Turkey and the EU

Today's top story on the BBC is Turkey's attempts to join the European Union. (Actually, it's the second story, but I don't think anyone is interested in a minor Scottish by-election.) Turkish membership of the EU would be a Very Important Thing. It would bring a Moslem nation into a major western power block, achieving by peaceful means what violence has failed to do.

Unfortunately, I am ashamed to say, certain nations have raised last minute objections. I have to say that I agree with the various Turkish historians who say this sounds like racism, or at least a distrust of outsiders.

Culturally, nations are all insecure. Why? Because our nations, from their origins to the present day, are based on theft - exclusion based on violence. Our borders exist because centuries ago we stole the land by force. Land owners - from the billionaire to the humble house owner, gain security from knowing that, even if they are not the most efficient users of the land, they are still guaranteed wealth just because they own it. Our whole way of life is based on exclusion. We do not know how to share, except with our close friends.

Land rent changes that culture. Land rent provides a way that land (the source of all wealth) can be allocated according to merit, and (because land prices go down) there is always enough for everyone. It encourages efficient use of resources, then shares the profit with society. So land rent provides economic security that welcomes any outsiders into its system.

An end to xenophobia - another long-term benefit of land rent.

the Soham murders

Today's top BBC story is about the Soham murders. Ian Huntley had a history of unhealthy interest in young girls, then he got a job as a school caretaker and the rest is history. Why wasn't he stopped? Because all the evidence against him (before he killed the girls) was just hearsay and unproven allegations.

If hearsay and unproven rumors were allowed as reasons to stop people working with children, innocent people might not be able to get another job. That is why we have rules against using hearsay as evidence.

However, in a land rent system, there are far more jobs. It is easy for any employer to employ someone who is just marginally profitable, because there are not taxes to pay. Since it is easy to get a job, it doesn't matter much is someone is wrongly banned from working with children, they can work somewhere else. The government agencies could have passed on hearsay, with the understanding that it was just that - hearsay - and not enough to stop someone working in some other industry.

Keeping pedophiles away from children - another benefit of land rent.

junk food in schools

Today's top BBC news item is junk food in schools. The government wants to ban it (more regulation!) But let's look at the land rent angle.

If you ban good food at schools, kids who want junk will just eat elsewhere. So a better solution is to change the kids' eating desires. Statistically, middle class kids are more concerned about eating healthy food than are poorer kids, so why not just increase the middle classes? (Not saying that poor kids don't care, but good food that tastes food costs a lot more than junk food that tastes good.) With land rent, everyone pays rent on where they live, but pay no taxes on work, so there are more jobs, and more incentive to work. Result: more self-reliant families, hence a bigger middle class, hence better food.

Children's nutrition - another problem made better by land rent.

slight changes in this blog

Like you, I am a busy guy. I don't want to read ten news sites every day, especially when they just regurgitate the same old stories and ignore the interesting ones. And I don't think it helps this site - I end up finding odd little stories that interest me but possibly nobody else. It also allows me to ignore the stories that don't have an obvious land rent angle. No more! From now on I will only look at the top stories that other people think are most important.

So until further notice, I will only report on the top story each morning from www.bbc.co.uk/news . Why the BBC? Partly because it has a reasonably good reputation around the world, and partly because I live in the UK, so there is a small chance I might know some background material on a particular topic. When I report on American news, there is a greater then normal danger that I don't know what I'm talking about. And finally, in today's global news market, the same kinds of topics come up anyway.

There is a risk that some days will just repeat old posts - how many times can you talk about the same thing? But if something is important it is worth repeating.

yes, tax does affect behavior

The simple economic case for land rent is that land is inelastic. That is, if you tax land, you won't end up with less land. But if you tax elastic things like production, some production becomes uneconomic and people do less of it. Today's Adam Smith blog is a good example, discussing the effect of oil prices and other costs on the economy. (The question of sustainable oil was discussed here in an earlier blog.)

(Some people criticize my use of a right wing site like Adam Smith Institute. But I find that, apart from the core issue of ownership, they make a lot of sense. Of course, ownership is the whole basis of capitalism, so that one caveat is rather important.)

