Now that so many countries are officially in "recession", the main effort of policymakers the world over is to re-establish economies on a path of "growth". The measure of success here is Gross National Product (GNP),  the value of all goods and services produced by the people of a nation. But how much more growth is possible? Or desirable?

Land value taxation is a practical means of implementing Catholic Social Teaching, as set out in the series of Papal Encyclicals commencing with Rerum Novarum, promulgated by Pople Leo XIII in 1891.

Later this year, the Bishops of England and Wales plan to produce a new social teaching document. Before the document is drafted they are holding an initial consultation.

Local Income Tax is an idea that keeps on popping up like a perennial weed. The House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee has just produced a report called "The Balance of Power: Central and Local Government". In the section on finance, we read...

"A further solution would be to either replace or supplement council tax with a different local tax, such as a local income tax. This proposal has a long pedigree:

With the recent confirmation of construction of a 19km long bridge from Puttgarden in Germany to Rødby in Denmark, to be finished in 2018, one of the last train ferries will come to an end. A Danish IC3 train from Hamburg to Copenhagen is seen here on the car deck of the Scandlines ferry.

Passengers who enjoy the 45 minute crossing and the comfortable ferry with on-board restaurant may not appreciate the change, but it will reduce transport costs. In the absence of land value taxation, however, this is another bonanza for landowners, paid for by taxpayers.

Tommas Graves takes a step back from considerations of winners, losers and avoiders, and gives a view of the budget from a broader perspective

“Dishonest” says the Economist. Taken together with the steps to deal with the banking crisis, what we can see is the attempt to get the economy back to normal.

NORMAL? But what is normal?

In April 1649 Winstanley, William Everard, a former soldier in the New Model Army and about thirty followers took over some common land on St George's Hill in Surrey and "sowed the ground with parsnips, carrots and beans." Digger groups also took over land in Kent (Cox Hill), Surrey (Cobham), Buckinghamshire (Iver) and Northamptonshire (Wellingborough).

Local landowners were very disturbed by these developments. In July 1649 the government gave instructions for Winstanley to be arrested and for General Thomas Fairfax to "disperse the people by force" in case this is the "beginning to whence things of a greater and more dangerous consequence may grow". Oliver Cromwell is reported to have said: "What is the purport of the levelling principle but to make the tenant as liberal a fortune as the landlord. I was by birth a gentleman. You must cut these people in pieces or they will cut you in pieces."

Instructions were given for the Diggers to be beaten up and for their houses, crops and tools to be destroyed. These tactics were successful and within a year all the Digger communities in England had been wiped out.

In memory of the 360th anniversary of the Diggers, we publish a poem kindly submitted by Simon M Hunter.

St. George's Hill in forty nine, the time
Of Charles's chopping block, we Diggers come
Reclaiming earth by Bastard taken, all
Those centuries before. But Fairfax cried
"Enough of revolution, turn again
Your commune to its owners, lords of land"