With our new property web site we have ended up doing a lot of research into everything to do with land and property. A lot of it is stuff that I knew a bit about already but the most surprising thing that I have found out so far was a legal quirk that most people probably don't know about or give much thought to.

The fact comes from an idea which dates right back to the Norman conquest in 1066 but it is still effective today. It is that the monarch is the only person in England and Wales who is capable of owning land. Everyone else who thinks they might only land only owns a set of rights and duties to the Crown.

That is where the term freehold comes from a freeholder is said to 'hold the land' for the Crown and in exchange they are normally fairly free to do what they want on the land.

If you are concerned that you might have some obligations to the Crown as part of your freehold title that you don't know about then your local land registry office might be able to check for you or alternatively you could examine your deeds.

Looks like we now have flying cars in the UK, unfortunately one crashed into a first floor bedroom of a house in Basingstoke, Hampshire. You can read more here: BBC NEWS | England | Hampshire | Car lands in home's upper floor.

Having had the bad, or perhaps good, fortune to be spending some more time in London lately. I have decided that driving to London is just not practical any more. Even very late at night there are long queues and parking attendants on steroids round every corner.

So I decided train had to be the best way in. Last time I used the train from Aldershot it was pretty awful. But credit to South West Trains this time the train was new instead of 20 years old, it was also nice and clean. This was all a pleasant surprise, until I arrived at the Tube!

First I had to get the northern line from Waterloo to Goodge Street and coming from nice country air it was pretty disgusting as I descended into the smell of a musty heated perfume concoction mixed with body odour and dust. As I rose in the lift at the other end gasping for fresher air I could already feel the dust settling in my nostril hair and looking at my hands they were all grubby.

I thought to myself is it any wonder people drive everywhere with that as the alternative and then thinking back to a bus journey last summer I remembered that was just as bad. It seems obvious that something needed to be done about transport but that is something everyone says not many people actually make a suggestion.

So here's my plan, it's pretty radical but perfectly achievable, with a willing government and the support of commerce and the people of London and the UK. Both the people and the businesses in London need to wake up to the mess short term thinking has got them in and start acting in the long term interests of everyone concerned instead of living in the fear and short term mentality.

Todo list:

1. Close the zone 1 tube lines.
2. Ban all motor vehicles from zone one.
3. Make a major public investment into pedicabs.
4. Put 50,000+ free to use bikes at each major station.
5. Invest in electric goods carriers so anyone can put heavy parcels or goods on a train into a zone 1 access station like Waterloo and from there, included in the price of the ticket, the goods can be taken to the final destination of their choice inside zone 1.
6. Rebuild the zone 1 tube to have 2 tubes at least for each line and a maintenance line.

The only problem with this idea is how to pay for it and I am not sure about that yet but perhaps the flat tax Paul has been going on about can help?

What I find even more surprising is that this short list of todo's is more bold and sensible than most of the main political parties plans on transport all the main parties seem to be good at ignoring the issues and not so good at dealing with them.

If there is one thing I have learnt in business it is that radical thinking backed by money goes a lot further to making a change than sitting on the fence thinking with 10 times the cash behind it. So next time there is a tax hike proposed. Why not think about this question: Is my tax going towards something radical? Or is it going towards a continuation of steady change?

It should be interesting to the present government that as a higher rate payer I would be happy paying a radical Green party government higher income and corporation taxes but I would hate paying the same or even more tax to a Labour government with more "Bank Manager" levels of adventure and risk in their goals.

Unlike our friends in the civil service, we are a private company and therefore I don't have to maintain any political neutrality during election time when I write on this blog. So, apologies to Mr Kilroy Silk, but I found this flash animation about Veritas quite amusing.

Although I won't be voting for Veritas personally, I find their views on taxation very interesting. They have suggested that if they got power they would move the country towards a system of flat tax. For those of you who don't know what a flat tax is, it is basically a simple tax system that charges a single rate of tax on all income, with a high personal allowance.

There are many benefits of a system like this, but I won't list them all here so I suggest you go read this report by the Adam Smith Institute on the effects of a flat tax on the UK economy. It presents a favourable argument for a flat tax concept and even suggests that the idea maybe more feasible than some would have us believe. Maybe soon the other mainstream parties might even take this idea seriously.

For those of you like me, who couldn't find Veritas' home page, try looking here.

We've now completed an upgrade of the Internet connection to our office. Before we were running 2 ADSL connections with bonded upload (to double the upload speed). Now we have 6 ADSL lines with bonded uplink and downlink giving us a theoretical 6mbps down / 1.5mbps up. All this is thanks to our little friend, the firebrick. We've also completed the migration of our office servers to a new 30u server cabinet, which should make the space a bit more organised and allow our Server Guru to do his work.

And about time too. Finally we have launched a Fubra blog where you can keep up to date with the latest goings on at Fubra. Expect to hear a lot from Fubra founders, Paul and Brendan as well as the rest of their team.