Intelligent taxation - another benefit of land rent.

comment spam

Over the last few weeks I've had a lot of spam comments that I then have to delete. So I've enabled the feature where you have to copy some distorted letters in order to confirm a post. Hope you don't mind.

off topic: space elevators

A few years ago I had a radio show where I interviewed local people. One man I remember vividly was a specialist in space elevators, and it struck me that this was an incredibly good idea. I am pleased to see that space tethers are back in the news.

A space tether is a long cable attached to a geostationary satellite. Or, to save the trouble of climbing said cable, a slowly rotating cable with its center half way between the ground and said satellite. Such an idea was impossible until the latest generation of strong, lightweight materials. the cable (or more likely webbing, to avoid the danger if one part breaks) would need to be tens of thousands of miles long, although only the bottom hundred miles or so would have any noticeable weight.

Rockets are incredibly expensive, vastly inefficient, and rather dangerous. An elevator is an infinitely more sensible idea. No more blast off, no more re-entry, just travel at a sensible pace, at a sensible price, and arrive in style.

land owners and land prices

Interesting article in yesterday's Adam Smith blog, about land prices. British land prices are highly inflated, but land owners want it that way, and will fight against any attempt to lower prices. The most immediate result of land rent is of course to reduce land prices (because unproductive land is no longer profitable, so must be sold to someone who can use it better. Supply goes up, demand goes down, so the price goes down.).

Affordable housing - another benefit of land rent.

torture in Iraqi jails

In today's news, more revelations of abuse of prisoners. The real problem is secrecy - everyone wants secrecy, and with secrecy we will do whatever we want. (Notice how, even at this stage, the authorities condemn the messenger - they still want secrecy.)

There are two solutions to secrecy: power, or trust. Trust arises from cooperation and cooperation from a fair balance of power. It's the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. Or in this case, runs the jails. If you come from a dirt poor part of Iraq and decide to support the local charismatic leader, and if you then get captured by western forces, there is nothing you can do about it. The real problem is economic inequality. Which can all be traced to land ownership, on a local and a global scale.

Injustice based on secrecy based on inequality - another problem solved by land rent.

orang-utans and survival

In today's news, orang-utans are threatened by the destruction of their environment. And the same goes for a thousand other species.

Wildlife and forests create measurable benefits. Trees release oxygen and regulate climates, wildlife creates tourism and is a source for new drugs, and people pay more to live in attractive places. All we need are laws that make people pay the full value of what they take. Land rent makes people pay the full value for the land, and the same principle can then be applied to other natural resources.

Species loss - another problem solved by land rent.

Venezuelan land reform

Interesting article in Venezuelanalysis.com about the pros and cons of land reform. I won't try to summarize all the issues, except to highlight the last one:

Related to the goals of social justice and food sovereignty is the principle that land use takes priority over formal land ownership. ... Venezuela’s elite can still rely on the argument that a land use principle undermines private property rights, which are “sacred.” This sacred principle of private property is still an important element in Venezuelan culture.

In my opinion this is they key. Simply taking land from the rich will not work. Land rent has a solid basis in private property - society creates land values, and thus society owns that value. If the land owner also tries to own the extra value created by society, that is theft.

global warming

The principle behind land rent is that you pay for your debt to society. Society makes your land more valuable, so you owe them. (And you pay no other taxes.) If we have land rent, people will get used to the benefits of paying their debts to society. It then becomes politically easy to extend the principle to other areas.

One area where we urgently need to pay our debts is global warming. Nature itself has provided us with coal, oil, air, water, etc, creating a massive level of value. But if we dump carbon dioxide into the air, we reduce the value of the world for everyone. So we owe a debt to our neighbors (and if they cause more of the problem than we do, then they owe a debt to us).

The size of the debt might seem large, but it is nothing compared with the long term cost of global warming. Here's just one more in an endless line of statistics: the carbon dioxide we are releasing now is similar to the amount released 55 million years ago. It raised the acidity of the oceans, killing off more than half of all ocean species. Recent ocean floor core samples indicate that the oceans took one hundred thousand years to recover.

Global warming: one more problem that would be solved if we had land rent.

the fur trade

I support land rent because it attacks all the world's problems at their source: economic injustice. However, some of the world's problems are so urgent that they demand immediate action, even if it distracts from the long term message. One such evil is the fur trade. If fur is harvested in a humane way, I have no problem with it. But some fur is not. This is from an interview in New Scientist, 18 June 2005, p.22, concerning fur in Britain that comes from China. The full report is here.

