AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Sharpham Rainbow Originally uploaded by seadipper . There was a massive downpour and then the sun came out again.

Sharpham and the River Dart Originally uploaded by seadipper . Met up with a group of old friends in Dawlish and we went to the Sharpham estate near Totnes and walked round. It is in a loop of the River Dart.

Ornamental Squash Originally uploaded by seadipper . My friend grows these - they are mainly for decoration.

Effects of the buy-to-let craze - my neighbours at the back Originally uploaded by seadipper . My previous neighbours at the back had a nice garden and grew a lot of vegetables. Then they moved and the house was bought by a builder who destroyed the garden and paved it over. Then it was bought by somebody who has just let it and the tenants use it to store their rubbish, which there is a lot of. Which has not improved my view. Buy-to-let has been a disaster for areas like this, as stable communities have been replaced by people who are on the move and don't care about where they live. The government has made matters worse by encouraging it. The effect has been to stoke up house prices beyond the reach of people who want to buy them to live in. This has helped to inflate the house-price-bubble. Of course, it is not the price of houses that has risen, it is the price of the land upon which they stand. Like all bubbles, it will burst, the only question is when? Then the place...

I sent in my tax return using the on-line submission facility. This is a well thought-out system and easier than filling in the bundle of paper forms they send out. And it will do the calculation right up to the end of January deadline, instead of you having to send it in by 30 September. Highly recommended. Give it a try instead of paying an accountant to do a job when you have to do most of the book-keeping work yourself anyway. That said, there is no excuse for taxing people's labour. It is unnecessary, complicated, discourages people from working, is a cause of the problems resulting from having 85% of the population living in one-third of the land area of the country. One can go on and on. The reality is the tax is not paid by employees - that is just an illusion. It is in reality paid by employers. To put some figures on this. A nominal wage of £25000 costs an employer £27560, and provides an employee with a real wage - the net value of what people can actually buy with their...

Last Saturday, there was a minor derailment outside Brighton station at about 9 am. But trains were still not running at 7 pm, and the disruption continued next day. A crane had to be brought from Derby to put the train back on the track. This did not arrive for several hours, apparently because it is "out of gauge" and special arrangments had to be made to give it the necessary clearance. There always used to be breakdown train and crane kept at Brighton, just outside the station. In the early 1980s, a new one was provided, complete with modern emergency lighting for working at night. Why was it taken away? Twenty years ago, trains would have been running within three or four hours after a minor incident of this kind, with a normal service next day. Are we letting too many decisions be made by the bean counters?

I have been back in Britain six weeks and it is starting to get to me. So here are some positive images. Balcombe Viaduct; Water meadows near Salisbury; Pavilion Gardens, Brighton; Oxford - Clarendon Building and Sheldonian Theatre - amongst the finest groups of buildings in Europe