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I live next door to Headington Hill Park in Oxford, which I think is the nicest park in the city, laid out as it was a century and a half ago now by the Morrell family as part of the parkland setting for Headington Hill Hall, which is now occupied by my employers at Oxford Brookes University. The park was split from the hall grounds some decades ago before the Hall was rented to Robert Maxwell to house his family (the "best council house in Britain" he apparently used to say) and has been managed by the city council ever since.

For a couple of weeks now there has been tree felling going on in all the city's parks as part of a biennial survey of trees that might be getting sick or dangerous. Anyway, I went round the park carefully checking all those with red crosses on, which I assumed were the ones that were going to be taken out and was quite sanguine about it - about a dozen out of several hundred trees in the park and all had either been obviously damaged in last year's heavy storms that felled on in our grounds next door or were clearly lifeless.

However on our daily lunchtime walk I was appalled to see this:

The second most interesting chestnut tree in the park has been hacked around - I don't know yet whether it is actually pollarded (can you do that to something as slow growing as a chestnut?) or in the penultimate stage of being removed completely. But I'm bloody fuming. I am sure there was no red cross on it. A few weeks ago they did cut off one of the most precarious looking branches (but no worse than some other beautiful chestnuts nearby) and whilst I was annoyed by that I thought the pain was all over for this majestic example.

Here's the best photo I have of it from last year.

And in case you are interested, here's one of the one I think is the most interesting tree, possibly that I've ever seen, but certainly in the park.

I have to say, whilst I initially dismissed the notion that trees were being cut down specifically to provide benching for the "promenade" production of Midsummer-night's Dream that's going on in the park this summer, clearly the few trees with Xs on previously would not have been enough to provide the amount of seating space they needed. I am now suspicious that might be the case. If so, it's gross. Who on earth would imagine it would be a good idea to cut down trees to assist a performance of probably the greatest drama set in a magic wood?

Apparently there's a story going around (in another Murdoch rag) that certain "important funders" of the Lib Dems are threatening to withdraw financial support for the party if Simon wins. They say he is "unfit" as a result of his leftward stance and his supposed "dishonesty" about his sexual identity.

I find this pretty nasty stuff. My reaction is "do your worst, we're bigger than the odd individual, whatever you are worth".

That it costs so much to "play at the top table" is one of the worst aspects of modern politics and it seems to me driven by people who want more influence than they warrant in a democracy. Whilst I'm not likely to be voting Simon at number one, this certainly makes me want to put him ahead of Ming in my preferences, and I would be very pleased to see us eschew such undue influences very publicly in an attempt to reposition ourselves in the public eye as the decent party.

I have some respect, moreso than most in the party I suspect, for the "economic liberal" argument, or at least my "unorthodox" economic outlook permits me to find a way in which freedom of economic life can be maximised whilst retaining a strong social safety net democratically run and managed, but if this is the game the main proponents of "economic liberalsim" within the party want to play, they are welcome to take it elsewhere.

As to Muslim members who are supposedly threatening to resign if Simon were to win because of his sexual history, I say to them, if they are any more than a figment of the Sunday Times's imagination (and we already know that the 20 they claim in Birmingham Hodge Hill are absolutely nothing to do with this but inter-Muslim community politics), I don't want to be in the same party as you. And on this I believe I am the liberal. So find a way to accommodate your faith within liberalism or find an illiberal party to support - there are plenty of them.

Whilst I accept that some of the Clarkson protestors objected because they think he’s a boor with a (deliciously) “un-PC” sense of humour, the main concern appeared to be his supposed environmental record.

In this respect, it’s the environmentalist lobby (I rather like Clarkson’s own word, “eco-mental”), that has it dangerously wrong. It is not the search for quality, for fun, for pushing technology to the limits that is the environmental culprit. But the economic system that continually forces more vehicles on the roads travelling further and further.

The traditional green response to “too many cars” seems to be to get people on buses, bikes, anything but cars. And on a small, localised scale, this may be superficially right. Congestion makes our towns seem as if they are choking.

Rather, we must ask why people need to hurtle around day after day and resolve pressures that will add to this. They are pretty fundamental economic questions.

For example, we are, in the developed world, the wealthiest we have ever been. And yet we are about to tell people they need to work for an extra five years at least to be able to afford to retire. That’s an additional 10%+ of rush hour traffic.

The amount of debt-money swilling around our system means that for much of our working lives we work two days a week for the government and one for the bankers, before we ever get to work for our own financial security. Solve that and we could finally see those 30-year old predictions of life in the 21st century, of 70% leisure time and such like, fulfilled.

Each working person in the country is permanently slaving to pay the interest on around £50,000 of systemic debt. Not necessarily their debt, but the trickle-down effects of corporate and government borrowing on top of personal borrowing.

25% of road haulage is just keeping the haulage industry moving – fuel, parts etc. 30% of all transport is shunting food ever increasing distances around the planet. Raw cotton, subsidised in the US, is flown to China and India before arriving here as £2 tee-shirts – all barmy, with diminishing returns and frightening consequences.

Take all that unnecessary debt-fuelled traffic off the roads and we’ll find we can respect the planet and still have fun with Ferraris.

Hat tip, though I hate to say it, to Yellow Peril for this story: LibDems soften on axing council tax - [Sunday Herald]:

LibDems soften on axing council tax

By Paul Hutcheon, Scottish Political Editor

SCOTTISH Liberal Democrats are backtracking on plans to replace the council tax with an income-based alternative, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
Nicol Stephen’s party is softening its support for abolishing the successor to the poll tax because it does not want to jeopardise a third coalition deal with Labour. Senior LibDems believe the policy, which could increase the bills of middle-class Scots, is not worth a huge political fight.

The development is significant as the introduction of a local income tax was presumed to be a key plank of the party’s electoral strategy for next year’s Holyrood election.

The issue separates the LibDems from Labour, who remain staunch supporters of the council tax, and was thought to be a factor preventing another coalition deal.

Of course they are perfectly able to vary policy in a properly federal party where different areas may demand different tactics, and this is great news, if true. Scotland has led the way on land reform and voting reform. Land Value Tax would be the natural extension of the community land ownership laws they passed. I hope ALTER and the Labour Land Campaign can maybe get together and persuade our respective party groups north of the border to go for a Site Value Rating for local government in Scotland.

Glasgow, I believe, has the lowest rate of home owner-occupancy in the UK - LVT with a homestead allowance could help spread home ownership.

Glasgow is also the city that, at the turn of the last century, was being squeezed by surrounding landowners till the poor people squeaked as highlighted in several speeches on Land Value Tax by one Winston Churchill - and he made one of his best known speeches on the subject in Edinburgh.

It was predominantly Scottish ex-patriate business-men and colonialists of course who took Land Value Tax to places like Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand - implementing overseas the solution to the problems of a feudal landowning system they had laboured under and escaped from back at home.

Let them now lead the way and prove to the rest of us how it can be done!

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