On the farms we found animals in barren cages with floor area averaging 0.6 square metres, 25 per cent smaller than the European Union's recommended minimum. We also found animals exhibiting extreme fear and signs of self-mutilation. But of most concern was the way they were slaughtered. Animals were being stunned with a blunt object or swung by their hind legs head-first against the ground. Many animals were fully conscious while being skinned, and remained so for up to 10 minutes after all their skin had been removed.

It is hard to think of anything more horrific - not just the manner of death, but the life that leads up to it. Fur comes from mammals - creatures with similar brain structures and hence feelings to our own. A life of blind fear then being skinned alive? It makes simple starvation pale in comparison.

What angers me most is that western buyers pay for this, but deny it. I spent most of my life in a religious cult, so I understand denial. Everyone does it. Some things are just too uncomfortable, so we ignore them, or we construct elaborate justifications to let us deny that we are involved, or to make the bad seem good. But it is still denial. It just allows the bad things to continue.

I now donate each month to Care For The Wild International. There are other charities who fight against this evil. I urge everyone to examine their priorities and ask what other uses of your money are more important?

global warming and immigration

This is old news, but an interesting application of land rent. The principle behind land rent is that you pay for the land you take from society. By the same principle, you should pay for the oil, water, clean air, and anything else you take from others. But in return you don't pay other taxes. Hence tax becomes an incentive to create more, and to benefit society.

A recent letter to Nature (discussed here) argues that if pollution causes global warming, and global warming creates millions of homeless people, then any country that creates thirty percent of the pollution should accept thirty percent of the immigrants. An excellent idea!

free trade

In today's news, South African president Thebo Mbeki has called upon the US and the EU to end subsidies that harm the poor. This is only the latest of several free trade stories over the past few months. Earlier, EU sugar subsidies were specifically highlighted: we keep our prices at three times the market level, so our farmers produce too much, so we dump it on the world market at next to nothing, so third world farmers cannot compete. Another story was the Chinese clothing quotas - large quantities of Chinese clothing were impounded at the ports because of a mix-up over quotas. China quite rightly demanded that we allow free trade.

Who believes in free trade? Who wants the poor to escape their poverty? Not us.

council tax

Today's top story on the BBC (in Britain) is property reevaluations. Local government tax comes from property values - but not land values. Clearly this is unjust, since it punishes people for improving their property, while allows wealthy people to have vast amounts of land yet pay the same as people with less. In addition, the amount of tax collected is arbitrary - each local council decides how much it wants, then charges accordingly. How we all wish we could get paid that way! In contrast, land rent only takes the money you owe to society (for taking its land) and nothing more. Here's an idea, why not try justice for a change?

setting the agenda

Each day I read various news sites, and what stands out most is that the same stories are reported day after day, while most stories go unreported. I already spent several blogs on terrorism and hurricane Katrina, and don't have anything else meaningful to add (assuming my ramblings are meaningful!) .

Of course, we all have our own agenda. My agenda is land rent. Unearned privilege is behind most of the world's problems, and justice is the solution. Everything else - war, famine, etc., - is just a symptom. Or at least, that's how I see it.

Scandinavia and land rent

Citizens worldwide believe that governments do not represent their people. The exception to the trend is Scandinavia, where citizens think their governments do a very good job. Norway, for example, is officially the best place to live for the fifth year in a row, and its citizens' views reflect that. And why is Norway so good? It spends its natural wealth on society. Its method isn't as efficient as land rent, but has a similar outcome. This generally better systems of government are further down the road toward land rent - Denmark (also Scandinavian and high in the rankings) already uses a limited form of land rent. Nations of the world, take note!

what if old folks paid land rent?

My brother and I somehow got onto the subject of tax. I mentioned that land values should be taxed. He said, "That would make all the retired people homeless. They save all their lives to own a house, then they retire on a tiny pension, and they would not be able to afford the land value rent."

I didn't answer him (arguing with siblings is a bad idea) but he only looked at one side of the equation. Each person would gain more wealth over a typical 40 year working life than they would lose in a typical 20 year retirement. Moreover, anyone who held more land than they needed would have an incentive to sell their excess, thus returning the land to useful production, and benefiting all of society.

