I've been in London for a couple of weeks, where I was set upon by a vicious door that conked me on the head and smashed up all the ribs and muscles and arms on my right-hand side. As a consequence, I haven't been able to think straight (yes, yes, very funny) and found my mind wandering in all directions at once.

I have been staying in the Borough of Westminster and such is my lot that all I have been able to do is to compare it to Bermuda. I'll focus here on the economics, since this is nominally a finance column.

Westminster has 256,000 residents crammed into a space much smaller than Bermuda. Westminster has in reality all the troubles that Bermuda fancies itself to have, none of which seem real at this distance. We'll take them one by one.

Crime. I seem to recall reading, or perhaps I made it up, that Bermuda had 132 robberies last year. In Westminster, most people have that many robberies every week, and they are stabbed, mugged and abused on the hour every hour. I myself was threatened by a roving gang of young punks on a train last week, one of whom threatened to bash my head in.

That hasn't happened to me in Bermuda since the last election. (When I pointed out that I was already a walking casualty, he very kindly relented from beating me up.)

Traffic. It takes some people 45 minutes to drive in from Southampton, and as a result Bermuda is considering any number of "solutions" to the "problem". In Westminster, the traffic is seriously horrendous and it can take people two and a half hours to drive to Edgware, the equivalent of Southampton, each way, each day. No one here says a word about traffic.

Westminster is in central London, so many people don't feel the need for a car. Public transport, when it works, is fabulous and cheap. When it doesn't work, suicide is always preferable to dealing with the consequences.

Education: Bermuda has a poor public education system and a very efficient private system. Ditto Westminster and just about everywhere else. The key difference that I can see is that Bermuda spends more per year on its students than it would cost to send them all to private schools. If you can explain the logic in that one, kindly do so (crombie@northrock.bm).

Identity. Bermudians bang on about how independence will bring them a national identity, when they already have a clearly defined national identity as strong as that of anywhere in the world.

England, on the other hand, is stripping itself of its identity, tearing down ancient practices such as the House of Lords and having Britannia on the currency. The British insist on a referendum for Bermuda, but won't be holding the one promised to them by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown on the adoption of the EU Constitution, which will give Brits a European identity that is fuzzy, chaotic and often could do with a good bath.

Housing: Bermuda is notoriously expensive for housing. I hate to say this, but hah! In even some ordinary parts of Westminster, two million dollars wouldn't get you within a mile of owning property. In the rest of the Borough you'd need a million bucks to buy a property about as big as your living room. Houses with gardens, which Bermudians consider their birthright, are few and far between in London's inner areas.

Here's the stunning part. Londoners live their lives carrying a burden of personal taxation that would test the strength of Samson. On salaries a fraction of those in Bermuda, which are then taxed in half, Londoners pay Bermuda prices for their goods and services.

I've mentioned this before - it's a pet theme - but taxation is a pernicious social evil. Not just because you have to pay a lot of money for the provision of often inefficient and unnecessary "public" services that you may not use, but because of the record-keeping requirement. In Bermuda, you do some work for someone, they give you a cheque and the when you bank it, the administration is done. Employers must administer payroll tax and other deductions, as well as pension arrangements, but administration need not be a working Bermudian's forte.

By contrast, the taxes in Britain create the need to keep voluminous records.

That means small business people calculating their value added tax liability (VAT) on the weekends, or paying a professional to do it. Deadlines are frequent and punishments for missing one severe.

It means keeping receipts and knowing where you were and who you dealt with, and why. It means filing annually or quarterly on forms that no human being alive today can understand. It means endless analysis of investment opportunities, special allowances, savings accounts and the whole panoply of legal dodges necessary to minimise the tax. In Britain, the tax effect is always the first and most urgent factor.

It means, for a noticeable percentage of people, that the whole thing is too much trouble. Taxes create a "can't do" atmosphere.

So Bermuda wins the debate hands down. Not counting the scenery and the charm and the people and the weather, Bermuda's refusal to tax people into the ground makes it a "can do" place, and one where a hard-working person might prosper.

It seems at times as if no one prospers in Britain, except hedge fund guys, foreigners and other exotica. The average British bloke gets by as best he can, and knows he will never rise above, because the tax system is there to cripple him if he even thinks about it.

Now I've made my head hurt again, so I'll stop rambling. Next week, with me happily back in Bermuda and not paying tax, I expect to return to my usual more focused self. How anyone will tell the difference is beyond me.