is taking society down a road as dark as any the right could contrive.

To leave the Catholic church one has to send a completed form to the local parish. I did not want to send it without an explanation. Here is the main part of what I wrote. Since the arguments on both sides have been rehearsed endlessly and inconclusively for 1000 years, this is not something that can be resolved by recourse either to debate or history. There is nothing I could add; more erudite people than me have tried. If the Orthodox Church is heretical, then so must be all the saints in the pre-schism Church. The issues come down to theology, ecclesiology, and their manifestation in liturgy, devotional practice, church architecture, art and music; it seems to me that the problems which have afflicted the Catholic church over the past forty years have their roots far back in Catholic ecclesiology. One attends liturgy to come into the presence of almighty God. Since the Orthodox liturgy, and its setting, creates the most favourable possible circumstances for that encounter, my ...

I am planning to discuss the new Hitachi inter-city trains in several pieces on this blog. I put it under the heading of  “vanity schemes” because they were clearly not the best value-for-money replacement for the HST fleet and came about due to the political influence of the civil servants within the Department for Transport who developed the project and then protected it at all costs. These trains have many good points, in particular the quality of the finish and detailing inside and out, the smooth ride and surprisingly low noise levels when on diesel power. However, they also have many shortcomings, which are due to the specification produced as a result of the work of the DfT.  Hitachi has made the best of a concept that could have been better conceived. There is a lot of poorly utilised space due to the length of the vehicles.This is noticeable in the uncomfortable seats misaligned with windows, inadequate space for luggage in a location where passengers can keep ...

The Guardian has been steadily reducing the number of articles on which comments are allowed. On the newspaper’s web site, which used to appear under the slogan “Comment is Free”,  attributed to its famous editor C P Scott, comment is now restricted to the most trivial of topics. As for the commenting opportunities that still remain; where, formerly, comment was normally open for three days, it is usually closed after a few hundred responses. There are many reasons why this has happened. The newspaper has been a staunch defender of immigration, looks down on criticism of Islam and regards Islamic immigration as unproblematic. This was a widely held view, before Isis and the series of sexual abuse cases came to public attention. These called forth responses ranging from reasonable criticism to xenophobia and outright racism. On the other side, the reasonable criticism was attacked as racist or Islamophobic. Then came Brexit, an issue which has divided the British b...

Easter has finally happened. It seems as if Lent has been going on for months. I am going back to bed for another couple of hours as I did not get home till three. I will say only that it is the first Easter Vigil which did not disappoint since I moved to Sweden in 2012. Thank you Fathers Nemania, Duschan, and Dragan, and the choir, who were singing solidly for over three hours and had to be back again at 8.30 this morning. At last, an Easter Vigil which was everything an Easter Vigil should be.

A parish in Brazil has been criticised on social media after video showed a drone flying the Blessed Sacrament into the church. The act has been branded ‘sacrilegious’. http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/04/03/parish-criticised-after-flying-blessed-sacrament-from-drone/ However, the entire cult of the Blessed Sacrament is questionable. It is of medieval origin, and whilst the motivation was pious, the command we were given was ‘take and eat’. The Anglican reformers emphasised the point in Article XXV of the Thirty-Nine Articles , which states that ‘the Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about, but that we should duly use Them’. The objection is not that Christ is not really present in the Blessed Sacrament, but that He really is present. And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. (Ex 33:20). The practice does not exist in the Orthodox church. This is one of the reasons why I am hoping to be rece...

Today feels strange. It is Palm Sunday when everyone else is celebrating Easter Sunday. Yesterday was Lazarus Saturday which is my family feast day. Next week is Holy Week as we are still in Lent, which began about the same time as everyone else’s Lent but weekends do not really count. It seems as if Lent has been going on forever, what with the cold weather and everything, and still snow on the ground. Next Saturday evening will be big, though.

מַה נִּשְׁתַּנָּה, הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה This year Passover corresponds precisely with the western Easter, whereas we Orthodox are still looking forwards to celebrating our Easter, which will be next week. John 19:14 says that today (Friday) was Preparation Day for the Passover, and therefore the Last Supper can not have been a Seder meal. Confusion over this point arises from a mistranslation of Luke 22:7. From this confusion arises a further confusion, that the Mass is a re-enactment of the Last Supper; this is explained in the polemical book Innovations of the Roman Church by Apostolos Makrakis. From this confusion arises yet more: the use of unleavened bread in the Catholic Mass and the entire programme of liturgical reforms introduced, first at the Protestant Reformation, and fifty years ago, by the Roman Catholic Church itself. Confusion should not, however, be a cause of enmity, but a reason for enquiry. I wish everyone who reads this a happy Pesach, or Easter, whenever you...