Of course, if society thinks that old people should pay no land rent, it is free to create an 'old folks allowance' that is exactly equal to whatever old folks pay in land rent. But we cannot ignore the facts: occupying land - preventing others from using it - has a real cost. Land rent simply forces us to face reality.

off topic: abortion

I love science. As long as we have ignorance we can argue forever, but science provides answers that are measurable, testable, peer reviewed, etc. In other words, answers that, while never perfect, are better than any others. Many people still prefer ignorance, and ignorance is always the easiest (and hence most popular) route, but for those who want it, science provides the best answers we have. Which brings us to abortion.

Abortion is one of those apparently intractable problems, because people have very strong feelings on both sides of the debate. Enter science to shine a light. (This weeks' New Scientist has a very good article on the topic, but the only online source I have found is an anti-abortion site that attempts to rubbish the findings.) The latest research shows that unborn babies do not have the physical structures to feel pain before 28 weeks. Those paths simply do not exist. This is not an opinion, it is a measurable fact.

This does not answer every other question - there is still doubt over whether pain can be experienced after that point (though all the evidence suggests that those pain pathways are not put to use until after birth). There is also the question of why an unborn baby will move away from a needle. But even a single celled organism can move away from a stimulus, so that does not imply any higher functions. There are plenty of questions, but one by one they are being answered. Critics point out that pain receptors grow in the skin before 28 weeks, but this does not change the fact that the message cannot reach the brain.

We can argue against abortion on many other grounds, but on the question of "does the baby's brain feel pain before 28 weeks" the debate is over. The debate needs to move on to other topics.

how to fund infrastructure

I've been reading a collection of land rent stories published in respected British magazines. This little nugget caught my attention. When the British government extended the Jubilee railway line in London, it cost £3.5bn ($5bn). But it caused land values to rise by £13bn. Next time, the government should pay for it by taxing the land value increase. Landlords would benefit because, even after the tax, they still make big profits from the new transport link that otherwise would never be built. And everyone else benefits from the link itself. Everyone wins!

a flat tax

The latest British tax guide has doubled in size to 9000 pages, despite the government claiming to simplify it. More and more groups are despairing of this quagmire and talking about a flat tax - nobody pays up to a certain amount, then everyone pays the same. The argument is that this encourages growth and removes bureaucracy and avoidance. See here for a summary.

I wonder, would a flat tax be a step toward land rent? Might it allow people to see more clearly? If taxes become simple it might be much easier to shift them from production (which discourages work) to land (which is neutral)? In my view, complexity is the enemy of clear thought, and thus the enemy of land rent Perhaps the first step to thinking clearly is to simplify everything, e.g. with a flat tax?

Britain considers limited land rent

An item I missed last week (scroll down to 'doing it wrong on land tax'): the British government is thinking of charging limited land rent: where a government action creates land value, that extra land value should be taxed. For example, if planning permission is granted, and so land values increase.

This is an excellent idea. But look at the details: the government does not actually create the value when planning permission is granted, it simply stops destroying value by withholding permission. Of course, it may be that withholding permission also created value by making the district a nicer place to live, in which case allowing permission destroys value in the long term. The only way to ensure that the real value is measured is to tax the bare land value everywhere. That way, the real long term benefits and costs are measured, and not just short term government-created distortions.

biomass instead of fossil fuels

Continuing the theme of "what if land rent makes fossil fuels more expensive," I have long been a fan of biomass. Most cars can already run on vegetable oil with a little tuning. Result: zero net emissions, and no need to pump billions into exotic new technologies.

The Achilles heel of biomass is that it requires a lot of land to grow the stuff. But that is less and less of a problem (scroll down to 'the grass is greener'). Ten per cent of Europe's farm land could provide ten percent of Europe's energy. And Europe is a crowded place. What if we pay North African countries to irrigate their vast semi-desert areas? A solution to poverty, desertification, global warming, oil shortage, and a dozen other major problems all solved in one go. Sweet. :)

land rent and utility bills

In today's news, British Gas is raising its prices yet again. If the people who own oil and gas fields had to pay land rent, would the prices rise much faster? The answer is no.

If they charged much more, users would simply move to other sources of energy - nuclear, biomass, wind, solar, etc. But land rent would ensure that the oil and gas industries do not disappear: if the companies lost sales, their land value and thus their land rent would fall until an equilibrium was reached.

It is conceivable that we might use less fossil fuels and use more renewables, and we might have to pay slightly more in the medium term, but the transition would be spread over several years. But the costs would be dwarfed by the financial and other benefits.

1. The really big change is saving the planet from the vast costs of pollution and global warming.
2. Further savings come from reducing our reliance on a single fuel (usually oil) and thus reducing the global tensions and wars that this brings.
3. With no incentive to keep unprofitable land, gas and oil fields would come onto the market. This allows genuine competition and thus lower prices. Meanwhile, alternative energy sources have more customers and hence can develop greater expertise and economies of scale.
4. Finally, land rent is spent on all of society. All society uses fuel, all society benefits from land rent. The difference is that land rent goes to those who most need it.

In summary, as regards the energy industry, the costs of land rent are negligible, and the benefits are enormous.

charity is not the answer

The oil company Shell donated three million dollars to emergency aid from Hurricane Katrina. That represents about one hour's profits. Under land rent, oil fields would be taxed to their full value. All profit would come from extracting oil more efficiently than the competition - there would be no profit from simply owning the fields. Hence oil would still be pumped, but billions would go to the community, and everyone benefits.

inequality

In today's news, some countries (such as the US) have more inequality - and hence poverty - poverty than others. There is massive inequality, and some countries are more unequal than others. We have three choices.
1. Business as usual.
2. Arbitrary redistribution of wealth.
3. Charge people for the wealth they take out of society.
Only the third choice - land rent - solves poverty and rewards wealth creation. It's not a hard choice.

oil for food in Iraq

In today's news, the UN is criticized for how it handles the oil-for-food program in Iraq. It is easy to see this as a cynical attempt to distract attention from the much greater Iraq scandal in Washington, but it is refreshing to see how Annan accepts blame, does not play it down, and plans real changes. However, for the most part it worked well.

But my point is not about how well it worked, but to point out that the principle in action was land rent. Saddam Hussein did not create that oil, its value was created by the wider community, and thus its wealth belonged to the wider community. The oil-for-food plan, suitably reformed to avoid corruption, should be adopted everywhere and applied to all non-earned wealth.

morality: the great fly wheel

A fly wheel is "a heavy wheel attached to machinery to equalize the movement (opposing any sudden acceleration by its inertia and any retardation by its momentum), and to accumulate or give out energy for a variable or intermitting resistance." Morality serves the same purpose in society. Morality is the accumulated wisdom of the ages - some things are "good" and some things are "bad." It averages out all the decisions of millions of people.

It takes a long time for morality to change. Clever politicians can appeal to morality to make people do apparently stupid things. But over the long term, enough counter examples will cause the heavy fly wheel to change direction. Without this fly wheel, people would take forever to make any decisions,a nd would change direction every day, and thus have even greater problems. Because the bottom line is that our brains are very limited, and we use numerous tricks and short-cuts to get better results with what we have.

So the inertia, though frustrating and occasionally disastrous, is good. Which means that, barring amazing events, any radical changes like a move to land rent, will take generations. But the good news is that it will happen, for the reasons given elsewhere. I just have to be more patient while the great fly wheel changes direction.

blind faith deserves respect

The trouble with land rent is that it requires a little thought. I've been listening to George W. Bush talking about Iraq and new Orleans, and I have to hand it to the man, he is an expert at blind faith. He makes everything sound noble and optimistic and rosy. He says "forget the facts, just trust me" and part of me wants to. So he lied about WMD? So he cut spending on levees? So things have got worse when he promised they would get better? Never mind, he will fix it this time. He is very convincing if you open your heart and shut your mind.

Faith beats thought nearly every time. I have seen this even on the Georgist message board over at progress.org. While they have no time for Bush, most of the Georgists there (or at least the active ones) base their beliefs on blind faith. That is, God gave the land to everyone equally, and everything else follows. That theory, like Bush's "trust me" message, is intellectually bankrupt, but it is very powerful. In contrast, actually thinking through the complex reality is just tiring. Much as I dislike blind faith, I have to respect its greater power over the human mind.

the basis of morality

Yesterday I revised the main site to focus on land rent and forget the Utopian stuff about choosing your own government. Discussing it on a Georgist forum raised some interesting opinions regarding the basis of morality. In short, the other contributors believe that "equal rights" are self evident and they should form the foundation of our arguments. I disagree.