British politicians are now saying that the future for the railways is hydrogen or battery power and that diesel traction should be phased out by 2040. Batteries have made vast improvements over the past couple of decades. Lithium supply is a problem but several of the elements on the top left hand side of the Periodic Table are candidates and we can expect substitutes to be adopted. However, the underlying problem of energy density is unlikely to be solved since there is no Moore’s Law in operation. The likely use of battery power will be for use on routes which are electrified for most of their length; one could envisage a train running from Paddington to Maidenhead on electric power and continuing to Bourne End and Marlow under battery power, where it could receive a top-up before returning; similar trains could also provide the all-day shuttle service on the branch. Apart from the provision of batteries, they would be similar in almost all respects to the regular fleet of electric ...

The author of the book “Dictator Pope” has now been revealed, which has led to him being suspended from the Order of the Knights of Malta. Marcantonio Colonna is the pen name of Henry Sire, an author and historian. Sire was born in 1949 in Barcelona to a family of French ancestry. He was educated in England at the Jesuits’ centuries-old Stonyhurst College and at Exeter College, Oxford, where he gained an honours degree in Modern History. He is the author of six books on Catholic history and biography, including one on the famous English Jesuit, writer, and philosopher Father Martin D’Arcy, SJ. The Dictator Pope is the fruit of Henry Sire’s four-year residence in Rome from 2013 to 2017. During that time he became personally acquainted with many figures in the Vatican, including Cardinals and Curial officials, together with journalists specialising in Vatican affairs . (Publisher’s note) It all makes for racy reading, but my own view is that anyone concerned about their spiritual we...

The Great Western Main Line electrification makes slow progress. Between Swindon and Bristol Temple Meads the project has been abandoned due to the cost, which is a mercy as it avoids disfiguring the Cotswold landscape. The work to Cardiff proceeds, much delayed, as here at Bristol Parkway. The overhead structures look as if they were designed to carry the weight of the trains, not the thin contact wires and supporting catenary.

Remainers claim that Brexit will allow in a torrent of toxic meat. This Guardian article , unsurprisingly not open for comment, shows yet again that there is already a grave home-produced problem. Tests carried out on food at the point of entry to a country are almost worthless in ensuring that it will be safe by the time it it put on the shelves of the shops, or served in restaurants. Food can be badly handled, or frozen food thawed and re-frozen. The most effective deterrent is the likelihood of random checks, with contraventions punishable by heavy fines or imprisonment. To supplement the resources of local authorities, it would also be worth giving the public better access to public analytical and testing services. Import controls exist primarily to protect producer interests. Benefits to consumers are largely incidental.

Remainers are like lovers who are blind to the faults of the loved one, even when these faults are expensive habits which can kill. How is this? The EU can be seen as operating in three levels in a hierarchical structure. At the top level is the principle of a forum where major issues of common interest can be discussed and differences resolved. This is one of the places where a particular moral tone is set eg through promoting values, human rights issues, legal structures, developing cultural and educational collaboration such as the Erasmus programme, and keeping a watchful eye on what is happening elsewhere in the world. There are also shared concerns such as the management of rivers which flow through several countries. Significantly, the EU steered clear of associating itself with Christianity, despite pleas such as that made by the Pope in 2002, when he said, of the EU draft Constitution, “How can we not mention the decisive contribution of the values which Christianity ...

I have taken down my Christmas lights at last, yesterday being the Feast of the Presentation, 2nd February, which marks the end of the Christmas season. Except that yesterday was 15th February. It was 2nd February on the Julian calendar, which is now 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar in secular use. Muslims use a lunar calendar with 12 months, but the months are  28 or 29 days long. The year is shorter than the real year, and feasts like Ramadan are 11 or 12 days earlier each year. At the moment, Ramadan is in the middle of the summer, which would be tough on those near the Arctic circle if the rules were not relaxed. The Jewish calendar is also a lunar calendar but extra months are added according to a 19 year cycle of leap years. The extra month, called Adar Sheni, the Second Adar, is in the spring, and is inserted on the 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19th years of the cycle. In practice the Jewish calendar is more complicated than that. Passover is on 15th...

This is extracted, unedited and without comment, from “The Innovations of the Roman Church” by Apostolos Makrakis (1831-1905). Here is an alternative interpretation of Matthew 16:18, the passage on which the perpetual Supremacy of Peter is based: that the Rock is not the person of Peter, but the faith which Peter confesses. “He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him. Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matt. 16: 15-19). The Father of Christ...

This is extracted, unedited, from “The Innovations of the Roman Church” by Apostolos Makrakis (1831-1905). I do not like the style but am in agreement with the substance.  Neither statues nor pictures are approved according to Jewish practice. Statues are indeed problematic; whilst they are intended only as a help to worship, it does not always stop there in practice. Ikons are a different matter because they are not made by human hands and are the product of prayer. The Gregorian calendar has been criticised by Jewish authorities on the same grounds: that Easter can occur a month too early. On the celibacy of the clergy, recent experience should be sufficient to condemn the practice. Married clergy is not of course a guarantee that misdemeanours will not occur, and this is not to suggest that most Catholic priests do not keep their vow of celibacy, but the requirement is neither necessary nor desirable. But besides the seven major innovations (heresies) and the infallible...