Morality is useful. Morality is a set of short-cuts and conclusions that help us make quick decisions in complex situations. For example, sharing and tolerance are moral concepts. But they are not foundation for serious thought, because they are not absolutes. They are conclusions resting on other foundations, and they only apply under familiar circumstances. There are plenty of times when any particular moral statement does not apply. If we want a deeper understanding, we need to find where these morals come from.

So morality is like the laws of physics. Statements like "heat rises" and "gravity pulls downwards" are useful short-cuts, ideal for everyday use. But if we want a deeper understanding we need to take a cold, critical look at why and how and when.

Georgists, like Christians or anyone else with a moral agenda, are trying to persuade people who hold a different moral system. They are trying to persuade powerful elites who control armies and deal in realpolitik. Simply stating that your morals are right will not work. As long as Georgists base their arguments on ideas that others reject as impractical, they will remain in an intellectual ghetto and never persuade the powerful.

We need to understand the deeper causes if we are to find common ground. In the case of property ownership, the common ground is that an ethical system can be derived from a consideration of cold hard power and survival. It does not rely on feel-good notions of duty and sharing, it relies on evolutionary survival of the fittest, because the fittest need to cooperate. That is something that everyone can understand.

homelessness and land rent

After the hurricane, many people are looking for shelter, or to rebuild. This might be a good time to remember that under land rent, nobody makes a profit from just sitting on a land monopoly. As a result, the demand for land goes down and the supply goes up, so the price of land falls. Which is good news for those who need somewhere to live.

complex issues made very simple

It's all about money. Whatever the problem - war, global warming, disease, how much you suffer depends on how much money you have. The New Orleans story illustrates this. The wealthy people mostly got out early. The poor people (who were mostly black) could not get out. That is why I keep banging on about land rent. If we get property ownership right, then everything else is right.

hurricanes and land rent

Best quote of the day: "W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives."

As usual, land rent would have prevented the problem. Land rent is based on the market value of land. The true market value, not the highly subsidized artificial value. If people paid the full market costs of living in a flood-prone area, you can be sure that those flood defenses would be rock solid.

Balkanization

Balkanization is the main argument against freedom to secede. The belief is that people naturally hate each other, and if they have their own little countries, they will constantly fight, just like in the Balkans.

That is rubbish. As I type I'm listening to a BBC discussion with veterans of Sarajevo. Time has passed, the dust has settled, and conclusions can be drawn. Without exception, they tell the same story. It was a simple land grab by a Serbian army. The idea that "Balkan peoples all hate each other" is simply false - it was propaganda of the time, and simply false. Studies of previous Balkan conflicts send the same message, but let us concentrate on this one for now.

The real problem is that international law is based on land ownership, and land ownership is based on force. This makes it impossible to create fair laws, or to others to judge fairly between competing claims, or for others to raise support to intervene. Until we install land rent (meaning that you only get from land the wealth you create, and the rest is shared with society), then land ownership - and hence history - will be an endless story of the strong living off the weak, occasionally punctuated by wars.

reality bites

Another non-land-rent story. I'm watching the New Orleans situation with great interest. Atheists have a saying (short enough for bumper stickers) - "reality bites." Meaning that, reality is reality, and will affect us even if we ignore it. New Orleans seems to illustrate this. Flood defenses were cut back in previous years. A large proportion of U.S. National Guards and their equipment are in Iraq. Government decided that terrorists were a bigger threat than nature. And now reality has bitten back.

Iraq stampede

I have often commented that fear of terrorism is irrational, and more dangerous than the bombs. I didn't expect such a clear and brutal illustration of the fact. A typical suicide bomber kills maybe 10 or 100 people. The irrational fear killed nearly 1000.

New Orleans flood defenses

In today's news:

"At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune [the local New Orleans paper] from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars." ...
"In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain [the lake that is now flooding New Orleans], according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness."

One more result of the irrational "war on terror"